2024 read #28: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

350 pages

Published 2017

Read from February 3 to March 1

Rating: 4 out of 5

White supremacy and American evangelical Christianity are interwoven, inseparable, inextricable. You can have white supremacy without religion, but you cannot have American evangelicalism without white supremacy. Evangelicalism positions a hierarchy with the abusive heavenly dad at its summit; rankings in the earthly hierarchy just happen to map onto the racial, sexual, gendered, and financial power structures of America’s horrific past (and all too plausible future). White supremacy is a rite of greater significance to the religion than the teachings or sacrifice of the biblical Jesus. American evangelicalism shouldn’t be called Christianity at all — nothing about it reflects the pre-Constantine faith. But then, which modern sect of Christianity does?

The setting of this novel literalizes this ideological knot to reflect the cruel heart of the American project back on itself. The Matilda is a generation ship. It left Earth — the Great Lifehouse, now a dead world — hundreds of years before, heading out to a Promised Land in the stars. Dark-skinned people, restricted to the lower decks, are brutalized and forced to labor to feed and maintain the pale-skinned aristocracy of the upper decks. The religious Sovereignty no longer controls the direction of the ship, but they maintain their horrific grip upon the generations of people trapped on board, even as power outages and other troubles plague the lower decks.

The world Solomon describes within the Matilda is palpable, tactile, vivid in its horrors and its secret touches of community. In part because it took me so long to read Ghosts, its setting lingers in my mind, burning like the nuclear reactor at the ship’s heart.

Our main viewpoint character is Aster, whom we might describe as queer, intersex, and autistic. She is a scientist, an alchemicalist, a healer, the child of a brilliant woman who disappeared when she was born. Her viewpoint is unflinching, detailing assaults and sexual violence and daily abuse, a careful record of the murderous rage she keeps tamped down in order to survive. In a world (or a ship) built with such calculated cruelty, the only rational response is to burn it all down.