The Arthurian magic is quite different than the living doll magic of “Women of the Doll”. In this way, Shawl immerses the reader quickly into the milieu of the story.įantasy and magic are prevalent in these stories, always feeling personalized to the characters and themes. In the Arthurian tale “I Being Young and Foolish” it feels Arthurian (“Three and twenty years had passed”), while the story centered on the Belgian King Leopold uses courtly language and vocabulary, interspersed with the casual racial slurs of that place and time. Shawl is very attentive to this, matching the tone and vocabulary to the story. One of the things to look for in a story is internal consistency: Is the language and style appropriate to the place, time and characters? (For instance, high fantasy uses a more elevated language and syntax, crime fiction a grittier one with slang). The protagonists are often women of color, sometimes practitioners of religion reminiscent of African or Caribbean ones. Those are often the topics of these stories. The author's biography says that Nisi Shawl is best known for fiction dealing with race, gender and colonialism.
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