“There is no solid ground beneath us”: The Shoals and Detours of Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Glass Bottle Trick,” “Precious,” and “Greedy Choke Puppy”
Abstract This article presents a reading of Nalo Hopkinson’s short stories “The Glass Bottle Trick,” “Precious,” and “Greedy Choke Puppy” that considers Caribbean Canadian subjectivity through lenses of (inter)textuality and the material/metaphorical spaces and movements of interruption. It draws from Tiffany Lethabo King’s thinking on shoals to theorize the gathering and accumulation of tales that occurs in Hopkinson’s re/imaginings of “Bluebeard,” “The Kind and the Unkind Girls,” and soucouyant folklore. The article suggests that these shoals interrupt the paths of dominant narratives in ways that force detours to emerge, adapting Rinaldo Walcott’s use of the term to explore the transformative possibilities that occur through the creation of new improvised paths, of otherwise ways of conceptualizing Caribbean Canadian being. Ultimately, it proposes that Hopkinson’s stories acknowledge and yet interrupt colonial narratives of geography, identity, and femininity, providing a framework through which to consider the unstable grounds and the searching detours of Caribbean Canadian subjectivities.
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Aesop. “The Hen and the Golden Eggs.” Three Hundred ?sop’s Fables. Translated by George Flyer Townsend, George Routledge and Sons, 1867, p. 119. Gale Primary Sources: Nineteenth Century Collection, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CDHEXE211101653/NCCO?u=edmo69826&sid=bookmark-NCCO&xid=088d64a8&pg=152
Anatol, Giselle Liza. The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora. Rutgers UP, 2015.
Atwood, Margaret. “Bluebeard’s Egg.” 1983. The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, pp. 156-78.
Avianus. “Fable 24. Of the Goose and Its Master.” Aesop’s Fables: With a Life of Aesop, edited and translated by John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating, UP of Kentucky, 1993, pp. 193–4. EBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), search-ebscohost-com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=938214&site=eds-live&scope=site
Bacchilega, Cristina. “Extrapolating from Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk: Reflections on Transformation and Recent English-Language Fairy-Tale Fiction by Women.” Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale, edited by Stephen Benson, Wayne State UP, 2008, pp. 178-203.
Batty, Nancy, and Nalo Hopkinson. “‘Caught by a … genre’: An Interview with Nalo Hopkinson.” ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 33, no. 1, 2002,
pp. 175-201.
Boyce-Davies, Carole. Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. Routledge, 1994. Taylor & Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203201404
Brand, Dionne. A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Vintage Canada, 2011.
Brooks, Kinitra D. Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror. Rutgers UP, 2018.
Brothers Grimm. “Fitcher’s Bird.” 1812. The Classic Fairy Tales, edited and translated by Maria Tatar, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, pp. 148-51.
Bucknor, Michael A., and Daniel Coleman. “Introduction: Rooting and Routing Caribbean-Canadian Writing.” Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 14, no. 1/2, 2005, pp. i–xliii. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23020007
Campt, Tina M. “Performing Stillness: Diaspora and Stasis in Black German Vernacular Photography.” Qui Parle, vol. 26, no. 1, 2017, pp. 155–70, https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-3822457
Carroll, Denolyn. “Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson.” Black Issues Book Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, p. 56. Literary Reference Center.
Carruthers, Charlene A. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Beacon Press, 2018.
Ellis, Nadia. Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora. Duke UP, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375104
Foreman, P. Gabrielle. “A Note on Language.” Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, U of Illinois P, 2009, p. xv.
Foreman, P. Gabrielle, et al. “Writing About Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help.” Community-sourced document, https://docs.google.com/document/
d/1A4TEdDgYslX-hlKezLodMIM71My3KTN0zxRv0IQTOQs/mobilebasic. Accessed 13 Feb. 2020.
Hairston, Andrea. “Double Consciousness.” Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory, edited by Marleen S. Barr, Ohio State UP, 2008, pp. 151-7. Project Muse, muse.jhu.edu/book/27901
Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford UP, 1997.
Hermansson, Casie. Bluebeard: A Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition. UP of Mississippi, 2009.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “The Glass Bottle Trick.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 92-110.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Greedy Choke Puppy.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 180-96.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Precious.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 262-70.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Riding the Red.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 10-3.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Something to Hitch Meat To.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 30-53.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Tan-Tan and Dry Bone.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 160-79.
King, Tiffany Lethabo. The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Duke UP, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478005681
The Mah?bh?rata. Edited and translated by J. A. B. van Buitenen, vol. 2, U of Chicago P, 1975.
McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. U of Minnesota P, 2006. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv711
Perrault, Charles. “The Fairies.” 1697. The Complete Fairy Tales, translated by Christopher Betts, Oxford UP, 2009, pp. 127-9. EBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), search-ebscohost-com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=302377&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Roberts, Warren E. “The Special Forms of Aarne-Thompson Type 480 and Their Distribution.” Fabula, vol. 1, no. 1, 1958, pp. 85-102. De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.1958.1.1.85
Robinson, Natalie. “Exploding the Glass Bottles: Constructing the Postcolonial ‘Bluebeard’ Tale in Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Glass Bottle Trick.” Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment, edited by Catriona McAra and David Calvin, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, pp. 253-261.
Rutledge, Gregory E., and Nalo Hopkinson. “Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson.” African American Review, vol. 33, no. 4, 1999, pp. 589-601. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2901339
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resurgence. U of Minnesota P, 2017.
Smith, Neil and Cindi Katz. “Grounding Metaphor: Towards a Spatialized Politics.” Place and the Politics of Identity, edited by Michael Keith and Steve Pile, Routledge, 1993, pp. 66-81, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203016695
Walcott, Rinaldo. Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada. 2nd revised ed., Insomniac Press, 2003.
Wright, Michelle M. Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology. U of Minnesota P, 2015.
Yearsley, Macleod. “Bluebeard and the Forbidden Chamber.” The Folklore of Fairy-Tale, Watts & Co., 1924, pp. 121-37. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/fairytales_201911/page/n1/mode/2up
“Yung-Kyum-Pyung.” Jamaican Song and Story: Annancy Stories, Digging Sings, Ring Tunes, and Dancing Tunes, edited by Walter Jekyll, David Nutt, 1907, pp. 11-3. Project Gutenberg, 2011, www.gutenberg.org/files/35410/35410-h/35410-h.htm#Page_11
Anatol, Giselle Liza. The Things That Fly in the Night: Female Vampires in Literature of the Circum-Caribbean and African Diaspora. Rutgers UP, 2015.
Atwood, Margaret. “Bluebeard’s Egg.” 1983. The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, pp. 156-78.
Avianus. “Fable 24. Of the Goose and Its Master.” Aesop’s Fables: With a Life of Aesop, edited and translated by John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating, UP of Kentucky, 1993, pp. 193–4. EBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), search-ebscohost-com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=938214&site=eds-live&scope=site
Bacchilega, Cristina. “Extrapolating from Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk: Reflections on Transformation and Recent English-Language Fairy-Tale Fiction by Women.” Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale, edited by Stephen Benson, Wayne State UP, 2008, pp. 178-203.
Batty, Nancy, and Nalo Hopkinson. “‘Caught by a … genre’: An Interview with Nalo Hopkinson.” ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 33, no. 1, 2002,
pp. 175-201.
Boyce-Davies, Carole. Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. Routledge, 1994. Taylor & Francis Group, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203201404
Brand, Dionne. A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Vintage Canada, 2011.
Brooks, Kinitra D. Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror. Rutgers UP, 2018.
Brothers Grimm. “Fitcher’s Bird.” 1812. The Classic Fairy Tales, edited and translated by Maria Tatar, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, pp. 148-51.
Bucknor, Michael A., and Daniel Coleman. “Introduction: Rooting and Routing Caribbean-Canadian Writing.” Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 14, no. 1/2, 2005, pp. i–xliii. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23020007
Campt, Tina M. “Performing Stillness: Diaspora and Stasis in Black German Vernacular Photography.” Qui Parle, vol. 26, no. 1, 2017, pp. 155–70, https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-3822457
Carroll, Denolyn. “Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson.” Black Issues Book Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 2003, p. 56. Literary Reference Center.
Carruthers, Charlene A. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Beacon Press, 2018.
Ellis, Nadia. Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora. Duke UP, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375104
Foreman, P. Gabrielle. “A Note on Language.” Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century, U of Illinois P, 2009, p. xv.
Foreman, P. Gabrielle, et al. “Writing About Slavery/Teaching About Slavery: This Might Help.” Community-sourced document, https://docs.google.com/document/
d/1A4TEdDgYslX-hlKezLodMIM71My3KTN0zxRv0IQTOQs/mobilebasic. Accessed 13 Feb. 2020.
Hairston, Andrea. “Double Consciousness.” Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory, edited by Marleen S. Barr, Ohio State UP, 2008, pp. 151-7. Project Muse, muse.jhu.edu/book/27901
Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford UP, 1997.
Hermansson, Casie. Bluebeard: A Reader’s Guide to the English Tradition. UP of Mississippi, 2009.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “The Glass Bottle Trick.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 92-110.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Greedy Choke Puppy.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 180-96.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Precious.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 262-70.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Riding the Red.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 10-3.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Something to Hitch Meat To.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 30-53.
Hopkinson, Nalo. “Tan-Tan and Dry Bone.” Skin Folk, 2001. Open Road Integrated Media, 2015, pp. 160-79.
King, Tiffany Lethabo. The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. Duke UP, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478005681
The Mah?bh?rata. Edited and translated by J. A. B. van Buitenen, vol. 2, U of Chicago P, 1975.
McKittrick, Katherine. Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. U of Minnesota P, 2006. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttv711
Perrault, Charles. “The Fairies.” 1697. The Complete Fairy Tales, translated by Christopher Betts, Oxford UP, 2009, pp. 127-9. EBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), search-ebscohost-com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=302377&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Roberts, Warren E. “The Special Forms of Aarne-Thompson Type 480 and Their Distribution.” Fabula, vol. 1, no. 1, 1958, pp. 85-102. De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.1958.1.1.85
Robinson, Natalie. “Exploding the Glass Bottles: Constructing the Postcolonial ‘Bluebeard’ Tale in Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Glass Bottle Trick.” Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment, edited by Catriona McAra and David Calvin, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011, pp. 253-261.
Rutledge, Gregory E., and Nalo Hopkinson. “Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Science Fiction Writer Nalo Hopkinson.” African American Review, vol. 33, no. 4, 1999, pp. 589-601. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2901339
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resurgence. U of Minnesota P, 2017.
Smith, Neil and Cindi Katz. “Grounding Metaphor: Towards a Spatialized Politics.” Place and the Politics of Identity, edited by Michael Keith and Steve Pile, Routledge, 1993, pp. 66-81, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203016695
Walcott, Rinaldo. Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada. 2nd revised ed., Insomniac Press, 2003.
Wright, Michelle M. Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology. U of Minnesota P, 2015.
Yearsley, Macleod. “Bluebeard and the Forbidden Chamber.” The Folklore of Fairy-Tale, Watts & Co., 1924, pp. 121-37. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/fairytales_201911/page/n1/mode/2up
“Yung-Kyum-Pyung.” Jamaican Song and Story: Annancy Stories, Digging Sings, Ring Tunes, and Dancing Tunes, edited by Walter Jekyll, David Nutt, 1907, pp. 11-3. Project Gutenberg, 2011, www.gutenberg.org/files/35410/35410-h/35410-h.htm#Page_11
Gerber, L., & Gerber, L. (2022). “There is no solid ground beneath us”: The Shoals and Detours of Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Glass Bottle Trick,” “Precious,” and “Greedy Choke Puppy”. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 10, 51–67. https://doi.org/10.14201/candb.v10i51-68
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