Speculation, by Nisi Shawl

My recent middle grade fantasy reading has been mostly mythology infused quests, and although it's great to have such a wealth of diversity, it was refreshing to read Speculation, by Nisi Shawl (Feb 2023, Tu Books), set firmly in our own world, albeit back in 1962.

I fell hard for Winna, the young heroine, who when we first meet her is reading Edward Eager, a favorite fantasy author of my own youth, and dreaming of magic.  I  thought how very nice but odd it was to see a contemporary character reading vintage books, and it wasn't until it was spelled out for the reader that this was 1962 that I realized I was reading a historical fantasy.  Indeed I also had been struck by Winna's grandfather using the term "colored" in relation to the family, who are Black, but being engrossed I didn't stop to think about it.  But in any event, I knew I'd enjoy spending time with her, and I did.  

Winna and her little sister are at their grandparent's house while their mother is in the hospital.  When her sister breaks her glasses (by accident), Winna is crushed; new glasses are both expensive and inaccessible.  So her grandfather gives her a pair that belonged to her great aunt Estelle. The glasses make her vision even sharper than her old ones, and there's a glimmer to what she sees...and so on the off chance that it's magic, she speculates-what if they show her ghosts?  And they do.  Generations of ghosts, including Estelle, haunt the family cemetery.  

Winna learns from Estelle's ghost about the curse on her family.  Winona, Estelle's mother, escaped slavery and while still moving toward freedom, gave birth to a baby boy, Key.  But Key vanished, or was taken from her, and Winona's grief stayed with her all her life.  So much so that when dying she unintentionally cursed her family, a curse that can only be broken if she and Key can be reunited.

Winna is sure her mother, getting worse in the hospital, is a victim of the curse.  So joining forces with a boy cousin she can't stand, she sets out to solve the mystery of what happened to Key.....and if he's still alive, to bring him back to the family. 

It's a great story, full of dualities that balance each other beautifully-- past and present, magic and reality, the loving family and the racist world.  I loved the historical and genealogical research that Winna and her cousin undertake, I loved how the magic wasn't just seeing ghosts with magical glasses but was aided and abetted by Winna's grandfather's affinity for African infused magic (for lack of a better word) of his own.  And of course I hated the racism that Winna and her family face, and hated too that this part of the book didn't read as much like historical fiction as it should.

Spoiler-- Key was raised as white, with a white family.  And so one of the horrors of chattel slavery, rape, is there in the story, not explicitly discussed by name but an unavoidable fact of what happened.  I'm all in favor of fiction that kids to think about the painful parts of the past and how they affect the present, and sure do hope this one gets to stay on the shelves....

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