Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“There are two endings to this story.” 

Tracker offers two versions of how he leaves his home—he kills his father or severely injures him—but both end with his exile from the Ku village by his mother. Like the previous quote, this speaks to the theme of storytelling. The Inquisitor must wonder which version is accurate, and if Tracker himself knew the truth. This exemplifies the levels of storytelling that occur: the framing device of the interrogation and the narrative of Tracker’s testimony (the main narrative of the novel).  

“I know the thought that just ran through you. And all stories are true. Above us is a roof.”

This is another metanarrative moment where Tracker interrupts his own testimony to comment on its validity. He is speaking about how the Omoluzu come from roofs, and those they hunt are only safe under open sky; they’ve hunted him in the past despite not currently attacking him under the roof of the interrogation room. He anticipates the Inquisitor doubting his testimony because of this incongruency, and addresses him directly.

“I was a fool. I thought you learned the old ways by forgetting the new. Walking through the bush I told myself that though every sound was new, none was frightening.” 

After leaving his home, Tracker travels through the forest and has trouble surviving without the help of other people. He attempts to reconnect with a mythic past (before civilization, represented by villages and huts, existed), but the forest is new to him. This is an example of golden-age thinking; there is no ideal age that one can escape to, and to attempt to is foolish.

“Truly, I will kill anything. Cut past my skin to find my heart and it will be white. White like nothingness.” 

Sadogo says this to the slave girl who collects the bets in his fighting ring. It is an example of how James subverts racial hierarchies in his novel. The inverted cliché here is the black unfeeling heart; here, white becomes negative and negating. Black is a positive color in the novel—a mixture of colors rather than the absence of color.

“‘Good buffalo, has anyone come around to this man’s place? Any dressed in black or blue?’ He shook his head. ‘Any in the colour of blood?’ He snorted. I knew he could not see the colour of blood, but something in this bull made me want to have sport with him. ‘Alas, I think we might be watched.’ He turned around, then turned back on me and grunted long. ‘If any man shows up in black and blue, or in a black cape, raise alarm. But do what you wish with him.’ He nodded up and down and gargled.” 

The semi-sentient buffalo is an extremely likable character. This passage is an example of how he communicates; he doesn’t talk but seems to understand language and responds to it with non-verbal cues. Tracker exchanges friendly jokes with buffalo as a sign of his affection, and buffalo helps Tracker, and other party members, in a variety of ways, like standing guard.

“‘A Sangoma. An enchantment. He would have killed me with a wooden sword,’ I said.” 

Tracker explains his vulnerability to wood to Mossi during a fight with Mazambezi. The Sangoma’s magic protects Tracker from metal, and he is able to catch the Mazambezi’s blade in his hands. This is at the heart of one of Tracker’s contradictions—for most of the novel, he professes his hatred of witches but lives because of magical protection. There are a number of other myths that include heroes who are vulnerable to wood, such as Baldur in Norse mythology. 

“Just like all you men of learning. Everything in the world cooks down to two. Either-or, if-then, yes-no, night-day, good-bad. You all believe in twos so much I wonder if any of you can count to three.”

In this passage, Tracker talks with Mossi about his (northeastern) education that leads to dialectical thinking. There are many pairs and dualities in the novel (white and black being one of the most prevalent). Tracker’s sexuality and sexual pairing with Mossi is one way to think outside of the traditional binaries; queerness is a third option, and Tracker eventually accepts his feminine side. 

“Indeed no man answer her and among them her father. This princess forget that she be princess and start to walk like prince. Crown prince.” 

Sogolon tells Lissisolo’s story—one variation of it—to the questing party. Lissisolo not only appears to be a more fit ruler, but she also acts outside of gender norms. Female-to-male transvestism occurs in many medieval romances that are the roots of modern fantasy, like the Roman de Silence, as well as renaissance plays. Beyond walking like a man, Lissisolo’s gender-bending appears in her political goals; she wants to rule but needs a male heir. 

“Look at my life. All of it around a hole owned, ordered, and arranged by men. Now I must take that from womankind too? You know nothing of sisterhood, you’re just a pale echo of men. The true King will be a bastard? Did this water sprite also fall on her head at birth?” 

When Bunshi suggests that Lissisolo should conceive a new heir, Lissisolo initially rejects the idea but, eventually, she concedes and conceives in wedlock with a prince. At first, though, the idea that politics should control her sexuality and body is off-putting, especially in the Avalon-like sisterhood at Mantha. Lissisolo hopes that other women will give her more of a choice, and notes that their political scheming resembles what she has experienced from male authority figures.  

“Truth? Love. That was all of his singing. Love looking. Love losing. Love like how poets from where Mossi come from talk about love. Love he did lose. That is all he was singing, love he did lose.” 

In this passage, Tracker talks to Sogolon after the griot died (murdered by Aesi while he possessed Sadogo). The song that the Moon Witch didn’t hear resembles the love poetry of Rumi; Mossi’s fictional home resembles the Middle East. Sogolon believes that the griot’s murder stems from a specific political song, but the love song was not Aesi’s motivation—rather, he enacts the King’s wish to suppress all griots. 

“Yes, if that is what you wish to know. I left my seed in her. You act if as arousal means anything. It does not even mean consent.” 

In Dolingo, Mossi must sleep with the Queen as part of her slave-breeding project. Tracker is jealous and questions him, but Mossi asserts that armed guards forced this sexual act. This passage is significant because it speaks to contemporary issues surrounding rape, especially male rape; having an orgasm does not equal consent.

“A beast with ten and two head not ten and two times the wiser. He a monster shouting down himself.” 

Sogolon talks to Tracker about the political structure of Dolingo—there used to be a council rather than a singular king. The Moon Witch advocates for the latter rather than the former, and the people of Dolingo end up killing all their rulers except for one king. This passage utilizes a hydra-like monster for the council, which is similar to imagery used by renaissance writers Cavendish and Shakespeare (in “Coriolanus”).

“White scientists. Some say they got their name because of working magics, and crafts, and potions, and burning vapors for so long they burned the brown away from their skin. I always thought the name came because they made wretched things out of nothing, and nothingness is white.”

This passage is another example of recasting white as a color with negative associations. Here, Tracker meets people who conduct unethical experiments on people and animals, similar to Nazis and slave owners. The whiteness of the skin, revered among the two groups previously mentioned, is an indicator of their evilness to Tracker; this is part of the ideology that one can judge a person’s character by their appearance, but inverted from the oppressive norm.

“The fire spread from my head down my back, along my legs to the tips of my feet, and I shook like a man whose head was taken over by devils. And dark came over my eyes and in my head and then a flicker.” 

The white scientists attach a Bad Ibeji to Tracker to discover the location of Lissisolo’s son, and this passage precedes a long run-on sentence that includes memories running out of chronological order. The white scientists possess Tracker with a tangible, parasitic monster rather than an unseen force in dreams, like Aesi’s possession of Sadogo. The moment of darkness is the reader’s preparation for the dive into a stream of consciousness.  

“None of the crew slept below. One, whose face I didn’t see, said something about slave ghosts, furious about dying on the ship for they were still chained to it and could not enter the underworld. Ghosts, masters of malice and longing, spent all their days and nights thinking of the men who wronged them, and sharpening those thoughts into a knife. So they would have no quarrel with us. And if they wanted ears to hear of their injustice, I have heard worse from the dead.”

On the slave ship, the crew sleep on the second level; they fear the ghosts because they take part in the institution of slavery (they are the “men who wronged” the ghosts). However, since Tracker and Mossi oppose slavery, including inciting a slave rebellion and killing slavers, they can sleep without fear of retaliation. They offer open “ears” to listen to the ghost’s stories of oppression, and spread love in this site of horror with their sex marathon in the cabin.  

“White because even their skin rebel against their evil, for there is only so much vileness that your own skin can agree to. White like only the purest evil.” 

In this passage, Lissisolo describes the white scientists to Tracker (after he pretends to not have encountered them). This is another association of whiteness with evilness; the fact that numerous characters share this opinion reinforces that it is a cultural norm in the fictional world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Black skin isn’t considered vile or the result of vile behaviors, as it is in much American hate speech literature (such as from the KKK). 

“It is a griot with a song about me. There are no songs about me.” 

This is one example of how Tracker lies to the Inquisitor. Like feigning ignorance of the white scientists in his conversation with Lissisolo, Tracker sometimes lies to see what the other person knows. He tests the griot, and the Inquisitor, to see how accurate the song about him is, and if he will have to reveal more about his life if he doesn’t want it sung by another, which develops the theme of truth and storytelling.  

“You tell me I cut all woman out / from my mother to whoever pass the house / when it is I who leave my mother / and I who would now cut away my own self / and with this he get up / and with this he leave the knife / and he walk away / and the people silent for he still a fierce man.”

This passage is part of the italicized, lineated verse about Tracker that the griot sings. Tracker returns to his birth place of Gangatom for a circumcision—but realizes that his desire is part of his misogyny. He realizes he can have a feminine side, make peace with his mother, respect other women, prefer sex with men, and still be a “fierce” warrior. 

“I looked at the two of them, both I had once tried to kill, both known to have wings—one white, the other black. The me who once would have pulled axes to kill both of them on sight, I wondered where he went.” 

In the second campaign for the boy, Tracker aligns himself with former enemies—Nyka, who has become the next Ipundulu, and Aesi. After Sasabonsam kills Mossi and the mingi, Tracker changes and has trouble finding his old self. The restructuring of the quest party is necessary for Tracker’s vengeance; only with the help of these winged creatures can he kill Sasabonsam.  

“You are the trickster and storyteller. Are you not one of Nan Si? And this is one of your tricks?” 

Tracker encounters a white scientist who transformed himself into a spider-like creature, one that he has not encountered before. In an attempt to understand the perversion that has taken place, James has Tracker allude to a popular figure from African folklore: the Anansi. This is similar to Afro-futurist texts, like Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber; old mythological frameworks help to understand new scientific breakthroughs.

“And that is the story I have taken and given to you,” I said. “But, but […] but […] but […] that is no story. That is not even half of one. Your story is only half-delicious.” 

This passage is from the end of Tracker’s encounter with the spider-scientist. His “half” story fills in missing pieces between the first and second campaigns to find the boy. He ends his tale after aligning with the Aesi and escaping the Mweru, and the scientist—a reader-surrogate—wants to hear more. This desire for more means Tracker’s story meets the requirements for release (the story must be entertaining), and it develops the theme of storytelling.  

“All in my head was my crawling on top of him, cradling his head, for there were flies everywhere else, and weeping, and bawling, and screaming, and screaming, and screaming into the trees and sky. And reading what he wrote in his own blood in the sand: The boy, the boy was with him.” 

This passage describes Tracker finding Mossi’s body after the Sasabonsam has killed him. The motif of writing appears here; the immortality of the blood-text helps Tracker not only discover who killed his love, but also who assisted him. Mossi’s writing ensures that Tracker will try to stop the monstrous boy from gaining the throne, and this moment is when Tracker becomes the person who can join with Aesi and Nyka (as Ipundulu) in the second campaign.

“I have seen them in the third eye, men red like blood and white like sand.” 

This passage sets up the conflict for the next book in James’s planned trilogy; Aesi asserts that their kingdom will come under attack from foes to the west, across the sea. The colors used here reflect previous discussions that associate whiteness with evil, and develop one of the colors in the title—red—to also have negative connotations. In some Asian languages, the slur for imperialists or colonialists (white people) is from the word for redhead or red-haired.