November 5, 2026
As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories
The worlds depicted in the anthology As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, edited by Therese Mason Pierre, are full of thresholds, trapdoors and portals (and magic carpets), entrances to other times and other places, which is also say they’re full of possibility. Although in “The Hole in the Middle of the World, ” by Chinelo Onwualu—my favourite, and what I found to be the most haunting, story in the collection—the portal is a vacuum instead of a passageway, an empty space remaining after the protagonist’s memory is harvested by a nefarious system of dehumanization, but even then something essential remains.
These are stories that insist on connection (or at least long for them), even with history intent on fracture. In Mason Pierre’s own contribution, “A Fair Assessment,” an appraiser at an antiques shop performs her work with the aid of connections to the dead, and a tarnished silver ring brings her into contact with her own ancestor. In Chimedum Ohaegbu’s “Ravenous, Called Iffy,” a woman attends her mother’s fourth funeral, and learns she has siblings she never knew about. And ravenousness recurs in the collection, especially with “Hallelujah Here and Elsewhere,” by francesca ekwuyasi, one of the contributors to the collection whom I’d encountered before (in her acclaimed novel Butter Honey Pig Bread). Another familiar name was Zalika Reid-Benta, whose “Paroxysm” is a wild story of laughter, contagion, and mysteriously multiplying bags of garbage.
These stories featuring portals are portals themselves, absolutely rich and engaging, providing wondrous literary immersion in one world after another.
