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Tentacle’ Is a Unique Caribbean Spin on Climate Fiction

How to make sense of a world increasingly beset by systemic problems like inequality and climate change? The use of a creepy metaphor like “tentacle” helps. It suggests a connectedness between phenomena that are hard to visualize, let alone understand.

That very metaphor slithers through the latest by Dominican novelist and singer-songwriter, Rita Indiana... — Tentacle. 

Called La mucama de Omicunlé  in the original Spanish, this beguiling but wonderfully thrilling book (translated into English by Achy Obejas) tells the story of Acilde Figueroa, a maid living in post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, where the oceans run black with pollution and poor people are literally killed on the doorsteps of the wealthy. 

With the help of a magic sea anemone — and a fulfillment of prophesy — Acilde, who dreams of being male, finds the means to undergo a gender transition. He is then bestowed with the power to travel back in time to save Earth’s oceans. 

From beginning to end, Tentacle is a strange, unnerving, and at times beautiful book that critiques global inequality and the politicization of climate change. Moreover, it throws into question the rigidity of time-old categories of gender, race, and spiritual beliefs. Excitingly, it also amplifies a Dominican voice on the matter of climate change,