Sorrowland is Rivers Solomon’s most masterful work in what the author knows how to do best: emancipate through the power of the imagination, by exposing systemic violence such as racism.
Among the new major figures of the contemporary imagination, Rivers Solomon – a non-binary American author – is in a very high place, both for the beauty of her writing and for her punchy words.
His first novel translated in France, The incivility of ghosts, embarked us aboard a huge spaceship in exodus — but behind the fabulous odyssey, in fact, hid there the ghosts of human history and all their social brutality. In The Abyssthen, Rivers Solomon engaged in the fantastic with a people of mermaids marked by the memory of slavery.
The works of Rivers Solomon are distinguished by their allegorical power, and Sorrowland is the pinnacle. Published on May 13, 2022 in France at the Forges de Vulcain, this new novel is translated by Francis Guèvremont.
Emancipatory metamorphosis
It is in a forest that Vern, a 15-year-old albino girl, gives birth to twins. Because for several months, her life has been an escape: she escaped from a violent sect where she was raised in total autarky, and whose members are now hunting her. In these harsh conditions, one would think that Vern quickly finds himself overwhelmed. But little by little, she experiences a metamorphosis in her flesh — her reflexes push her to use a supernatural force. What creature is she becoming? What heritage does this come from?
The keystone of Sorrowland is in its title. Rivers Solomon places his story in a country that wants to be totally fictional, but which, obviously, echoes our real history – that of racism in particular, while also integrating reflections on gender or religion. Sorrowland becomes, as a fictional country, the ultimate allegory of trauma and systemic violence: the hostile land—yes, our society—where the brutal ghosts of the past endlessly pursue us in the present, turning life into survival for many.
But it is also there all the positivity of the novel. Sorrowland is a land of traumas, as much as a land of asylum — interior. Vern, the heroine, struggles through constant rebellion. His metamorphosis is brutal, but in a way, liberating. More than a resilience, it’s a resumption of power for someone who, in normal times, would probably not have had this opportunity.
It is in particular in this that the literature of Rivers Solomon is emancipatory: it expresses the inexpressible, reveals the biases, shows the violence, and, in the end, restores the desire to live in the world in those whose shackles are constructed throughout human history refuse the right to simply be. All with a clear and powerful pen and narration.
Numerama met Rivers Solomon, during his visit to France, at the bookstore Les Mots à la bouche (Paris). Find this meeting soon on our social networks in video and on our site.
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