I love world-building.
Twelve years ago, I became a permanent resident of Canada, lured here by my beautiful wife, Anne. I can’t remember if I heard “Brown Girl in the Ring” at a birthday party Anne and I attended before I read Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring, but at that party, watching the reverie unfold I felt something unfamiliar. Like something was missing.
The Greater Toronto Area is truly multicultural. Anne is Hungarian-Japanese and most of her friends are an equally rich blending of ethnicities. West Indian Indian. West Indian Black. West Indian Black Asian. Middle Eastern Maritime.
All of them are complete and engaged in their diversity. They slipped so smoothly between their respective histories, their languages—an intricate, joyous, and very loud! mashing of English and a myriad of dialects that was completely natural. It was beautiful.
I wished I had that.
That party, that song, that true melting pot in my new home country—and being a Black Chicagoan in that moment—left me with a new kind of yearning, a desire to belong I couldn’t quite articulate.
My mother’s side of the family is from Mississippi, and many (many!) live in New Orleans. There’s always been talk of the uniqueness of the Creole culture there, and of really, really unique people. True characters. People and culture I wanted to put into my stories.
But, as any truly good-and-shy writer would do, I chose not to call my family to mine information from them. I didn’t ask questions or take notes over a pot of jambalaya with Uncle Role or Antie Annette or Aunt Cute, or unreservedly dig into the lore of my kin. Nope.
Instead, I started quietly world-building a fictional culture in an alt-Chicago with elements of Louisiana Creole. (Somehow, my introverted logic fully conceded this would be easier, even though some of my older cousins shared bits of our Creole heritage.)
In 2009, I found very little Louisiana Creole online, save one limited Louisiana Creole dictionary. Not-so-coincidentally, one of my main dark fantasy characters at the time, Bijou LaVoix, was forbidden to speak Louisiana Creole by her mother. In the story, it was because her English grades weren’t good enough. In reality, I couldn’t figure out how to realistically weave in and do justice to that distinct and distant tongue in my writing.
I continued to search for good Louisiana Creole resources, and then, one day I had the incredibly good fortune to find Mandaly Louis-Charles’s blog, Sweet Coconuts, for Haitian Creole. I was astounded by the amount of information, depth, and detail. It was a thrilling discovery, one I’d been waiting for, even though it was a different kind of Creole.
Immediately, I shifted my world-building.
My stories that followed were set in an alt-Chicago where the real Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, thought to have been born in Haiti, still founded Chicago, but didn’t leave to trade. No, in my world, he became Chicago’s lord mayor and established Haitian Creole as its official language. He made the city obscenely rich through its minerals, pissed off the State of Illinois by hoarding the wealth, and seceded Chicago from Illinois to make it a sovereign state. In my alt-Chicago, Jean Baptiste was THE MAN. He raised up my birth-city as the black market capital and technological center of America.
To expand my world, many of these stories incorporated elements of my life, including characters based on my mother and her sisters. And her brothers. And my grandfather. And my grandmother, Big Mama.
My mama was one of twelve, so there were personalities aplenty. And there were characters who mirrored my half sister. My biological father. My step father, who’s my chosen dad. My four step brothers, who are my blood brothers.
I’d eventually realize I had a connection—many connections—all along. I’d just overlooked them.
I wrote every story with this thick, deep background in mind, especially the ones in this collection. I also tried my best to accurately incorporate some of the Haitian Creole language and grammar from the Sweet Coconuts blog. Though, I often asked myself if this was cultural appropriation, while always, always feeling an enormous cultural appreciation as I continued to learn more.
Two years ago, I was invited to be part of a Caribbean Diaspora writers panel. The invite itself was a heady experience; two deeply respected authors, one of whom I’d long, long admired, had come up with the idea that I should be offered a place on said distinguished stage. The writer who extended the invite said she loved my Half Dark stories in Shimmer magazine. The other, much to my elated (somewhat starstruck) inner fanboy ego, mentioned I would be a good fit. I was tremendously flattered and said so, but declined the panelist offer. Somehow, I felt it would’ve been wrong to participate.
I was just as flattered (and enormously grateful) when I asked Mandaly Louis-Charles to narrate one of my stories, “Shadow Man, Sack Man, Half Dark, Half Light,” and she said my Haitian Creole was “on point.” Coming from her, it was the highest compliment.
I wasn’t (and still am not) proficient in Haitian Creole, though. Mandalay took the time to make linguistic corrections on other stories she agreed to narrate for me (for Escape Pod and PodCastle), which I wholeheartedly appreciate.
So, my Haitian Creole isn’t perfect. And my writing isn’t perfect. Neither is my world-building.
But it is a meticulously crafted labor of love.
I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing—and building—them.
Malon Edwards