The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Review

I had the chance to read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ beautiful debut novel, The Water Dancer, so I wanted to share my review of the book. True confession, the reason I got to read the book is because I bought a copy for my brother as a gift, but took the liberty of reading it myself first. Am I the only one who does that? Don’t judge me please.

A Slave Story But Not Really

The main character in The Water Dancer is an enslaved Black man named, Hiram Walker. The story is narrated by Hiram and begins in his childhood and ends when he’s an adult. So, one could say The Water Dancer is a slave story, but that wouldn’t be accurate. The Water Dancer is a superhero origin story about a man who happens to be enslaved. It’s Black magical realism – more realism than magic – with a deep grounding in antebellum history.

Hiram has two supernatural powers. He has a perfect memory, like literally perfect, and he can transport himself from one place to another with his mind. From a young age he knows about his powerful memory and understands its usefulness, but throughout the course of the novel we see him try to harness his other powers to put them to good use. And that good use involves escaping from slavery and helping others do the same.

A Honest Meditation on the Real Victims of Slavery

As mentioned above, The Water Dancer is narrated by Hiram himself and he is a thoughtful and detailed narrator who uses some foreshadowing to alert us to future events. The effect is a continuous sense of anticipation and sometimes worry that kept me turning pages relentlessly until I reached the end of the book. Still, the book also serves as an intimate re-telling of American history that refers to enslaved people as the Tasked and allows us inside the minds of Black people who yearn for freedom of body, mind and spirit.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has to be commended for writing a book that is at once a thriller, but also a deeply thoughtful meditation on the effects of slavery on Blacks, whites and the American south. In my opinion, Coates is showing us that slavery was as damaging to whites as it was to Blacks. Even the land itself was ravaged by the unchecked greed of slavery. And Coates is masterful at defining the difference between white people in antebellum America, creating a hierarchy where The Quality whites ruled and Low whites did their bidding. There is a line in the book where Hiram, who once admired The Quality, realizes that their lives are not enviable and he’d choose his own struggles over theirs. 

He writes: ” …I saw that I had set my sights much too low…{we Tasked who lived among The Quality} knew first-hand that they took the privy as all others, that they were young and stupid, and old and frail, and that their powers were all a fiction. They were no better than us, and in so many ways worse.”

The Harriet Tubman Cameo

I was thrilled to see Harriet Tubman makes a few brief but pivotal appearances in The Water Dancer. Like Hiram, Harriet shares the same ability to “conduct” herself across a great distance with only her mind. And she can bring others with her as well. Kind of explains how she managed to sneak in and out of the south without detection for all of those years!

Without giving the ending away, I will say, The Water Dancer ends with the firm possibility of a sequel. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not one of those unsatisfying endings and there’s no cliffhanger, it’s just that it doesn’t seem like Hiram is finished with his story on the last page of the book. Or maybe that’s just my wishful thinking.  I hope that Ta-Nehisi Coates loves this character he created as much as I do and will bring Hiram back for more adventures. I did hear Mr. Coates say in an interview that it took him 10 years to write this book, so, I won’t hold my breath. I might just read The Water Dancer again! It really was that good.

Have you read The Water Dancer? Do you want to share your review? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Drop them below in the comments.