Reading Order
The Water Dancer Reading Order
The Water Dancer (2019) by Ta-Nehisi Coates is his debut novel — the story of Hiram Walker, a young enslaved man in antebellum Virginia who has a photographic memory but cannot remember his mother, who was sold away when he was small. When Hiram nearly drowns in a river crossing, he discovers he has a supernatural power — 'Conduction,' the ability to transport himself and others across vast distances through a form of magical teleportation that seems connected to memory and loss — and the novel follows his escape from slavery, his work with the Underground Railroad, and his eventual confrontation with his past. The Water Dancer is Coates's attempt to bring the methods and concerns of Between the World and Me into a novelistic form, with the addition of a fantasy element (the Conduction) that allows him to explore the relationship between memory, loss, and slavery in a way that straight historical fiction might not. The novel has been compared to Toni Morrison's Beloved and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad in its use of speculative elements to approach the horror of slavery. Where Between the World and Me is analytical and argumentative, The Water Dancer is lyrical and sensory — Coates the novelist is a different writer than Coates the essayist, and the novel reveals capacities that the essays did not.
Where to start
The Water Dancer — any One World/Random House edition. The Conduction's mechanism is not fully explained at first; trust the novel to develop it as the narrative progresses.
Complete The Water Dancer Book List
- 1Buy
The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates·2019·The novel — Hiram Walker's Conduction power and his journey from slavery on a Virginia plantation through the Underground Railroad; Coates's debut fiction, lyrical and sensory where his essays are analytical. - 2Buy
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates·2015·Coates's letter to his son — the nonfiction companion; the same concerns about what slavery built and what its destruction means, in an analytical personal-essay mode rather than a novelistic one. - 3Buy
Beloved
Toni Morrison·1987·Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winner — the most important predecessor in literary fiction that uses speculative elements to approach slavery's horror; Sethe's story is the formal and thematic precursor to Hiram's. - 4Buy
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead·2016·Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winner — the companion in speculative historical fiction about slavery and the Underground Railroad; the literal underground railroad as literal railroad, the revisionist mode that The Water Dancer joins. - 5Buy
Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi·2016·Gyasi's multigenerational novel — the companion in recent fiction about slavery's consequences; the same antebellum Virginia world that Hiram's plantation inhabits, traced forward across seven generations. - 6Buy
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler·1979·Butler's time-travel slavery novel — the formal predecessor in speculative fiction about slavery; Dana's ability to move through time is the predecessor to Hiram's Conduction, both using speculative elements to make the reader inhabit slavery's reality. - 7Buy
The Known World
Edward P. Jones·2003·Jones's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in antebellum Virginia fiction; Manchester County, Virginia is Hiram's world, the Black slaveholder and the plantation economy that The Water Dancer inhabits. - 8Buy
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup·1853·Northup's memoir — the primary-source account of slavery in the same Virginia and Louisiana settings that The Water Dancer draws on; the documentary basis that Coates's novel imaginatively transforms.
The Water Dancer — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Water Dancer about?
The Water Dancer follows Hiram Walker, a young enslaved man in antebellum Virginia who has an extraordinary photographic memory but a gap where his mother's memory should be — she was sold away when he was small. When Hiram is involved in a carriage accident that plunges him into a river, he should drown; instead, he finds himself transported miles away by a supernatural force he comes to call Conduction. The novel follows Hiram from his plantation (Lockless, owned by the Walker family), through his initial failed escape attempt, his work with an Underground Railroad network, his time in Philadelphia with the abolition movement, and his eventual return to Virginia to rescue people from slavery using Conduction. At the center of the novel is Hiram's relationship with his missing mother — Conduction, it turns out, is powered by loss and memory, and Hiram's most powerful Conducting is connected to his grief for the mother he cannot remember.
What is Conduction and how does it work?
Conduction is the novel's supernatural element — the ability to transport people across vast distances through a form of psychic teleportation connected to memory and loss. Hiram discovers it instinctively during his near-drowning, but he cannot control it or reliably repeat it. As the novel progresses, he learns that Conduction is not unique to him — other enslaved people have had versions of the same power, and the underground network that assists his escape has been studying it. Conduction seems to operate through grief: the more intensely someone has lost something (a loved one, a homeland, a freedom), the more powerfully they can Conduct. The mechanism is left mysterious rather than rationalized — the novel uses it as a metaphor for the relationship between memory, loss, and survival in the enslaved community rather than as a literal physical technology.
How does The Water Dancer compare to Coates's nonfiction?
The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me approach the same subject — slavery and its consequences, the destruction of Black bodies and communities — in very different ways. Between the World and Me is analytical, argumentative, and personal in the mode of the essay: Coates makes a case, cites history, uses his own experience as evidence. The Water Dancer is lyrical, sensory, and narrative: Coates is trying to make the reader feel what slavery felt like from the inside of a specific consciousness, using a speculative element (Conduction) to externalize internal states that might otherwise be inaccessible. Critics noted that The Water Dancer is better at atmosphere and sensation than at plot and character — Coates the novelist has different strengths than Coates the essayist — but as a first novel it is a serious, substantial achievement.
How does The Water Dancer compare to other speculative slavery fiction?
The Water Dancer joins a tradition of speculative fiction about slavery that includes Toni Morrison's Beloved (supernatural elements: the ghost of a murdered child), Octavia Butler's Kindred (time travel: a contemporary woman transported to an antebellum plantation), and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (revisionist history: the underground railroad as a literal railroad). These novels share a formal premise: that the horror of slavery cannot be adequately approached through conventional realistic fiction, that some speculative element is needed to make it accessible — to force the reader out of the position of safe historical observation and into an imaginative inhabiting of the experience. Coates's Conduction fits this tradition: it is a metaphor for the enslaved person's impossible situation (the desire to escape, the power of grief and memory) given a literal, physical form.
What should I read after The Water Dancer?
After The Water Dancer, Coates's Between the World and Me (2015) is the essential nonfiction companion. For the speculative slavery fiction tradition, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Octavia Butler's Kindred, and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad are the most important comparisons. Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2003) provides the realistic historical fiction companion in the same antebellum Virginia setting. Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave (1853) is the primary-source predecessor. For Coates's later work, his run on Black Panther for Marvel Comics (2016-2018) is a companion in his use of superhero mythology for political argument.
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