Sistah Samurai

Okay, so truly a mixed bag here. What I liked, I really liked. What I didn't like felt very mishandled.

What I did like: look, this concept is great and a lot of fun. It has emotional weight and it immediately captures your attention. The ATMOSPHERE of this novella is, for better or worse, exactly its own thing and you're either in for it or you aren't. A “last Samurai” style story with a black woman who has two swords named Fuck Around and Fuck Out. The voice of the novella is very unique and I can say sincerely I've never read anything like it. The action scenes were also really fun. I realized relatively early on what the “gist” of the central idea was going to be, and I was immediately excited. It centers on grief, trauma, mental illness and survivor's guilt and for the first half of the novella, I was totally in. However...

What I didn't like: as a minor thing, I was fine with most of the anachronisms (because that's part of the point) but some just didn't make any sense. Having Sistah talk a certain way or have a certain attitude and stuff is fine, but things like “she's the type of girl who would drag you out of the club” just...what? Why would clubs exist in this world? Like I get that it's supposed to just be instantly relatable to a certain audience but I value things making internal sense over audience easement and lines like this are just silly. But this isn't a big deal overall.

What I really didn't like was the resolution and the heavy handed-ness. Sistah has been dealing with A Thing for years. And then, randomly, she decides to handle it. And the way she handles it....is very brief. I actually really like the way she handles it, if there were more scenes leading up to. But it was not earned. There was no reason for this catharsis to happen, it was like Sistah realized she was 80% into her own novella so it was time to handle things. It was very clunky. There was also a demon that went on an over the top, ridiculously hamfisted rant that lasted for 1.5 pages. If this rant was a paragraph or two, it would have been excellent. Sometimes less is more. And this general ham-fistedness made some of the thematic elements exhausting. Like, women deal with a lot of shit. Yep. Women are tired. Yep. Women are tired of shitty men. Totally. But can you find a way to say it without, idk, literally saying it every page? It was just too on the nose.

Overall I do recommend this novella, it's a short enjoyable read that you probably haven't seen anything like before. And if you can get past that it is TELLING YOU SOMETHING, you will probably like it more than I did.

To me this is a love letter to African-American and Japanese cultures and the literary version of their fusion that marries historical fiction and modernity — using champloo in the title is apt. There is an In Memoriam chapter at the end, which enlightened me to some things I didn't see while reading, and really solidified for me that this is a very special book.

In a world that is bleak and grim, everyone lives in fear of soul-eating demons, and the cost of protection is high. Our protagonist, Sistah Samurai, rocks an afro and her katana and wakizashi, Fuck-Around and Find-Out, and likes to eat in peace at her favorite ramen joint.

If any of the above sounds interesting to you, you like the animes Samurai Champloo or Afro Samurai, you like to read about characters haunted by guilt, or you like fight scenes, you'll absolutely want to check this out. If either plot or exploration of character relationships are critically important to you, you might be disappointed. I had a good time with it, I was entranced by the mash-ups and the world, and very curious about the story of the MC.