Midnight Robber

Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber was first published by Warner Books in 2000. It is dystopian/speculative fiction with many Afro-Caribbean/Afrofuturist influences and cyberpunk elements. Midnight Robber was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and Hopkinson won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Plot Summary

The novel moves between a first-person narrator and a third-person narrator who tell the story of Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen. She lives on planet Toussaint with her father Mayor Antonio and mother Ione. Antonio and Ione have a tumultuous relationship. After killing Ione’s lover, Antonio escapes with Tan-Tan to an alternate world called New Half-Way Tree.

The first-person narrator interjects with a story titled “How Tan-Tan Learn to Thief” that reflects the exile in the main narrative but in mythic terms.

Once on the prison planet for exiles, Antonio and Tan-Tan encounter a douen—an indigenous species that lives alongside humans on New Half-Way Tree—named Chichibud. He guides them through the bush to a human village called Junjuh. Antonio gets drunk, ignores Chichibud, and is injured by a giant bird.

After being healed by his former mistress—the doctor in Junjuh—and meeting their child, Antonio takes another wife named Janisette. On Tan-Tan’s ninth birthday, Antonio starts sexually abusing her. At 14, she aborts a child he fathered and plans to leave Junjuh for Sweet Pone with her friend Melonhead when she comes of age.

However, on her 16th birthday, Antonio rapes Tan-Tan again, and she kills him. She flees Junjuh with Chichibud and his wife Benta to the douen tree village. There, she struggles with the douen way of life.

The next myth, “Tan-Tan and Dry Bone,” interrupts shortly after Tan-Tan arrives in the douens’ village. It foreshadows the danger Tan-Tan brings upon her hosts, as well as their difficulty feeding her, by describing Tan-Tan being forced to carry a skeletal human who eats all her food and being carried away by a buzzard.

As Tan-Tan grows accustomed to douen life, even befriending Chichibud’s daughter, Abitefa, she realizes she is again pregnant with Antonio’s child. She travels with Abitefa to several villages pursuing an abortion, only to perform acts of mercy and kindness as the Robber Queen instead.

In time, Janisette arrives at the douen village in a car, seeking vengeance against Tan-Tan. The douens try to stop her, but she kills two of them with a rifle before Tan-Tan confronts her and drives Janisette away. With their secret village discovered, the douens exile Tan-Tan and Abitefa and use a secret of the planet’s biology to destroy and regrow the tree village.

Tan-Tan seeks a new home, travelling between villages with her douen companion, continuing to act as the Robber Queen when the need arises. She is forced to flee upon seeing Janisette already looking for her, having followed the rumors of “Tan-Tan the Robber Queen.”

The next myth is “Tan-Tan and the Rolling Calf,” which somewhat accurately describes how Tan-Tan saved both a traveler and a rolling calf baby, a dinosaur-like creature that is one of the planet’s more dangerous animals, from its rampaging parent.

Tan-Tan arrives in a new town, looking for clothes to hide her pregnancy. She finds Melonhead, now working as a tailor, and they reconnect. Preparations for Carnival are underway, and Tan-Tan joins as a successful Robber Queen masque.

Janisette arrives in town, now driving a tank, and confronts Tan-Tan. Tan-Tan confesses everything in a Robber Queen speech, cowing Janisette and winning the adoration of the entire village. Melonhead wants her to stay, but Tan-Tan leaves to have her baby in the forest.

It is revealed that the first-person narrator is a Toussaint A.I. speaking to Tan-Tan’s baby, named Tubman. With this contact, the A.I. is finally able to reach people on New Half-Way Tree.