The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (literature books to read txt) 📗

clear that this worldis set in the real past, and that conceit has brought with it a host of complicationsbeyond the usual worldbuilding of a fantasy series. Specifically, history is not prettyor sanitized, and historical fiction cannot be either, not if it is to be true inany sense of the word.

Looking back at our history, studying and recovering it, often brings tolight a wealth of problematic incidents and issues—many of which are hurtful andoffensive to modern readers. It is the job of the writer to make choices about what toinclude and what to leave out, and how to represent truthfully the often terrible eventsthat have created our present. Writing fiction meant for entertainment, however, hasallowed me freedom that the academic historian doesn’t have. Fiction offers moreflexibility in the choices I’ve made to position characters and events, and evenin the language I use to represent the very real past.

Language has real power. If it didn’t, ethnic slurs wouldn’tbe able to inflict such pain and violence, and people wouldn’t use them todehumanize others. But slurs aren’t the only type of language that has power. Thelabels we place on each other and claim for ourselves also have power, but often labelsthat were once used in the past are later recognized as or become offensive to modernears. One of those words is the label “Negro.”

In previous books in the series, I’ve resistedusing antiquated labels for groups. For example, historically, it would have been moreaccurate for the book to refer to Chinese Americans as “Oriental,” a termthat is now recognized as being offensive. Even in the 1950s, Sammie’s friends inSan Francisco would likely have referred to themselves with this term, just as theyrefer to the white patrons as “Occidentals.” In the end, I decided againstusing that term, not only because it is offensive to modern readers, but also because itdidn’t add anything to the text other than historical accuracy. Because of thebreadth of people and nations covered by the term, it wouldn’t have helped me todescribe more clearly any single, specific community. More importantly, using the termwould not have contributed to Sammie’s friends’ agency in any way.

The term “Negro,” and my use of it in this book, however, issomewhat different. Though the term may sound uncomfortable and problematic to modernears, historically it was used by the African American community to claim an identityfor themselves. In the late nineteenth century, “colored” would have beenthe common term, but by the early twentieth century, there had been a movement, led inpart by Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, to replace “colored” withthe term “Negro.” Some historians see the increased use of“Negro” as a way that Black communities distinguished themselves from otherimmigrant groups and people of color. Other historians have suggested that the increasedimmigration during this period might have motivated the Black community to establish agroup name, in the way the Italians or Polish immigrants had group names andcorresponding identities.

Whatever the reasons the term began to grow in use and popularity, perhapsit is more important to recognize that by the early twentieth century, the term“Negro” came to stand for a new way of thinking—it signified the hopesfor racial progress and aspirations of the Black community. During the first half of thetwentieth century, “Negro” was the preferred term used to describe BlackAmericans. In 1928, Du Bois wrote that “etymologically and phonetically it is muchbetter and more logical than ‘African’ or ‘colored’ orany of the various hyphenated circumlocutions.”1 According to onesurvey, before 1940, 74 percent of respondents self-identified as preferring the label“Negro” and 21 percent preferred the term “colored.” Only 4percent self-identified as “Black.”2 The label“Black” would not come into more common use until the 1960s, and“African American” even later—in the late 1980s.

My decision to have Cela and Abel claim the term “Negro” wasintentional. Unlike “Oriental,” which obscures individual ethnic identity,Cela’s and Abel’s use of the term “Negro” in this book does theopposite. The use of the label allows the Johnsons to align themselves with ahistorically specific identity and to claim agency as part of a larger community, justas their historical counterparts were doing at the time.

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Name ‘Negro,’ ”  The Crisis: 70th AnniversaryEdition: Part I, vol. 87, no. 9 (1980): 420-421.

2. Tom W. Smith, “Changing Racial Labels: From ‘Colored’ to ‘Negro’ to ‘Black’ to ‘African American,’ ”  The Public OpinionQuarterly, vol. 56, no. 4 (1992): 496–514.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was not an easy one to write. Anyone who’s been following me on social media knows that. If you’ve been waiting for the next installment of Esta and Harte’s story, thanks for sticking around. You’ve been more than patient, and your support has buoyed me and humbled me. Thank you to each and every reader who sent me notes of encouragement, who told me that it was okay not to work myself sick, and who told me that you were willing to wait for it. I hope that The Serpent’s Curse is everything that you hoped it would be. Thank you for sticking with me and these characters. I couldn’t do any of this without you.

Thanks, too, to my long-suffering editor, Sarah McCabe, who dealt with more delays and missed deadlines than anyone should. From the very beginning, her keen insights have made this series immeasurably better. I am so lucky to be working with someone as supportive and patient as she is. Thank you to everyone at Simon & Schuster: Justin Chanda, Karen Wojtyla, Sarah Creech, Katherine Devendorf, Chelsea Morgan, Sara Berko, Penina Lopez, Valerie Shea, Jen Strada, Lauren Forte, Lauren Hoffman, Caitlin Sweeny, Chrissy Noh, Alissa Nigro, Anna Jarzab, Emily Ritter, Christina Pecorale and the rest of the S&S sales team, Michelle Leo and her education/library team, Nicole Russo, Cassie Malmo, and Ian Reilly. Thank you to Craig Howell for another incredible cover and Drew Willis for the gorgeous map designs. Thank you to Risikat Okedeyi and Shenwei Chang for their thoughtful readings and astute comments on earlier drafts of this