Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Tracker recalls running from his father’s house to an abandoned town. He interrupts himself, noticing the Inquisitor staring at his wolf-eye. His story then resumes, and he describes a valley and struggling to eat in the bush.

After a break in the text, Tracker awakes in a hut. A man who saved him from a snakebite asks him questions. Tracker recovers and discovers the “monkeybread tree” (19). The witchman tells the origin story of the tree.

Three boys from the village visit. One has white ash covering him, another has white ash stripes, and the third is in just dark skin. They tell him to come to a Zareba manhood rite because the “moonlit one” (20) has lost his partner to a snake. Tracker agrees.

Addressing the Inquisitor directly, Tracker asks if he wants to hear more, then continues his story. The witchman takes Tracker to the village to meet his uncle, a tall rich man with six wives.

Between text breaks, Tracker details differences between the Ku and their enemies, the Gangatom, and describes Hemba mask dancers.

Tracker tells his uncle that three boys invited him to the Zareba, and his uncle tells him it’s too late to become a man. By way of explanation, he shows Tracker a village boy’s circumcision—cutting the “woman away” (25)—and compares it to female circumcision.

However, uncircumcised Tracker watches the ceremony, hidden with the moonlit boy. There are drummers, jumping, and dancing. The boy encourages him to watch couples having sex in the bush and gets Tracker to orgasm with his hand.

Tracker discovers his grandfather is his father and learns more about the tribal conflict—that he is supposed to avenge his brother. He considers searching for his grandmother, but finds the moonlit boy, named Kava, and stays with him.

In Kava’s hut, Kava and Tracker talk about fathers, family, and how another village—Luala Luala—accepts same-sex couples. After describing mutual masturbation, Tracker directly addresses the Inquisitor, asking questions about his sex life, and mythologizing female genitalia.

Returning to his main story, Tracker describes Kava leading them through the bush, where they meet and travel near Leopard. They encounter Yumboes, “good fairies of the leaves” (37), who have found a baby. This child is mingi, which Tracker (and the reader) learns means a baby born with a deformity or stigma of some sort.

After they encounter a second baby—this one dead—Leopard transforms into a man. He plans to bury the dead baby while Kava and Tracker continue on ahead. Kava tells Tracker he met Leopard saving a baby. Leopard returns, and Tracker is jealous of their relationship.

The Yumboes warn them that someone is following them, while also identifying Tracker’s gift of smell. Kava helps Tracker both focus on the Leopard’s scent and follow the path he sets for the rest of them. The group eventually reaches trees and mists of many colors—“enchanted woods,” (46) as Tracker calls them.

In treehouses, mingi children play and greet the travelers. Tracker talks with a Gangatom woman who cares for the children; they are at odds and avoid each other for a week. Kava tells Tracker the children’s stories—why their families rejected them.

James splits the novel into six titled sections. Each one starts with a quote in another language. Some of these quotes reappear in the text with a definition. For instance, the novel’s first section includes the proverb: “Bi oju ri enu a pamo” (2), which translates later as “Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth” (3). These proverbs are a re-blending of African dialects, including Yoruba and Swahili.

While the novel is set in a fantasy location, with fictional maps included—a trope of the genre—the land is most similar to Africa and the people look African. James emphasizes dark skin; for instance, the ash the Ku boys adorn themselves with is a contrasting “white as the moon” (19). This becomes a strong theme throughout the novel. Foreigners are the lighter-skinned characters and it is the lightness of their skin that sets them apart from the majority.

Early in the text, Tracker identifies himself as someone who has sex with people of all genders. However, he is primarily interested in men and generally dislikes women. Tracker’s male-male gaze and Luala Luala’s acceptance of gay coupling are departures from the fantasy genre’s heavy use of heteronormative romance that stems from the Arthurian tradition and Marie de Champagne’s medieval court of love.

James explores the roots of Tracker’s homosexuality and misogyny metaphorically in these early chapters through the snakes—the one that nearly killed Tracker in the bush and the one that killed Kava’s original partner for the Zareba manhood rite.

In a more literal sense that mirrors the metaphoric trope, the Ku think uncircumcised penises retain the skin of female genitalia (and an accompanying femininity). This posits that Tracker wrestles with the male and female in a physical sense that he didn’t have control over as an infant. This is a motif that runs throughout the novel, leading to Tracker’s rejection of the Ku’s traditions and stigmas around circumcision.

Chapter 1 introduces the Omoluzu, a monster keeping with fantasy genre traditions, but one that draws upon African source material rather than the Anglo-Saxon sources Tolkien drew upon. One potential source for the Omoluzu—a linguistic amalgamation like the African language used in proverbs throughout the text—are the popobawa, an evil shapeshifting spirit from the Swahili language.  

A month later, Tracker observes Leopard, then turns his attention to the Gangatom woman. Passing through an unseen door—what appears to be a wall—in her hut causes Tracker to call her a witch, and she replies that she is Sangoma.

She walks on the ceiling with the children—a girl made of blue smoke, a boy with no legs, a boy with legs like a giraffe’s, conjoined twins, and more—and pulls Tracker upside-down. Sangoma introduces him to the word purple, and asks if he visits the palace of wisdom, where he could lose prejudices and learn to accept the mingi. She also notes he is a shoga.

One night, Tracker sees the smoke girl struggle in nightmares and the Sangoma slap her awake; once awake, the smoke girl runs to him. Sangoma retrieves and returns a nkiski nkondi that caused the nightmares. After this, the smoke girl hovers around Tracker all the time.

He later bonds with the other mingi: The giraffe boy leads him on a search for a specific yellow flower, and ball boy plays hide and seek.

After a section break, Tracker addresses the Inquisitor, prefacing stories about Leopard. In the first, Tracker discovers Kava and Leopard having sex and is jealous. Interrupting himself, he turns to the Inquisitor and defines shoga as gay men who are both vulgar, instructive prostitutes and poetic warriors, depending on who you ask.

The second story is about Leopard teaching Tracker archery. When asked about his relationship with Kava, Leopard says, “Nobody loves no one” (62). Tracker is a terrible bowman, and Leopard laughs at him. They also talk about Leopard’s shapeshifting ability, Tracker’s nose, and their families.

The third story is about Tracker talking with Sangoma about her training and his gift. She hires him to find a goat gallbladder stolen by a boy. Kava warns Tracker about Leopard, accuses them of having sex during the archery lesson, and the two men fight. Leopard breaks up the fight and travels with Tracker.

They follow the boy’s scent, and Leopard asks Tracker to join him after this job. In the morning, Tracker wakes up without the scent—because the boy has died—and they find a tree full of dead bodies strung up in pieces. Tracker describes the scene as a “lair of one of the old and forgotten gods, back when gods were brutish and unclean. Or a demon” (78).

The purple-haired killer calls himself Asanbosam; he strings up Tracker across from the dead boy. Tracker begs for his life, and the monster claims he has to wait for his blood-sucking brother, Sasabonsam, to kill, so he will only maim and eat parts of Tracker.

However, Leopard’s arrows suddenly pierce Asanbosam, saving Tracker. Tracker cries in Leopard’s arms, and they escape with the gallbladder. 

After beheading the Asanbosam, Leopard and Tracker head back to the Sangoma’s huts. There, the huts are on fire and the children are mostly slaughtered, along with Sangoma. They manage to rescue a few children—Giraffe Boy, Ball Boy, the twins, the albino, and Smoke Girl—and defeat a pack of hyenas.

They either bury, burn, or send the dead children down the river, and they track the scent of the killers. Tracker’s uncle’s friends are the guilty parties, and Tracker kills a few of them before Kava appears and chokes him. Tracker kills Kava in self-defense and realizes that Sangoma’s magic protects him.

After using his hatchet and spear to kill more men, Tracker confronts his uncle, who thinks the mingi’s continued existence would curse the village. His uncle pleads for his life, repeating that he is Tracker’s “beloved uncle” (90), and tries to kill him, but Leopard shoots the “beloved uncle” with arrows. 

Tracker and Leopard bring the children to the Gangatom village, and show their chief the Asanbosam’s head and Tracker’s uncle’s head. The villagers take the children in, but Smoke Girl tries to follow when they leave the village until Tracker throws rocks at her. Leopard and Tracker go to Fasisi, the northern capital, but Leopard only stays two months and leaves Tracker for many years.

By the time they meet again, Tracker has moved to Malakal, a “city where men loved men, priests married slaves, and sadness was washed away with palm wine and masuku beer” (93). Leopard says he wants Tracker’s help to “find a fly” (93).