RIVERS SOLOMON

The American writer talks about living in opposition to the status quo

We talk to the author of timely new fantasy Sorrowland.

WHY DO AUTHORS WRITE SPECULATIVE fiction? One reason is aesthetic, a sense of being drawn towards fantastical worlds, places that are an escape from day-to-day reality. As Rivers Solomon puts it, “There is that delicious childish impulse to want to live in another world, one with more magic, more novelty”. In Solomon’s extraordinary new novel Sorrowland, this involves crafting a world that has a distinctly – and distinctive – gothic quality, and something of the quality of a fairy tale. “I wanted something that felt dark, tense, and full of energy but with all the lushness and richness of a period drama,” fae (Solomon’s preferred pronoun) says.

At its heart lies Vern, an albino teenager from a Black family who flees a cultish religious community, Cainland, to live in the woods. On one level “she’s simply a young girl who ran away”, but she’s also a tough cookie, an outsider and a survivor. “I wanted to lean into her difference,” says Solomon. “I’m very fond of extraordinary heroines, partly because of wish fulfilment, but also because I think everyone has it in them to be a heroine at one point or another, if they’re set up for it, if the fates allow it.”

When SFX suggests that motherhood is one of the book’s themes, Solomon instead says it’s more concerned with childrearing. “I spend a lot of time wondering why people are the way they are,” fae says. “Not their personalities, but their values and attitudes. We know upbringing plays a large part in it, but we also know that many people can escape, or at least attempt to fight against, the bigoted values that may have been imparted to them in childhood.

“But many don’t. Why are there so many people so deeply committed to hate, prejudice, exclusion, and subjugation? I have a theory that part of it is the way that we treat children. We don’t respect them. From early on, they’re indoctrinated into how to submit to authority.”

THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE

Vern, with her “deeply questioning spirit” and “cantankerous nature”, is, despite her years, someone who challenges authority. It seems reasonable to suggest that Solomon’s own feelings about being an outsider play into the character. Solomon is, says faer website, “a dyke, an anarchist, a she-beast, an exile, a shiv, a wreck, and a refugee of the Trans-atlantic Slave Trade” who “writes about life in the margins, where fae is very much at home”.

“I’ve been marked by difference for as long as I can remember, in every setting or place I’ve been,” fae says. “Around 10 or 11, I realised that there was very little about the mainstream world I wanted to be a part of. I lived in Texas at the time. I hated church, and I hated the Bible. I hated George Bush. I thought to myself, ‘Why would I ever want to be a part of this? Leave me out of it’.

“Being Black is good. Being in opposition to the status quo is good. It comes with injustice and pain, which isn’t a cost any of us should have to pay, but it’s like the spiritual [“Oh Freedom!”] goes, ‘Before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave and be free.’”

BLACK BOOKS

Nevertheless, Solomon took a “boring” route into becoming a professional writer. Fae took undergraduate creative writing courses at Stanford, and wrote in faer spare time. Toni Morrison was a key influence, and something of the energy of Morrison’s Sula courses through Sorrowland in the way it conveys a sense of the fantastic lying just beneath the everyday.

One day, Solomon gloomily asked one of faer teachers, writer Adam Johnson, if faer writing would ever improve. He said of course, and it was a “lightbulb moment”. Fae applied for MFA (Master of Fine Arts) courses. Debut novel An Unkindness Of Ghosts was Solomon’s thesis.

After many rejections it was finally accepted by Akashic Books. It was an instant critical and, later, commercial success, as was follow-up The Deep. Vindication for someone who says of the rejection, “I felt very down on myself as a writer. I felt too weird. I felt out of step.” Today, this has been replaced by a pressure of expectation.

Both books were extraordinary adventures in, for want of a better word, Afrofuturism – a part of the genre, SFX suggests, that has at long last found a purchase within SFF. “Honestly, it will never be enough for me,” Solomon says. “So many years have been stolen from Black art and Black fiction. There are so many stories dying to be told. How much territory will publishing cede? What if the stories continue to get Blacker, queerer, weirder? Based on cultural norms or religious mythos that are too unfamiliar?

“Readers want these stories. Of course they do. And they’ve always been here, if you’re willing to look in the right places.”

Sorrowland is published by Merky Books on 6 May.

There is that delicious childish impulse to want to live in another world, with magic