"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, July 20, 2020

Favorite Characters: Nova Bordelon (Queen Sugar)


I was hooked on Nova from Queen Sugar’s opening scene, and while the show has taken her places that aren’t to my taste, she’s still a complex character with keen intelligence and occasionally more passion than sense.  Whether I’m cheering for her or she aggravates me, she’s always interesting to watch (a few Nova-related spoilers.)

Nova is many things.  She grows her own pot that she gives out to some friends/family and sells to others.  She’s an investigative journalist whose dig through the criminal justice system has grown deeply personal as she takes on the local police department for systemic bias, and her reporting career leads her to writing a memoir about the Black experience filtered through the lens of her family. She has strong spirituality tied to the earth and what it gives, and while some dismiss her beliefs as voodoo paganism, others look to her for healing.  Even as she is a devoted lover (rather than using the term “bi” or “pansexual,” she eschews a specific label and instead describes herself as being attracted to souls rather than gender,) she is fiercely independent and won’t allow herself to be defined by those she loves.

It all makes for a really intriguing combination of traits that gel even when they feel like they shouldn’t.  From the start, we see Nova’s pride, determination, and passion.  She’s a strong character who instantly clashes with Charley, who is also very strong but comes at things from an entirely different angle.  Over the course of the show, we see how these qualities can work for both good and ill in Nova.

This is a woman with a talent for knowing what she wants and going after it.  She’s deeply compassionate, and when she learns about Too Sweet’s unjust incarceration, she follows the story like a dog with a bone, fighting to make the system safer and fairer for all marginalized boys and young men while at the same time advocating strongly for bettering Too Sweet’s situation in particular.  It’s something of a rabbit hole, and once she goes down it, there’s no coming out unless she’s about to bring real change with her.  Although her drive to help and her empathy for Too Sweet are undeniably good, they lead her to do reckless things, risking her own well-being and career by challenging the police department and spending money she doesn’t have to bolster Too Sweet’s legal defense.

These traits work through Nova’s relationships as well.  As we see, first with Calvin and later with Chantal, Robert, and other partners, Nova uses her strength to defend her own needs in relationships.  Despite her love for Calvin, she finds that there is too great a divide between them to sustain what they have. When Chantal tries to insert herself too overtly in Nova’s fight for Too Sweet, Nova feels that Chantal is valuing Nova’s professional connections/platform over Nova’s actual voice.  Robert shares Nova’s desire to create change, but she’s wary of the way he goes about it, wading too far into making nice in “enemy territory” for her view. In every case, it’s a delicate balancing act, because while it’s right for Nova to fight for what she wants in relationships, she can be guarded to the point that she’s ready to pull the plug at the first sign of trouble (this quality can also apply to her siblings at times, especially Charley.)  If she wants to move forward, she needs to recognize the good within something imperfect and more carefully weigh whether it’s worth holding onto.

Frequently the best thing about Nova is her dedication to social causes and fighting injustice, but that very thing can fuel her more unfortunate impulses too. This is most clearly exemplified in Nova’s book, in which she airs huge amounts of the family’s dirty laundry in the name of “starting a conversation of healing” in the Black community. She’s so tied up in the goal of what she wants the book to accomplish that she never thinks seriously about how her family will feel about having all their shameful moments put out in the open. As a result, the book brings Nova tremendous success and appears to do just what she wanted it to, but at the same time, it pulls her and her family apart, setting everyone against her because she was more focused on the mission than on individual people. That’s usually her biggest downfall, and as she tries to rebuild going forward, she needs a way to keep sight of both.

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