5. Nalo Hopkinson
How can you possibly sum up the beautiful, strange and wide-ranging work of an author like Nalo Hopkinson? You honestly can’t, or at least not for someone who has never read her work. Still, we can do our best to give you an introduction. However, it’s for you to experience her writing yourself.
Hopkinson’s work draws deep from her Caribbean heritage, as well as the region’s history, folkways, and languages. She’s written while holding a variety of jobs, from cultural research officer, grants administrator, and library worker. She is now a professor at UC Riverside, though that position appeared only after years of ill health and dire financial straits. Thankfully, Hopkinson is now able to teach and publish her speculative fiction.
While it’s difficult to pick just one book to start, you would do well to begin with her 2000 novel, Midnight Robber. The story is set in a far future world, where people can travel not only amongst the planets but between dimensions. Tan-Tan, a young girl, grows up in this environment, first on the planet Toussaint, and then its alternate dimension counterpart, New Half-Way Tree.
Along the way, she deals with serious issues such as adultery, abuse, and unwanted pregnancy. She also interacts with the Douen, a group of alien people and an information system that lives in your bloodstream and talks to you in your head via quasi-mystical nanotechnology by the name of “Granny Nanny.”