Will Do Magic for Small Change

Written by Andrea Hairston

Narrated by Tamika Katon-Donegal and Andre Santana

Andrea Hairston’s historical fantasy Will Do Magic for Small Change presents a tale of alien science and earthbound magic and the secrets families keep from each other.

Cinnamon Jones dreams of stepping on stage and acting her heart out like her famous grandparents, Redwood and Wildfire, but she’s always been theatrically challenged. That won’t necessarily stop her! But her family life is a tangle of mysteries and secrets, and nobody is telling her the whole truth.

Before her brother died, he gave Cinnamon The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer—a tale of a Dahomean warrior woman and an alien from another dimension who perform at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Theirs is a story of magic and alien science, but the connection to Cinnamon’s past is unmistakable.

When an act of violence wounds her family, Cinnamon and her theatre squad determine to solve the mysteries and bring her worlds crashing together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705072578

Andrea Hairston

Andrea Hairston is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and the artistic director of Chrysalis Theatre. She is the author of Redwood and Wildfire, winner of the 2011 Otherwise Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award, and Mindscape, short-listed for the Philip K. Dick and Otherwise Awards and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. In her spare time, she is the Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. Hairston has received the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Distinguished Scholarship Award for outstanding contributions to the criticism of the fantastic. She bikes at night year-round, meeting bears and the occasional shooting star.

Reviews for Will Do Magic for Small Change

[the_hibernator · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this dual timeline plot, present-day Cinnamon deals with teenaged life after the death of her beloved brother Sekou. She reads a book given to her by Sekou, which is a memoir following the life of an alien and his/her Dahomean warrior lover as they escape wartorn Dahomey Kingdom.I really wanted to love this book. There was so much to love. The writing was lyrical – full of beautiful imagery. The plot was intriguing. But I guess I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters. I suspect it’s not the fault of the book so much as the fact that I (a white, generation X woman who is easily mistaken as a “Karen” on Facebook) am not the target audience.

[pwaites_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Will Do Magic for Small Change feels like Octavia Butler crossed with Charles de Lint. It genres, with aliens and magic, and explores themes such as race, gender, sexuality, and family history. It’s one of the most original SFF novels I’ve read in years.Will Do Magic for Small Change opens with Cinnamon Jones, a black girl in 1980’s Philadelphia, attending her half-brother’s funeral. Her brother left her a book written by an alien wanderer from another dimension who appeared in West Africa during the 1890’s. The wanderer’s story is not complete and more sections continue to appear as the course of Cinnamon’s teen years. Eventually, Cinnamon realizes that the wanderer’s story has some mysterious connections to her own family history.My expectation was that I would enjoy the alien’s story more than Cinnamon’s, but the reverse was true. Cinnamon aspires to be an actress, but the theater is a difficult place for a large, dark skinned black girl. It does provide the opportunity of friendship with two other teenagers, and the three of them become caught up in the mysteries of the Chronicle.That said, I never skipped over the other sections relating to the wanderer (Taiwo), who gets caught up in the life of a warrior woman of Dahomey, Kehinde, who is searching for her dead brother’s wife and an escape from her own past. New sections of Taiwo and Kehinde’s story appear as the wanderer remembers them, but they’ve fragmented and lost many portions of their own historyGender and sexual fluidity are at the heart of Will Do Magic for Small Change. Cinnamon is bisexual (although the word is never used) and becomes involved in a fledgling polyamorous romance. The wanderer, Taiwo, is not male or female, but either both or neither. They, like Cinnamon, are bisexual, and various characters they encounter are also queer.In a large part, Will Do Magic for Small Change is a story of identity and history, with Taiwo trying to form their own identity and recall their personal history. Meanwhile, Cinnamon is searching into her own family history, trying to uncover the truth of the event that led to her father’s coma, and still in the process of self discovery. There’s a sense of searching for a connection between an African American present and an African past.For me, the characters are what I found most compelling about Will Do Magic for Small Change. I became strongly invested in Cinnamon’s story, and I loved Kehinde, a fierce warrior woman who continues to move forward despite the tragedies in her past. Even characters such as Opal, Cinnamon’s mother, who could have been little more than a two dimensional obstacle for Cinnamon to overcome ultimately proved to be more than that. If I have one complaint, it lies with the ending. The book ends suddenly and abruptly, without any real conclusion or closure. I’m guessing that there’s some thematic or literary purpose, but I read for entertainment and this didn’t work for me. I’m willing to go with such experimentation in form, but I’m not willing to invest the time in a 400 page + book only for an ending reminiscent of “The Lady or the Tiger?” That being said, I’m still planning on reading more by Andrea Hairston. The level of quality and imagination she displays here is such that I’m not going to pass up the opportunity to read more. I believe there’s another book about Cinnamon’s grandparents, and I hope to get my hands on it soon.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.