Everfair

by Nisi Shawl

Nisi Shawl explores the question of what might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had adopted steam technology as their own.

In Shawl’s eloquently explored vision, told by a multiplicity of voices that have historically been silenced—Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another—Fabian socialists from Great Britian join forces with African American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo’s “owner,” King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as former slaves returning from America and other places where African natives and their descendants were being mistreated. The work of keeping this land their own is near impossible, and tragedy is unavoidable. Yet the citizens of Everfair are determined, and even try their hand at the rewarding tasks of governance, invention…and romance.

INCLUSION CRITERIA

Two significant characters are attracted to people of multiple genders.