CHARLOTTE AND THE CHICKENMAN

An animal rights activist hurdles toward reparative cannibalism in Hunter’s debut speculative novel.

How did the Black American vegan Charlotte-Noa Tibbit come to be seated at a dinner table in Haiti, in the year 2060, dining on viandechar blanc, a delicacy composed of citrus-marinated, pepper-roasted white human thigh? “I need you to know that my citrus-seared thigh-steak was more than just five-star delicious, it was medicinal,” Charlotte explains to the squeamish reader. “Because the thing about eating is that it’s more than organs and chemicals and cells; it’s what’s playing in your head while you chew. All that you’re thinking and suppressing when you swallow and digest.” The conditions of Charlotte’s meal stem from the techno-dystopia (or is it a utopia?) in which Charlotte lives: a world in which the reorganized Caribbean nations of New Caricom have outlawed the farming of meat, though “culled” meat—from any animal—is allowed. But what precisely is Charlotte’s role in this new world? Her path across a reimagined, sustainable Haiti to a luxury hotel featuring “epicurean anthropophagy” on the menu started back in the semi-autonomous states of America, where Charlotte and her Eurindigenous girlfriend, KJ, were registered activists with the Non-Human Animal Rights Collective, battling the forces of capitalism and autocracy. Or does it go back further, to Charlotte’s teenage insecurities related to her Black queer identity? Does it go back to Charlotte’s mother, the lifestyle coach Nicole Thibidaux, host of a wildly popular show on HelloCast? Or even further, to the Haitian nanny who cared for Charlotte when she was a baby and inducted the infant into the mysterious practice known as the flesh tribute? Chapter by chapter, Charlotte sinks deeper into herself, probing the roots of her own radicalization while observing the ways that society shifts in predictably unpredictable ways. In a world where even humans count as animals, it’s impossible to know where one falls on the cradle-to-table pipeline until the final meal is served. 

Hunter tells Charlotte’s story backward, demonstrating the ways in which history is built from a seemingly endless series of individual decisions and acts, most of them made without thought or care for what destruction might result. The author captures the absurd and contradictory ways that capitalism, culture, and justice movements intersect, as here where the titular Chickenman, an advocate for a thoroughly inhumane product called Guiltless Real Chicken, explains the beauty of the food: “Chicken, we’ve found, is both culturally specific and shape-shiftingly neutral…Everyone has a proprietary interest, and that’s a plus! You have Chicken Kiev, Chicken and Dumplings, Chicken Marsala, Chicken Yakitori…” For all its humor and occasional horror, the novel is a dense, difficult read due both to its structure and the never fully illuminated elements of the world. Hunter does not hold readers’ hands, forcing them instead to sink or swim with every strange turn or revelation. Those who stick with Charlotte’s journey will come to appreciate the author’s inventive storytelling, as well as the complex and vital ideas she serves up.

A postmodern fable of Afrofuturism and food justice that provides plenty to chew on.