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"Winner of the Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award. At the turn of the 20th century, minstrel shows transform into vaudeville, which slides into moving pictures. Hunkering together in dark theatres, diverse audiences marvel at flickering images. Redwood, an African American woman, and Aidan, a Seminole Irish man, journey from Georgia to Chicago, from haunted swampland to a "city of the future." They are gifted performers and hoodoo conjurors, struggling to call up the wondrous show more world they imagine, not just on stage and screen, but on city streets, in front parlors, in wounded hearts. The power of hoodoo is the power of the community that believes in its capacities to heal. Living in a system stacked against them, Redwood and Aidan's power and talent are torment and joy. Their search for a place to be who they want to be is an exhilarating, painful, magical adventure"-- show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
There were aspects of this book I really enjoyed, but it definitely drags in the middle quite a bit. There are several hundred pages where the characters are basically just doing the same things over and over. I get that this mirrors their emotional conditions (both main characters are "stuck" emotionally in the same way they are stuck physically) but it makes for very tedious reading material.
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/redwood-and-wildfire-by-andrea-hairston/
A pretty intense novel set between 1898 and 1913 (with a brief excursion to 1893), partly in Georgia and partly in Chicago, about the relationship between Redwood, a young black woman, and Aiden Wildfire, half Irish and half Seminole, and their friends and relatives in the course of their separate journeys. There is a lot of magic; there is a lot of racist oppression; there is a decent amount of romance; I thought it was pretty good.
A pretty intense novel set between 1898 and 1913 (with a brief excursion to 1893), partly in Georgia and partly in Chicago, about the relationship between Redwood, a young black woman, and Aiden Wildfire, half Irish and half Seminole, and their friends and relatives in the course of their separate journeys. There is a lot of magic; there is a lot of racist oppression; there is a decent amount of romance; I thought it was pretty good.
Tiptree winner 2011. Did not finish. Dull characters, no plot to speak of and nothing that I could see that was relevant to Tiptree. Gave up about a third of the way through.
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ThingScore 75
Redwood and Wildfire is a book full of intensity. Both main characters are vivid and often tormented.
added by karenb
“For some time now there's been hope that fresh directions in fantastic or speculative literature might come from black diasporic writers—that the world's next Tolkien or Heinlein might be brown or beige. With her second novel, Redwood and Wildfire, Andrea Hairston edges up alongside Minister Faust and Nnedi Okorafor to become a serious contender for that role.”
added by karenb
Lists
Magic Realism
371 works; 52 members
Best African American Literature
53 works; 9 members
Diversity in Fantasy and Science Fiction
219 works; 32 members
Books Read in 2013
1,629 works; 51 members
Author Information
11+ Works 1,318 Members
Andrea Hairston is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Notable Lists
Series
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2011-02-28
- Epigraph
- All our stars have not yet risen.
- Dedication
- For two women who rehearsed the impossible:
Zitkala Sa (18786-1938), writer and activist
Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), performer and choreographer
And
For my grandfather and great aunt--I am the song they sung. - First words
- "I can't keep running."
- Blurbers
- Cleage, Pearl; Kress, Nancy; Shawl, Nisi
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 197
- Popularity
- 165,615
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.74)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 3
