New Worlds, Old Ways ed. by Karen Lord (2016)

A challenging collection of eleven speculative fiction stories by Caribbean authors.

Book Review: New Worlds, Old Ways is quite appropriately subtitled "Speculative Tales from the Caribbean," and spotlights "new writers and new works" of speculative fiction from English-speaking countries. As someone who lives 1,000 miles (1600+ km) from the nearest ocean, these stories could be culturally and geographically exotic, but were still familiar. As I learned from reading Jamaica Kincaid's story collection At the Bottom of the River, speculative fiction can include digging deep into the mythic and archetypal, as in "Once in a Blood Moon" by Tammi Browne-Bannister. That story had the place of honor in kicking off this collection. Myth, magical realism, speculative fiction, it's all kind of a blur. The story also involved sea turtle conservation and probed the connection between humanity and nature, so how could I not like it? The next story by Summer Edward, set in Puerto Rico, took me into a bewildering psychedelic haze. The next two stories were straight science fiction ... and from there we had a ghost story, horror, magic, dystopian ... oh, and more SciFi. There's a wonderful mix of genres in New Worlds, Old Ways, each story is different from the one before. And not a clunker in the bunch. Some were better than others, but I enjoyed them all.

As a tangent, I not only wondered about the eternal question of how to pronounce Caribbean (accent on second or third syllable?), but also the relationship between the various English, French, and Spanish speaking countries. As one story noted: "You are from a region where the nations share an overarching history. You belong more to a region than you do to a nation. You can travel anywhere along this chain of islands and find customs and traditions that remind you of your own." New Worlds, Old Ways included authors from Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, and Bermuda. It's easy for the under-educated and ill-informed to dismiss other cultures, other countries. But after reading other literatures, the reader soon learns that we're all just people, with brilliant ideas, great stories, and a surplus of humanity to embrace. I was quite fortunate that my local library had this book. If you're interested in "reading 'round the world," look for New Worlds, Old Ways.  [3½★]