We Travel the Spaceways (Black Stars, #6) by Victor LaValle

We Travel the Spaceways (Black Stars, #6) Reviews

• 
  Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)

  3.5 stars
  
  Really interesting concept, though I wanted more from the story than I got. We Travel the Spaceways follows a homeless Black man who gets instructions from beings speaking to him through empty soda bottles. But it's also a love story and the love interest is a trans woman. I don't want to say too much more, but I think the idea of forgotten and misunderstood people being able to hear or see beyond is a cool one. This also has a very strong sense of place and as a New Yorker, I easily recognized many of the locations described.
• 
  Chrissie

  Wow. A solid finish to this collection — bravo to whoever put together the ordering of this set of stories.
  
  We Travel the Spaceways was unique and tender, developing a quiet story which I will miss visiting. LaValle has written a story that felt vast and full of possibilities by the end, and I think it has worked its way to being my favorite of the bunch. Wonderful writing and brilliant characters.
  
  Audiobook, as narrated by
  Brian Tyree Henry: Brian Tyree Henry really nailed this performance. His voice is soft and strong and heartfelt. The delivery was serious and inviting, perfect for these characters.
• 
  Sadie Hartmann

  Oh, my heart!
  What a unique, unusual, and unexpected story this is! WE TRAVEL THE SPACEWAYS by Victor LaValle is book 6 in the Black Stars Amazon Original Series.
  We meet Grimace, a homeless man searching for food and on a mission from the gods that talk to him through empty bottles and cans he has collected.
  One day, he meets Kim at a Mcdonald's and she supplies him with some human essentials he hasn't had in a long time, kindness, food, and touch.
  Ugh, LaValle knows just how to say the perfect thing and when to say it at *just* the right moment. I loved this so much...these two characters who fall in love and I'm sad my time with them was so short.
• 
  chan

  4 / 5 stars
  
  Like most other stories in this collection, this was weird, but the kind of weird I really like! It also helps tremendously that
  Victor LaValle did not only vividly capture the streets of New York City but was also able to give his protagonist a very distictive voice in such a short time. Definitely a good reminder for me to finally pick up more by this author!
  
  content notes:

  ◦ moderate: mental illness
  ◦ minor: deadnaming
• 
  Anomaly

  I loved the narrating voice and the characters of Kim and Grimace, but I didn't care much for the writing style or the premise. I'm not particularly fond of what by all appearances is severe mental illness being portrayed as supernatural, especially when it leads to extremes such as the burning of Black churches (and mosques) because soda cans allegedly possessed by the old gods demanded it. I'm uncomfortable with that on so many levels, none of which I'm keen on trying to articulate right now. I just can't handle it; it makes me feel extremely unsettled and not in the pleasant way of, say, a thriller or horror story.
  
  Having dialogue from secondary characters - including the cans and bottles - followed not by proper prose but rather by square bracketed comments was just the nail in the coffin for my reading experience. For example:
  
  

  “You don’t have time for this.” [Dr Pepper; spilling out of the bag so she could survey the room]

  
  
  This just isn't my cup of tea. I prefer peppermint and this is spearmint: close to something I'd love, but just... not. Forty-something pages felt more like a couple hundred, for how much mental energy this required and how uneasy the main plot made me.
  
  I'm still awarding two stars because the characters of Grimace and Kim are highly engaging and the concept would have been epic if only it didn't rely on turning mental illness into a superpower and glorifying the burning of sacred places because the people worshipping there were following the 'wrong' idols. (There's a reason police in the story perceive it as a hate crime, and I'm flabbergasted the author recognized this yet still wrote the story as is.) Additionally, I recognize the main complaint might be a me-problem - and one that only exists because the story used real life religions not fake ones and there's enough destruction of holy places based on religious self-superiority in real life, especially mosques. Also, there's the whole 'it's not mental illness, it's legit and a special power' trope which I am beyond tired of right now. So, yeah. Maybe it's just me, but I feel strongly enough not to rate this any higher.
  
  Side note: Kim is a transwoman who is visibly recognized as assigned male at birth and half a foot taller than Grimace. Yet, the woman on the cover is clearly smaller than him and passes easily as a cis woman. I'm a little disappointed with whoever made the cover for not properly portraying Kim's appearance. She deserves to look like herself, not how people generally expect women to look.
• 
  ♥Milica♥

  I finished this series woohoo!! Sadly none of the stories were exactly to my taste, but I'll still check out the authors I didn't already know from before.
• 
  Akona

  So refreshingly original!
  
  Meet Grimace, a homeless man living in NYC. He is on a one man mission to free African Americans from spiritual enslavement. He carries with him a bag of friends, aluminium cans and a Coke bottle who help him on his mission. Is he mentally ill or is there more to the stinky man who talks, no yells at a garbage bag?
  One night he meets his soulmate Kim, also an outcast of society. And so begins their journey to discovering themselves and each other.
  I loved this story. I especially loved the narration on the audio.
  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25
• 
  Alondra Miller

  2 Stars
  
  I didn't get it. Why was he doing the things he was doing?? It didn't make sense. The ancestors would NOT go about communication that way. WTF?
• 
  Alan (On Summer Hiatus) Teder

  Sun Ra and H.P. Lovecraft Mashup
  Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook (August 2021)
  

  We travel the spaceways,
  from planet to planet.
  We travel the spaceways,
  from planet to planet. - lyrics to
  We Travel the Spaceways* by
  Sun Ra (1914-1993)

  
  We Travel the Spaceways was yet another favourite of mine in Amazon Original's Black Stars series. Like Nisi Shawls's
  2043… it takes its title inspiration from a music work, although neither author acknowledges that in the story itself. So it is more from my own early listening in experimental music from the 1960s and 1970s that I noticed the Jimi Hendrix and Sun Ra references.
  
  Victor Lavalle's We Travel... casts a much wider net though and manages to incorporate subplots of homelessness, possible mental illness, transgender identification, religion, old Gods (that is the H.P. Lovecraft tie-in, although Lovecraft's Cthulhu is obviously something completely different), and interstellar travel into the brief space of a 40 page Kindle story. It perhaps doesn't even leave the earth, some interpretation is left up to the reader, but manages to travel an extensive journey regardless. Possibly the standout story of the collection.
  
  We Travel the Spaceways is the 6th of the 6 short stories making up the speculative / fantasy / science fiction series
  Black Stars, released simultaneously on August 31, 2021 as an eBook by Amazon Originals and as an audiobook by Audible Originals.
  
  Trivia and Link
  * We Travel the Spaceways (1959) is the title track of
  the same-titled Sun Ra LP which was first issued in 1967 on the Sun Ra Arkestra's own record label El Saturn.
• 
  Netanella

  Victor LaValle's specialty lately seems to be marginalized people - the homeless, the mentally ill, people who are ignored by large swathes of humanity because they don't want to deal. Here, a homeless man, named Grimace for his large purple jacket, moves around the city setting fires to black churches while he speaks with the cans of soda in his shoulder sack. Is he crazy? Is he sane? Or is he on some special mission? Awesome stuff - I loved it.
• 
  Christine

  Nice story. The twists were pretty good.
• 
  jboyg

  Quirky Novella Is A Fun Read.
  
  Short and sweet with a street bum protagonist who converses with a trash bag of bottles and tin cans and follows directives from on high. I don't think I quite got it but
  I enjoyed the ride.
• 
  Denise

  I really don't know what to think of this book. It was really well-written but certain parts of the story actively disturbed me. I gave it 4 stars for the writing.
• 
  Deidra (ShadeTreeReads)

  3-3.5 of 5 stars
  I liked this entry to the Black Stars (a series by Amazon Original Stories) anthology. I read this completely via audiobook on my commute home today. And I gotta say that the narrator, Brian Tyree Henry, has a very pleasingly thunderous voice that I could listen to all day! Definitely need to see what else Henry has voice-acted on!
  
  This is also my introduction to LaValle's prose. I've owned
  The Ballad of Black Tom in ebook format for some time but haven't gotten to it yet. Though it will be moving up my TBR now. And I've read his Destroyer comic retelling of Frankenstein which I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend. I think, maybe, for We Travel the Spaceways I needed more than 40 pages because I was left wanting more but not in a good way. I wanted to know more about Kim's background story and what her life was like prior to meeting Grimace. And I wanted to know more about how Grimace ended up in the position he was in and who taught him how to make a Molotov cocktail. I would definitely read a continuation of this story or even a prequel!
  
  Overall, I would recommend giving this one a try but I can't speak to how good of an introduction to LaValle's writing it is. I will absolutely be reading the other books in the series except for the one by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because I don't fw her transphobic ass. Kinda disappointed to see her put in the series next to such amazing Black authors who don't say trash things repeatedly (at least not in public) but capitalism I guess.
• 
  Cassandra Marie Darling

  Love the writing style, it was fluid, easy and enjoyable. I liked the idea of what it was trying to get to. I just haven't a clue what the ending was saying. I am still non the wiser on whether or not this guys tripping or really going between worlds. I will give the authors writing a go. Great end story for the series just would of liked some closure on what the heck was happening 😂
• 
  Tony

  There is so much to mine here; homelessness, the treatment of transwomen, the Black church, the erasure of Black peoples history, mental illness, and the disregard of the humanity of the marginalized.
• 
  Alan (On Summer Hiatus) Teder

  Audio Follow-up
  Review of the Audible Original audiobook (August 2021)
  
  I reviewed the Kindle eBook edition of We Travel the Spaceways in
  Sun Ra and H.P. Lovecraft Mashup, but was curious enough to want to hear how the audiobook version was performed. I had imagined that perhaps the voicings of the bottles and cans might lend itself towards an exaggerated performance, but the narration by actor Brian Tyree Henry was solid and sympathetic and was delivered with gravitas.
  
  We Travel the Spaceways is the 6th of the 6 short stories making up the speculative / fantasy / science fiction series
  Black Stars, released simultaneously on August 31, 2021 as an eBook by Amazon Originals and as an audiobook by Audible Originals.
• 
  Eric Novello

  
  “Wait a second. Tell me the truth. Have I lost my mind?”
  
  “Oh, you shouldn’t ask me,” I said, as I stepped out. “I lost mine a long time ago.”
  
  
• 
  LouchoBi ⚓

  Five stars.
  Perhaps the best of the series.
  It made me cry, damn...
• 
  Erica

  3.5⭐️
  
  I really enjoyed this and it gave me a quick jumpstart into Sci-Fi September. Let's start with the pros. The pacing was just right for me. It's only 40 pages, but there is a lot that LaValle says in these 40 pages. It's a commentary on mental health, homelessness in America, & how the homeless are treated. Early on the main character says,
  

  You spend enough time being actively ignored, and you learn to protect yourself. Stuff your feelings in one sock, . . .

  
  The story is pretty easy to follow and keep up with. Our main character, who we know as Grimace is homeless and goes around burning Black houses of worship. By the way, he is Black himself. He talks about a red supergiant and UY Scuti and how he was the Signalman.
  
  Grimace meets Kim at a Mcdonald's and they hit it off. And come to find out she hears the same voices Grimace hears. Now the cons. This short story is a mere 40 pages and LaValle introduces a lot, but there's a lot that's not fleshed out. I get the impression that Kim and Grimace are stranded on Earth, but there is no explanation as to how they got here, why they can't get back, who they're trying to contact. I also wanted to know more about Kim because there's an instance in which Grimace says,
  

  You mean because you're a man.

  
  and Kim responds by saying,
  

  I am a woman. My name is Kim. If you hurt me right now, you will never see me again.

  
  I was curious what gave him the impression that she was a man. What did she look like, her mannerisms, voice, build, etc.
  
  Anyway, overall an enjoyable read and if LaValle decides to expand this story I'd definitely read it.
• 
  chantel nouseforaname

  Brian Tyree Henry x Victor Lavalle & a really really out there story. It was magic.
  
  It was exactly the kind of weird that I love. It was otherworldly, yet human. Frustrating. Enraging. Tender. Victor Lavalle scares me as a writer with how much I enjoy his work. His work is just so much for me to contend with mentally. It’s like drowning. Swimming can be fun, but when the water gets out of control you feel like you’re being dragged out of the universe. It’s frightening, and electric.
  
  The voice acting made me melt. I have a huge crush on Brian Tyree Henry and his voice was amazing. The story dragged me in and didn’t let me go.
  
  I’m working my way through the series and this one was bomb.
  
  My only problem with audiobooks is that the character in the text meets the character doing the voice especially if they’re an actor I already like — so it distorted the lens for me, but you know what I ain’t even mad at all.
• 
  Arbys Mom

  This is the sixth story in the Amazon Original Stories series Black Stars. It was well written, but confusing, and I’m not sure I understood it at all. The protagonist, “Grimace,” is a New York homeless Black man, who hears voices from soda cans and bottles, that by the end are supposed to be voices of intergalactic beings who visited Earth hundreds of years ago. My problem with the plot isn’t the absurdity of that, but that the voices tell Grimace to burn down churches of people of color (“never white churches”), and I don’t see the point of that, nor is one given. It was interesting reading about his journeys around the city, and meeting Kim, who turns out to be able to hear the voices too, but it’s like a whole chapter was removed, explaining WHY the voices wanted those churches and mosques burned down.
• 
  Lois

  This was interesting and wonderful.
  I loved it.
  Great start to 2022.
• 
  Sheerin Shahab

  New York.. A homeless black man. Hungry. Half crazy. Scavenging among the garbage for cans and coke bottles. Called Grimace, like the McDonald character, because he wears purple, he has a problem with volume and to
  
  "Stuff your feelings in one sock, slip them down around your left ankle, they fit as snug as an ankle monitor, and believe me, I know about such things."
  
  But he can sprout random facts about the largest star in the universe and he is, in his words, on a mission.
  
  So what is his mission and what is the role of the loquacious bottles and cans he picks up? And what role does Kim, the transgender woman he falls for, have to play in this cosmic saga?
  
  This was quirky but enjoyable. The portrayal of transgenders as people who straddle two worlds, seemed perfect.
  
  "Someone used to navigating between a world where they’re understood and a world where they’re misjudged."
  
  As weird as the rest of the Black Stars collection but one that I liked.
  
• 
  Matt Quann

  I like Victor Lavalle, but this is not a good story.
• 
  Tish Burley

  Honestly... no idea what I've just read ahaha! I liked the style of writing though so I'll probably give some other stuff by LaValle a go
• 
  Faith

  2.5 stars
• 
  Angelica

  Really loved the voice of the protagonist in this one.
• 
  CAROLYN G WYNN

  Cool Story. Keeps you guessing if it's real or delusion
• 
  Cale

  There isn't a huge amount of science fiction in this story, but at the same time it underpins the story and provides a framework of sympathy for "Grimace" our protagonist and Kim, his love interest. The story is unconventional in every way, from his friendships to his work. LaValle paints this world vividly, providing a sense of longing and empathy that comes through in this brief story. Definitely worth the time it takes to read (or listen to - Bryan Tyree Henry's performance adds a lot).