Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-9

Chapters 10-22

Chapters 23-36

Chapters 37-44

Chapters 45-51

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Cultural Context of Black Folklore

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky is shaped by West African and Black American oral culture, specifically the folktales of West Africa and what enslaved people made of those tales as they survived the Middle Passage, the journey from Africa to the Americas, and lived through the terrors of slavery. Black folk culture is thus an important cultural context used as a thematic element for understanding the world of the novel.

Storytelling is an essential part of the oral culture produced by Black people in Africa and the Americas, and it served as an important strategy in the face of powerfully oppressive systems of control over newly enslaved African people. Once enslaved people came under the direct control of owners, not only did they have to deal with loss of control over their bodies, but they also were forced to operate in a setting in which their names, language, music, food, and spiritual beliefs were discounted. In some instances—as in the case of drumming—slave holders actively forbid aspects of their culture to discourage community-building among enslaved people. Owners feared that such connections would encourage revolt against the masters.

First generation enslaved people relied on the language they used to facilitate trading back home, the music and storytelling traditions they encountered in the Americas (including those derived from Christianity), and the storytelling traditions they brought with them to create Black American folklore. After slave rebellions during the 1830s, communities dominated by slaveholding interests in the United States created laws forbidding enslaved people from learning to read and others from teaching them to read and write. Oral culture became one of the few ways enslaved people could preserve their culture, transmit ethical values, and create a space for play and creativity, sometimes right under the noses of slaveholders.

Use of this context creates a rich alternative to fantasy worlds in which much of the material is inspired by the culture and history of people of European descent. In Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, an imaginary world in which children of color can see themselves is created and the novel makes space for such children and other young people to see Black children as the heroes.

The ancestors who created, remixed, and passed on folktales did so in the face of the terrible new world in which they found themselves during slavery, and these creative acts made a space where Black people could be whole. The novel does much the same in a moment when Black children may still be receiving the message that their lives and stories are not of value to others.

The Power of Storytelling

The novel focuses on the theme of storytelling as a powerful key to survival and resilience for Black Americans. Tristan’s salvation is that he knows how to tell stories rooted in this cultural context. Tristan learns these stories that form the basis of his power via oral tales told to him by Nana Strong, through the collection work he did with Eddie, and under the mentorship of figures who show him how to tell these stories with enough discipline and focus to reshape the world around him.

In oral culture, storytelling is not just the action of one voice delivering a story to a passive audience. Instead, storytellers and audiences create stories together when the audience responds to and adds to the story the storyteller presents. For example, Tristan manages to make the seriousness of the monsters threatening the Ridge and other lands more real by telling the story of Abiyoyo but also by making space for the audience to create parts of the story. When Tristan banishes the Abiyoyo that he conjured, he is only able to be successful because he recruits the Ridgefolk as co-storytellers. The power of storytelling in this instance is that it builds community and allows everyone to play a role in creating the reality they want, even in the face of evil and monsters.

Storytelling also allows storytellers and listeners to participate in the creation of historical narratives. While the history of Black American ancestors and Black Americans often went unwritten, they told each other stories about enslaved African natives flying back to Africa from the Georgia Sea Islands. They told stories about figures like John Henry or even more modern culture heroes like Muhammed Ali. These stories all point to the enduring importance of resistance to oppression. This is a different story to the one that said that Black Americans either didn’t resist or were even content to live under slavery and racist societies.

Storytelling seen in Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky also allows Black Americans to imaginatively fill in gaps in this unwritten history of Black American life. The Middle Passage, for example, is hard to represent historically from the perspective of enslaved people. People want to forget the painful parts of history, especially in the United States, where new beginnings and leaving the past behind are prized parts of American identity. Furthermore, much of the record that does exist was created by people with an interest in preserving the slave trade or simply keeping accounts of slavery as a money-making activity, not showing what happened to the objects of this trade.

In Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, the reality of the violence and sadness of the Middle Passage comes to life with the fetterlings, bone ships, the Maafa, and hullbeasts, all of which are constructed of key tools in the slave trade. MidPass—a shortened form of “Middle Passage”—is itself a creation of the pain and resilience of enslaved people in the holds of slave ships. The character Uncle Cotton, who wishes to become “King Cotton,” shows the moral corruption of seeing slavery as an economic activity instead of one with moral dimensions that should have troubled those who participated in it.

The people of MidPass do not have their own Story Box and suffer for it, an outcome that shows the damaging effect of not having access to or control over one’s own history. When Tristan comes, he creates, collects, reveals, and distributes their stories, allowing the land to be rescued. This rescue is accomplished not just because of one individual, a boy with a magic backpack. It is the collaboration among Tristan, the Midfolk, the Alkeans, and the Ridgefolk that saves the day.

Finally, another important lesson of the novel is that the stories we refuse to tell about the painful parts of our lives and history can do damage to us. The people of MidPass bound the Maafa, and its inability to have the truth of its origins in slavery nearly led to the destruction of MidPass. In Tristan’s own life, Tristan refuses for the longest time to own his sense of guilt over failing to act as Eddie was dying. When Tristan helps bring the story of the Maafa to life and finally shares his grief and guilt, he and the others who hear these stories are free to be who they need to be to survive and thrive. One of the greatest powers of storytelling is that it can heal us.

The Black Hero’s Journey

According to critic and mythologist Joseph Campbell, our stories and ideas about heroes reflect across all cultures and certain narrative patterns and archetypes (universal figures) are used when we tell stories about heroes. In Campbell’s account, the hero’s story includes a departure, the moment when the hero leaves their world and sets out on the adventure; the initiation, when the hero faces trials, is forced to overcome temptation or death, and may receive key gifts; and the return, when the hero uses their knowledge and powers to overcome and move seamlessly back and forth between the ordinary world and the world they encountered on their journey. In Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, a hero’s journey is created, but it is one that departs from Campbell’s theory to tell a more diverse and contemporary story about heroism.

Characters and heroes in Tristan Strong are archetypal figures, but they are drawn from African and Black American archetypes. In the stories of the Akan and Ashanti, for example, Anansi is a hero because he manages to outwit or even cheat more powerful figures, not because he is stronger, more beautiful, or more moral than others. Anansi is physically weak, a liar, and is amoral. The remixing of his stories by enslaved Black people in the United States makes sense in a cultural context in which much of the power was in the hands of slaveholders. The hero in this context is far from morally perfect, but his or her resistance is a form of strength that allows for survival.

While Anansi’s trickery is the cause of much of the drama in Alke, his form of heroism is an important context in which to read the evolution of Tristan from ordinary boy to hero. Tristan, like Anansi, is frequently not the strongest or bravest of characters. He is a child, one struggling under the burdens of thoughtless adult decision-making and his many fears. His life, by his own account, is defined by failure after failure to live up to his own ideas about what makes one a good or even brave person. No one would choose him as a hero, including Tristan himself.

Tristan’s quest and trials to deliver the Story Box and rescue Alke through battle and magic fail in the latter chapters of the book because creatures like the Maafa and Uncle Cotton cannot be defeated through strength. Tristan defeats the Maafa by listening to it and giving it what it wants, which is to be remembered. He uses trickery and the ability to drive a hard bargain to defeat the much more powerful Uncle Cotton. Tristan’s ability to recognize a fellow trickster when he unmasks Anansi is what ultimately forges a good outcome.

In addition, the hero in Campbell’s account is almost always a man or a boy, but in Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, figures who are heroes are just as likely to be female or gender neutral as male. For example, Ayanna and Thandiwe save Tristan and his quest time and again, sometimes even forcing Tristan to do what needs doing even after Tristan refuses to do so initially. The wizardry of Chestnutt, a bunny with an undefined gender, is their knowledge of MidPass and Alke. Gum Baby is the linchpin to Tristan’s last and greatest trick to defeat his foes.

Even more powerful and appropriate in a contemporary world is that heroic outcomes are achieved through working together and relying upon each other. The true hero in this story is the team, with each character providing key skills and character traits that allow for the successful end to the quest. The importance of collaboration makes sense in a more contemporary world in which values like equality and collaboration are much more prized than they would have been in Campbell’s day.