“So investigating stories about that really was exciting to me because of the notion of how women had power in societies. We'll take our babies, we’ll go to the next village,” she said. And the women would also just say, OK, we're leaving, you're not listening to us. “The men had to listen to the women or women would do war on them. One of her favorite themes centers around what’s called the Women’s War - where women from the Ibo people judge the men on their behavior. In her writing, Hairston draws from the themes of African folklore and history. NEPM Andrea Hairston's new book, 'Master of Poisons.' “Allegory usually is more of like a one-to-one correspondence,” she said. But Hairston doesn’t consider her novel a pure allegory.

And fantasy allows us to ask questions about what we take for granted as normal,” she said.Ĭlimate change is the real-world version of a poison desert. “It allows me to take us out of what we take for granted because we take realism for granted. Still, she said the sub-genre of fantasy does allow for flexible storytelling. She points out that all fiction presents an alternate reality. The genre is fantasy, though Hairston doesn’t think it’s fair to define the genre too narrowly. 'Master of Poisons' follows two main characters who are working to save the world. 'And people go from, 'Oh, my God, we should do something,' to 'We should just save ourselves, and let everybody else die,'' Hairston said. Who could fight the wind?Īt the center of the book’s plot, there is a poison desert encroaching on the world. Good citizens now feared change would make no difference or was in fact impossible. Then crops failed and rivers turned to dust. But as long as sweet water fell from the sky every afternoon and mist rolled in on a night wind, everybody promised to change - tomorrow or next week. For twenty years as it crashed through river valleys and swallowed forests, Djola pleaded with Council and begged good Empire citizens to change their ways.

Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston