Midnight Carobber Analysis

Midnight Robber mixes the conventions of the science fiction with Afro-Caribbean symbols and history. The inhabitants of Toussaint have not completely forgotten the history out of which they arose on Earth. Jonkanoo has become a holiday during which they celebrate the landing of the Marryshow Corporation nation ships that had brought their ancestors to Toussaint two centuries before: “Time to remember the way their forefathers had toiled and sweated together: Taino Carib and Arawak; African; Asian; Indian; even the Euro, though some wasn’t too happy to acknowledge that-there bloodline. All the bloods flowing into one river, making a new home on a new planet” (Hopkinson 18). This explanation of Jonkanoo and the life on Earth alludes to the history of colonialism and slave trade which brought diverse populations together in the Caribbean. The moment of diasporic travel to the “Nation worlds” also encompasses the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. This is invoked when Ben, the programmer in charge of Garden, presents Tan-Tan, during the Jonkanoo, with a hat in the intricate shape of a ship fashioned out of rattan: “Long time, that
It “deftly combines the competing and complimentary exigencies of Afro-futurist, cyberpunk, and utopian impulses. The trickster qualities inherent in cyberpunk’s celebration of bricolage and hacking are retooled into skills of subterfuge and making do when inflected with Afro-futurism’s attendance to African-American and diasporic African themes” (Dery 9). The use of hacked language and carnivalized form accommodates a diverse and inclusive space to examine the multiplicities, fissures and complexities of Afro-Caribbean culture. The narrative combines the popular with the discourses of power, knowledge, and the legacies of slavery and colonialism to create a critical paradigm which preserves and extols Caribbean