SERVING THE SPIRITS: THE PAN-CARIBBEAN AFRICAN-DERIVED
RELIGION IN NALO HOPKINSON’S BROWN GIRL IN THE RING

MONICA COLEMAN
https://monicaacoleman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/serving-spirits-pub.pdf

Set in the Caribbean-Canadian community of Toronto, Canada, Nalo
Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring reflects the unique ethnic and national identities
of the Caribbean diaspora. Both literary scholars and Hopkinson herself note the
ways in which Hopkinson uses language to identify both the different national
distinctions within the Caribbean immigrant community and the relationship that
the Caribbean community has to the larger Canadian society. However, it is through
her description of “serving the spirits” that Brown Girl describes a pan-Caribbean
identity within the Caribbean diaspora of Toronto. In the concept of “serving the
spirits,” Hopkinson draws together various African-derived religious traditions found
throughout the Caribbean into one religious practice. By dissolving the boundaries
in religious practices, “serving the spirits” functions as the basis for a unique panCaribbean identity for the characters of Brown Girl.

Brown Girl in the Ring is set in the future decaying inner city left when Toronto’s
economic base collapses. The city center is inhabited only by the formerly homeless
and poor, now squatters, and is ruled by drug lord Rudy and his posse. The
protagonist, a young Caribbean-Canadian female named Ti-Jeanne, lives with her
grandmother, who runs a business in herbal medicine that has become vital to the
disenfranchised of the Burn. Ti-Jeanne’s grandmother, Mami Gros-Jeanne, is a faithful
follower of the spirits. Ti-Jeanne, on the other hand, believes that the herbal medicine
and African-derived spirituality of her grandmother should have no role in the lives
of sane and practical people. Jeanne must finally face her spiritual heritage or risk
her life and family. In the climactic scene of the book, Ti-Jeanne summons the powerful
Yoruba òrìsà by name connecting the earthly world with the spiritual world. Then
she is able to end the evil that plagues the inner city, and begin the work of recovery
and healing.