Ready! Set! UNREAL! Nalo Hopkinson’s THE CHAOS

~ Stephanie Barbé Hammer

Nalo Hopkinson’s new YA novel THE CHAOS is one bad-ass surealistic, feminist, progressive, queer friendly, POC celebrating, anti-ableist mind- trip.  Featuring gorgeously ambiguous grrls of color, the novel takes us on a ride that Andre Breton and Frida Kahlo would feel right at home in.  Or should I say on?  Nice town Toronto Canada becomes Ground Zero  for a global nervous breakdown, as all inside fears and desires burst outwards, propelling our hero Scotch into a combination Russian fairy tale, Creole Soup Kitchen, Hurricane Katrina, and PTSD slam poetry/dance routine.

To paraphrase a sentence in the novel, weird is Hopkinson’s vacation home – a crazy house on chicken legs that gives birth to self-discovery, terror, joy, and freedom.

Think young adult fiction has to be realistic, standardly dystopian, and/or just plain nice?  Or just plain mean?  Or one-issued/one themed?

Think again. And jump into the fiery furnace of The Chaos.  You won’t get burned.

Or will you?

Published by Stephanie Barbé Hammer

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a magical realist prose fiction writer, novelist, occasional essayist, and a committed, intermittent poet, as well as a passionate instructor of writing. A 7-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize she has published work in Hayden's Ferry, Pearl, CRATE, Rhapsoidia, NYCBigCityLit, the East Jasmine Review, Apeiron, Inlandia, Literary Alchemy and the Bellevue Literary Review among other places. She is the author the fabulist novel THE PUPPET TURNERS OF NARROW INTERIOR (Urban Farmhouse Press), a novelette, RESCUE PLAN (Bamboo Dart Press), a prose poem chapbook collection, SEX WITH BUILDINGS (dancing girl press), and a poetry collection, HOW FORMAL (Spout Hill Press). Stephanie's new novel PRETEND PLUMBER is available for order from your favorite bookstore, and her poetry chapbook CITY SLICKER will release in July 2022.

One thought on “Ready! Set! UNREAL! Nalo Hopkinson’s THE CHAOS”

  1. Pingback: Magically Real Special Report: The last episodes of Battlestar Galactica or why we need different stories « Stephanie Barbé Hammer @ Magically Real

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