Charlotte Kersten

“Women like the Black Water Sister became gods because their lives were so shitty, their deaths so hideous, that people prayed to them to avert their vengeance. Because they had died with all that fury left to spend.”

Year published:  2021

Category:  Fantasy/urban fantasy

Representation: bisexual, main character and her partner

Summary: 

Jessamyn Teoh is closeted, broke and moving back to Malaysia, a country she left when she was a toddler. So when Jess starts hearing voices, she chalks it up to stress. But there’s only one voice in her head, and it claims to be the ghost of her estranged grandmother, Ah Ma. In life Ah Ma was a spirit medium, the avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she’s determined to settle a score against a gang boss who has offended the god–and she’s decided Jess is going to help her do it.

Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she’ll also need to regain control of her body and destiny. If she fails, the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.

My Thoughts:

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed everything I’ve read by Zen Cho, and Black Water Sister is now included amongst the company of her books that I loved featuring messy plots that come together in a satisfying way and delightfully obdurate and remorseless women who do kind of fucked up stuff. Those seem to be the two things that always tie her stories together.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I kind of love Jess’s ghost grandma Ah Mah, who possesses her without any compunctions and is a generally irascible, cantankerous spirit bent on revenge. There is a deeper level to her callousness, however, and over the course of the story, Jess comes to understand the rage that fills her because of how she was wronged by her abusive husband in life. This rage ties her to the god Black Water Sister, who was murdered by her own husband after a lifetime of wrongs. Black Water Sister is stuck in the horror of her death and her fury at the way she was treated in life. When Jess herself is almost sexually assaulted, the god takes over her mind, first thinking what she thought when she was assaulted by her own husband and then stepping in to decimate the men with brutal glee. The quote I started this review with gets to the heart of the matter, comparing male gods to female gods. In full:

“Men like Master Yap became divine after living revered lives, dying serene deaths and getting promoted by the Jade Emperor. Women like the Black Water Sister became gods because their lives were so shitty, their deaths so hideous, that people prayed to them to avert their vengeance. Because they had died with all that fury left to spend.”

The way that Ah Man and Black Water Sister are stuck reminds me a bit of what I talked about in my review of The Woman in Black by Susan Hill – the idea that ghosts could be thought of as manifestations of trauma, unable to find rest after experiencing horror, stuck in a state of perpetual limbo. In this case, Jess helps Black Water Sister realize that her own suffering is over and that she can be at peace finally and after all, bringing Ah Mah to rest at the same time.

Jess’s relationship with her parents is very complicated. She feels extremely beholden to them and is desperately afraid of disappointing them (especially by coming out to them), all the while having to navigate her mother’s overbearing anxiety, Her mom reminds me quite a bit of my own mom and so many of their interactions were quite relatable in addition to being extremely funny. Tied to Jess’s complicated feelings about her parents is her family’s experience of being immigrants two times over, first with her parents moving to the US to have her and then with the three of them moving back to Malaysia. I wouldn’t say that this is the overriding theme of the book or anything, but there are some great meditations on these experiences and the nature of belonging/not belonging and struggling to adapt in the process of immigration. In addition, the setting of Malaysia is rendered with a lot of loving detail.

Jess herself isn’t the most interesting character. Part of it is that she is quite passive through a lot of the story, and another thing that didn’t quite work for me was her relationship with her girlfriend Sharanya. This is the least convincing part of the story, and their dynamic leant me no clues as to why they were even a couple. Part of this is definitely intentional because they are supposed to be struggling to do long distance while Jess hides her sexuality from her parents, but beyond that there is just absolutely nothing to the relationship. I did love this part of the story’s conclusion, however.