***REGION 7: The Caribbean
ConversazioniReading Globally
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1avaland
If you have not read the information on the master thread regarding the intent of these regional threads, please do this first.
***7. The Caribbean: Anguilla, Antgua & Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Monserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands.
***7. The Caribbean: Anguilla, Antgua & Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Monserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands.
2rebeccanyc
How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphane Yanique, 2010, Virgin Islands
In this collection of short stories and a "novella" (or a long short story) and in deceptively simple language, Yanique, who is from the Virgin Islands, tells stories of people on various Caribbean islands who are in some way isolated, grieving, confused, uprooted, not (as one of her characters put it) at home-home, as opposed to the more simple home. Her characters and their situations stayed with me as I read through the stories, some of which, such as the title story, have elements of the fantastical. But . . . I have a quibble, and that is that after reading the whole collection I see Yanique using some of the same elements in story after story: coincidence, something from the beginning of a story "explained" at the end, exact repetitions of text to show how different people perceived the same event. It all works, in the context of individual stories, but I was disappointed to see it over and over again; as a reader, I then noticed what the writer was doing instead of being completely absorbed in the story. That said, I did enjoy and was moved by the stories and the characters, and I think Yanique is excellent at portraying the lives, concerns, and souls of people in a postcolonial, migratory world.
In this collection of short stories and a "novella" (or a long short story) and in deceptively simple language, Yanique, who is from the Virgin Islands, tells stories of people on various Caribbean islands who are in some way isolated, grieving, confused, uprooted, not (as one of her characters put it) at home-home, as opposed to the more simple home. Her characters and their situations stayed with me as I read through the stories, some of which, such as the title story, have elements of the fantastical. But . . . I have a quibble, and that is that after reading the whole collection I see Yanique using some of the same elements in story after story: coincidence, something from the beginning of a story "explained" at the end, exact repetitions of text to show how different people perceived the same event. It all works, in the context of individual stories, but I was disappointed to see it over and over again; as a reader, I then noticed what the writer was doing instead of being completely absorbed in the story. That said, I did enjoy and was moved by the stories and the characters, and I think Yanique is excellent at portraying the lives, concerns, and souls of people in a postcolonial, migratory world.
3kidzdoc
School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique; read in 2010)
School Days is narrated by a Martiniquan boy (perhaps a younger version of Chamoiseau?) who is the youngest of his family's four children. He sees his brothers and sister go off to school every morning, and endlessly pesters his mother to let him go, too. Naturally, the day comes when he is ready for kindergarten, and, not unexpectedly, he is terrified once he learns that he will be without his beloved mother.
He soon grows to love school, under the kindly tutelage of his first teacher, until it is time to enter first grade, with its older kids and intimidating staff. He and most of the Creole speaking children in his class struggle with the work, as their haughty and Eurocentric teacher insists that they speak only perfectly accented French. His best friend is Big Bellybutton, who falls in disfavor with the teacher because of his poor background and inability to speak properly, and is routinely bullied by the older boys during recess while the teachers turn a blind eye.
The quiet and shy, but mischievous narrator learns to respect and love books and reading from his first grade teacher. At the same time, he is enriched by the friendship of Big Bellybutton, who shares his "underground language" and joie de vivre with him.
School Days is a lighthearted and humorous tale of the life of a young child in a postcolonial Caribbean country, as he struggles to fit in with his classmates and develop his own identity.
School Days is narrated by a Martiniquan boy (perhaps a younger version of Chamoiseau?) who is the youngest of his family's four children. He sees his brothers and sister go off to school every morning, and endlessly pesters his mother to let him go, too. Naturally, the day comes when he is ready for kindergarten, and, not unexpectedly, he is terrified once he learns that he will be without his beloved mother.
He soon grows to love school, under the kindly tutelage of his first teacher, until it is time to enter first grade, with its older kids and intimidating staff. He and most of the Creole speaking children in his class struggle with the work, as their haughty and Eurocentric teacher insists that they speak only perfectly accented French. His best friend is Big Bellybutton, who falls in disfavor with the teacher because of his poor background and inability to speak properly, and is routinely bullied by the older boys during recess while the teachers turn a blind eye.
The quiet and shy, but mischievous narrator learns to respect and love books and reading from his first grade teacher. At the same time, he is enriched by the friendship of Big Bellybutton, who shares his "underground language" and joie de vivre with him.
School Days is a lighthearted and humorous tale of the life of a young child in a postcolonial Caribbean country, as he struggles to fit in with his classmates and develop his own identity.
4whymaggiemay
Small Island by Andrea Levy (Jamaica, read 2008)
Told through the voices of four characters, this is a beautifully written novel which examines, among other issues, immigration and racism in the 1940s.
Queenie - initally not very likeable, but she grew on me as I learned her story. She was resilient, bright, hard working, and pragmatic.
Gilbert - was the character I loved from the outset - funny, wise, generous. He's the character who made me feel the damp cold of England and the lash of racism.
Hortense - intially unlikeable, but I warmed to her as she went through some of her trials. Intensely proud, has little sense of humor, selfish, but hard working and forgiving.
Bernard - A sad sack who allowed life to happen for him - he didn't make it happen. Very racist and the character who reminded me how disgusting and ignorant racism is. Queenie is right that he'd never have fully embraced baby Michael.
Michael Roberts - the character whose voice you only hear through others - self-important and self-absorbed - he's the unknown tie between the two women.
Told through the voices of four characters, this is a beautifully written novel which examines, among other issues, immigration and racism in the 1940s.
Queenie - initally not very likeable, but she grew on me as I learned her story. She was resilient, bright, hard working, and pragmatic.
Gilbert - was the character I loved from the outset - funny, wise, generous. He's the character who made me feel the damp cold of England and the lash of racism.
Hortense - intially unlikeable, but I warmed to her as she went through some of her trials. Intensely proud, has little sense of humor, selfish, but hard working and forgiving.
Bernard - A sad sack who allowed life to happen for him - he didn't make it happen. Very racist and the character who reminded me how disgusting and ignorant racism is. Queenie is right that he'd never have fully embraced baby Michael.
Michael Roberts - the character whose voice you only hear through others - self-important and self-absorbed - he's the unknown tie between the two women.
5GlebtheDancer
-->3 kidzdoc:
Interesting comments about School Days. I have read a couple of Chamoiseau's books and really like him as an author. I'll be keeping an eye out for more in the future.
Interesting comments about School Days. I have read a couple of Chamoiseau's books and really like him as an author. I'll be keeping an eye out for more in the future.
6rebeccanyc
The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier Cuban author, published in 1953, my translated edition, published 2001
I am also going to post this in the South American thread because much of the story takes place in an unnamed country that is presumably Venezuela.
This is a fascinating, multilayered novel that I discovered when it was recommended for the Reading Globally theme read on Journeys. The outline of the story is simple: an educated and cultured musician, originally of European parentage but living in New York shortly after the second world war, has been reduced to working in advertising to support his wife, an actress whom he almost never sees because of their different schedules, and himself; he also has a mistress who is devoted to astrology and various poorly thought out bohemian ideas. Frustrated, dissatisfied with his life, he accidentally encounters someone from his past, a museum curator who decides to send him on an expedition to the South American jungle to find some primitive musical instruments. The core of the novel is the narrator's journey up a nameless river, through the jungles, to a hidden village; his somewhat unwilling return to New York, and then a failed attempt to return to the hidden village.
But that is only the outline. The real journey is one of time, time both in the sense of going back through history to earlier eras, because there are people in South America still living as people did centuries and millennia earlier, and in the musical sense. Music, myth, and a stunning, rich, almost hypnotic, use of of language dominate this book; I needed to look up a lot of words and terminology. Carpentier's depiction of the jungle is dramatic and beautiful, based partly on a trip he actually took up the Orinoco.
As the narrator goes up the river and back in time, he recovers a sense of who he really is, independent of the trappings of modern "civilization," and falls in love with a woman who is at once both primitive and modern. He even begins to compose again, and believes he wants to spend the rest of his life there. But first his former life intervenes, in the form of rescuers sent by his wife, and then later, when he returns to South America, he discovers that the people of the remote village always saw him as an outsider. The introduction to the edition I read, by Timothy Brennan, makes clear, as does Carpentier's writing itself, that Carpentier did not believe in romantic notions of the "noble savage" but rather that people must live as best they can in their own world and time period.
This book is one of those books that, when I finished reading it, I felt I should start again at the beginning, because I understood much more of what it was about at the end. I really enjoyed it.
I am also going to post this in the South American thread because much of the story takes place in an unnamed country that is presumably Venezuela.
This is a fascinating, multilayered novel that I discovered when it was recommended for the Reading Globally theme read on Journeys. The outline of the story is simple: an educated and cultured musician, originally of European parentage but living in New York shortly after the second world war, has been reduced to working in advertising to support his wife, an actress whom he almost never sees because of their different schedules, and himself; he also has a mistress who is devoted to astrology and various poorly thought out bohemian ideas. Frustrated, dissatisfied with his life, he accidentally encounters someone from his past, a museum curator who decides to send him on an expedition to the South American jungle to find some primitive musical instruments. The core of the novel is the narrator's journey up a nameless river, through the jungles, to a hidden village; his somewhat unwilling return to New York, and then a failed attempt to return to the hidden village.
But that is only the outline. The real journey is one of time, time both in the sense of going back through history to earlier eras, because there are people in South America still living as people did centuries and millennia earlier, and in the musical sense. Music, myth, and a stunning, rich, almost hypnotic, use of of language dominate this book; I needed to look up a lot of words and terminology. Carpentier's depiction of the jungle is dramatic and beautiful, based partly on a trip he actually took up the Orinoco.
As the narrator goes up the river and back in time, he recovers a sense of who he really is, independent of the trappings of modern "civilization," and falls in love with a woman who is at once both primitive and modern. He even begins to compose again, and believes he wants to spend the rest of his life there. But first his former life intervenes, in the form of rescuers sent by his wife, and then later, when he returns to South America, he discovers that the people of the remote village always saw him as an outsider. The introduction to the edition I read, by Timothy Brennan, makes clear, as does Carpentier's writing itself, that Carpentier did not believe in romantic notions of the "noble savage" but rather that people must live as best they can in their own world and time period.
This book is one of those books that, when I finished reading it, I felt I should start again at the beginning, because I understood much more of what it was about at the end. I really enjoyed it.
7wandering_star
Alma Guillermoprieto is now a very respected journalist and writer on Latin American affairs. but in the early 1970s she was a dancer in New York City, trying to scrape a living in avant-garde classical dance. Fed up with being third choice for every part, when Merce Cunningham suggests she apply for a post teaching dance in Cuba, she takes this as a (devastating) sign - he had noticed her, but not asked her to dance in his company - and heads to Cuba more out of a sense of wounded self-esteem than any commitment to the cause. In fact, while reflexively left-wing in the mode of her environment, Alma was pretty politically naive. On top of that, she could not have known just how underfunded and under-regarded the dance school would be. The clash of cultures is made obvious in her first class where she starts to explain avant-garde dance and is told, vanguardia just means anything to do with the Party. There are no mirrors in the classrooms because they are seen by the management as a sign of bourgeois vanity, rather than an essential tool for a dancer to see what their body movements look like.
From this tiny corner of the Revolution, Guillermoprieto manages to craft a very revealing portrait of its contradictions and complexities - the gaps between the rhetoric and reality, but also the passion for the revolution's principles felt even by some of those who are disillusioned with the reality. Writing with hindsight, she even manages to make her rather self-involved and hapless younger self sympathetic, mainly by being very honest about her faults but also clear about the desperation she was feeling. For example, she is constantly tormented by conflicting desires - as a dancer and artist, she wants to be unique, yet she is also desperate to fit in and therefore needs to be more 'revolutionary'.
Sample: Conversation, a way of sharing time that in New York was ruled by the imperative of maximum speed and concision, was, here in Cuba, a baroque art. Standing in line, Galo and Pablo ramblingly narrated to Carlos and Boris, in minute detail, the ride we'd just taken, adorning each stage of the journey with its little dose of exaggeration, sting, and humor, and there was still plenty of time left over for me to give a detailed account of my first week in Cubanacán.
From this tiny corner of the Revolution, Guillermoprieto manages to craft a very revealing portrait of its contradictions and complexities - the gaps between the rhetoric and reality, but also the passion for the revolution's principles felt even by some of those who are disillusioned with the reality. Writing with hindsight, she even manages to make her rather self-involved and hapless younger self sympathetic, mainly by being very honest about her faults but also clear about the desperation she was feeling. For example, she is constantly tormented by conflicting desires - as a dancer and artist, she wants to be unique, yet she is also desperate to fit in and therefore needs to be more 'revolutionary'.
Sample: Conversation, a way of sharing time that in New York was ruled by the imperative of maximum speed and concision, was, here in Cuba, a baroque art. Standing in line, Galo and Pablo ramblingly narrated to Carlos and Boris, in minute detail, the ride we'd just taken, adorning each stage of the journey with its little dose of exaggeration, sting, and humor, and there was still plenty of time left over for me to give a detailed account of my first week in Cubanacán.
8wandering_star
It Falls Into Place, a collection of 14 short stories by Phyllis Shand Allfrey.
Allfrey, a white Dominican born into a family of planters/colonial officials in 1908, sounds like she led a fascinating life, growing up in Dominica and then, as a young woman, living in the US and UK for a number of years before returning to Dominica in the 1950s to co-found the Dominica Labour Party, and serving for four years as a government minister.
This collection contains 14 stories published together here for the first time. Most of them are short, vivid episodes, many of which appear to have autobiographical elements, including a couple of childhood episodes which hint at the admiration felt by a quiet girl for the confident, attractive women who break rules. There's also a running theme about exile - sometimes, that is missing the island from a cold, bombed-out Europe, but in other stories you realise the characters are remembering a world which doesn't really exist any more - or which they can't get to, such as one story in which a Dominican woman in New York, who is able to pass as white, makes a one-time-only journey to a West Indian nightclub in Harlem.
Sample sentence: My great-uncle, the colony's medical officer, had issued a statement to the press that the prevalent epidemic was kaffir-pox, a disease that was unlikely to affect people of pure European blood. Unfortunately, the first white victim of this unpleasant ailment was the Anglican archdeacon and the second was myself, a child of ten.
Recommended for: fans of atmospheric and slightly poignant short stories.
Allfrey, a white Dominican born into a family of planters/colonial officials in 1908, sounds like she led a fascinating life, growing up in Dominica and then, as a young woman, living in the US and UK for a number of years before returning to Dominica in the 1950s to co-found the Dominica Labour Party, and serving for four years as a government minister.
This collection contains 14 stories published together here for the first time. Most of them are short, vivid episodes, many of which appear to have autobiographical elements, including a couple of childhood episodes which hint at the admiration felt by a quiet girl for the confident, attractive women who break rules. There's also a running theme about exile - sometimes, that is missing the island from a cold, bombed-out Europe, but in other stories you realise the characters are remembering a world which doesn't really exist any more - or which they can't get to, such as one story in which a Dominican woman in New York, who is able to pass as white, makes a one-time-only journey to a West Indian nightclub in Harlem.
Sample sentence: My great-uncle, the colony's medical officer, had issued a statement to the press that the prevalent epidemic was kaffir-pox, a disease that was unlikely to affect people of pure European blood. Unfortunately, the first white victim of this unpleasant ailment was the Anglican archdeacon and the second was myself, a child of ten.
Recommended for: fans of atmospheric and slightly poignant short stories.
9rocketjk
I've just started In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (Domincan Republic). I'll be back with a review upon completion!
10rocketjk
For anyone interested, my review of In the Time of the Butterflies can be found on the book's review page or on my 50-Book Challenge thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/106335
Overall I thought it was enjoyable--good but not great. 3 1/2 stars.
Overall I thought it was enjoyable--good but not great. 3 1/2 stars.
11Cait86
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 1966, Dominica
Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife, born Antoinette Cosway. Antoinette is the daughter of a rich slave owner and a vivacious mother; her father's death plunges the family into poverty, and the emancipation of slaves in Jamaica makes the Cosway's a disadvantaged, between-two-worlds group of people. Antoinette's mother remarries, and her new husband, Mr. Mason, does not understand the hostility in Jamaica. Eventually, tragedy strikes the Cosway/Mason family, and Antoinette's mother succumbs to grief.
Years later, Antoinette is married to Mr. Rochester, and the reader hears of her descent into insanity from her new husband. Antoinette's instability is called into question, and Mr. Rochester may be the one who is in fact mad. However, given his dominant position in society, Antoinette becomes Bertha Rochester, destined to spend her days in the attic of Thornfield Hall.
I generally enjoy novels that give voices to silenced characters, and Antoinette's story is a fascinating one. Rhys creates this emotional, intelligent woman, and then shows how society crushes all of her spirit. She also sheds light on racial and colonial tensions in the 1800s, as Antoinette is neither a native of Jamaica, or an English woman - she is somewhere in between. Her life is not easy, and she puts up a gallant fight against Mr. Rochester. His character is quite different from the misunderstood man in Jane Eyre, and I no longer view him merely with sympathy. He treats Antoinette terribly, believing in rumours and lies over the words of his wife. This filling-out of his character makes his eventual transformation and fate in Jane Eyre all the more poignant.
I also admire Rhys' writing style. She uses the sparse, difficult prose that I enjoy, writing in a stream-of-consciousness narrative that jumps from image to image, forcing the reader to pay attention. She succeeds in mirroring Antoinette's life and character with that of Jane Eyre - both women had horrible childhoods, both lost parents, both were educated away from home, and both fall in love with Mr. Rochester. That Jane's life turns out much happier is proof of Rochester's change in personality.
Jane was not really a character I cared to cheer for; Antoinette is someone who I wanted to succeed. The fact that I knew her story would be a sad one did not stop me from hoping that things would change, and life would get better.
My main quibble with Wide Sargasso Sea is that it is quite short, and I would have liked to keep reading - there is much of Antoinette's life that Rhys barely touched on, and I wanted a more thorough treatment of her life. Other than that, I really enjoyed this novel, and felt it added significantly to my enjoyment and appreciation of Jane Eyre.
Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife, born Antoinette Cosway. Antoinette is the daughter of a rich slave owner and a vivacious mother; her father's death plunges the family into poverty, and the emancipation of slaves in Jamaica makes the Cosway's a disadvantaged, between-two-worlds group of people. Antoinette's mother remarries, and her new husband, Mr. Mason, does not understand the hostility in Jamaica. Eventually, tragedy strikes the Cosway/Mason family, and Antoinette's mother succumbs to grief.
Years later, Antoinette is married to Mr. Rochester, and the reader hears of her descent into insanity from her new husband. Antoinette's instability is called into question, and Mr. Rochester may be the one who is in fact mad. However, given his dominant position in society, Antoinette becomes Bertha Rochester, destined to spend her days in the attic of Thornfield Hall.
I generally enjoy novels that give voices to silenced characters, and Antoinette's story is a fascinating one. Rhys creates this emotional, intelligent woman, and then shows how society crushes all of her spirit. She also sheds light on racial and colonial tensions in the 1800s, as Antoinette is neither a native of Jamaica, or an English woman - she is somewhere in between. Her life is not easy, and she puts up a gallant fight against Mr. Rochester. His character is quite different from the misunderstood man in Jane Eyre, and I no longer view him merely with sympathy. He treats Antoinette terribly, believing in rumours and lies over the words of his wife. This filling-out of his character makes his eventual transformation and fate in Jane Eyre all the more poignant.
I also admire Rhys' writing style. She uses the sparse, difficult prose that I enjoy, writing in a stream-of-consciousness narrative that jumps from image to image, forcing the reader to pay attention. She succeeds in mirroring Antoinette's life and character with that of Jane Eyre - both women had horrible childhoods, both lost parents, both were educated away from home, and both fall in love with Mr. Rochester. That Jane's life turns out much happier is proof of Rochester's change in personality.
Jane was not really a character I cared to cheer for; Antoinette is someone who I wanted to succeed. The fact that I knew her story would be a sad one did not stop me from hoping that things would change, and life would get better.
My main quibble with Wide Sargasso Sea is that it is quite short, and I would have liked to keep reading - there is much of Antoinette's life that Rhys barely touched on, and I wanted a more thorough treatment of her life. Other than that, I really enjoyed this novel, and felt it added significantly to my enjoyment and appreciation of Jane Eyre.
12LiteraryNomad
Hi all,
I have just finished Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid set in Antigua and reviewed it here: http://theliterarynomad.com/countries/23-antigua-and-a-tenth-of-the-way-through-...
Has some delectable descriptions of the local cuisine!
I have just finished Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid set in Antigua and reviewed it here: http://theliterarynomad.com/countries/23-antigua-and-a-tenth-of-the-way-through-...
Has some delectable descriptions of the local cuisine!
13berthirsch
if you like narrative poetry:
Derek Walcott's Omeros is a joy to read.
Derek Walcott's Omeros is a joy to read.
14kidzdoc
JAMAICA
Pao by Kerry Young
This novel is narrated by Pao, who fled at the age of 14 from Guangzhou, along with his mother and brother, to Jamaica in 1938, after his father was killed during the second Sino-Japanese War. Uncle Zhang, a friend of Pao's father who is the godfather of Kingston's Chinese community, provides for the family and takes Pao under his wing. Pao quickly learns the business, and acquires more power and status as he provides protection for businesses and individuals in Chinatown and becomes an influential racketeer and businessman in his own right. He marries Fay Wong, the beautiful but self-absorbed daughter of another powerful businessman, which allows him to accrue more power but leads to personal grief and tragedy. Through Pao's narrative the reader learns about multicultural Kingston, the relationship between the races and different segments of the local community, and the history of Jamaica as a British colony and an independent though not completely free nation, where the majority struggle to overcome poverty and increasing violence while a select few profit handsomely and leave the island with their ill gotten gains.
Pao is an engaging narrator, whose Jamaican patois, frequent quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and personal conflicts and successes make this an enjoyable and educational novel. However, the reader learns about the other characters through Pao's not entirely reliable eyes, and they are more inscrutable and less interesting as a result.
Th author was born in Kingston and emigrated to England in 1965 along with her Chinese father and Chinese-African mother, and her personal knowledge and experiences add flavor and integrity to this compelling debut novel.
Pao by Kerry Young
This novel is narrated by Pao, who fled at the age of 14 from Guangzhou, along with his mother and brother, to Jamaica in 1938, after his father was killed during the second Sino-Japanese War. Uncle Zhang, a friend of Pao's father who is the godfather of Kingston's Chinese community, provides for the family and takes Pao under his wing. Pao quickly learns the business, and acquires more power and status as he provides protection for businesses and individuals in Chinatown and becomes an influential racketeer and businessman in his own right. He marries Fay Wong, the beautiful but self-absorbed daughter of another powerful businessman, which allows him to accrue more power but leads to personal grief and tragedy. Through Pao's narrative the reader learns about multicultural Kingston, the relationship between the races and different segments of the local community, and the history of Jamaica as a British colony and an independent though not completely free nation, where the majority struggle to overcome poverty and increasing violence while a select few profit handsomely and leave the island with their ill gotten gains.
Pao is an engaging narrator, whose Jamaican patois, frequent quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and personal conflicts and successes make this an enjoyable and educational novel. However, the reader learns about the other characters through Pao's not entirely reliable eyes, and they are more inscrutable and less interesting as a result.
Th author was born in Kingston and emigrated to England in 1965 along with her Chinese father and Chinese-African mother, and her personal knowledge and experiences add flavor and integrity to this compelling debut novel.
15rebeccanyc
Cuba Originally published 1949, translation 1957
The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier
I read this deceptively simple novel about the Haitian revolution, the first and only time enslaved Africans liberated themselves in the Americas, and its aftermath in almost one setting. Through the eyes of Ti Noël, who is a young slave at the beginning and an old free man at the end, and with lush but spare prose, Carpentier portrays a period of great harshness and turmoil, from the period of slavery through revolution and upheaval to the reign of Henri Christophe who effectively re-enslaved the people and to his overthrow and beyond.
The reader first meets Ti Noël as he picks a new stallion for a his master, a horse bought for breeding, and then accompanies his master to a barber, staying outside and observing wax heads with wigs in the barber's windows and skinned calves' heads in a neighboring shop. What a preview of some of the themes of this novel in just the first two pages: sex and violence, and the interactions of animals with humans. Needless to say, although Ti Noël's master, a French plantation owner, respects his kill in selecting horses, he considers him a work animal, just like the horses.
Soon, Ti Noël is working with Macandal, a slave who remembers and tells others about the wonders of former African kingdoms (the Africans enslaved in Haiti come from a variety of places and a variety of tribes) and the powerful gods there. After a horrific accident in which he loses an arm, Macandal flees to the mountains where the plot is set in motion: he gathers plants, both healing and poisonous, studies with a witch, and secretly plots with slaves on plantations around the country. And so the revolution begins.
For the most part, there are few historical characters in this novel, with the exception of Henri Christophe, who later crowns himself the first king in the western hemisphere, forces Haitians with cudgels and whips and overseers to build his palaces and his supposedly impregnable citadel high in the mountain clouds, and emulates Europeans until he recognizes the powers of the African gods, transmuted into voodoo, just before his death. Nevertheless, Carpentier's research into Haiti, his imagination, and above all his gorgeous writing bring to life Ti Noël, Macandal, and the other fictional characters, the often harsh but nevertheless beautiful landscape of Haiti, the vivid reality of the the African gods, the barbaric treatment of the slaves and attitudes of their owners, the sexual sleaziness of some of the French, and the thrill and horror of the revolt. Not all is "real" in this book: Macandal, when burned at the stake, transforms himself into a variety of animal forms and lives on in the Kingdom of This World, for example. But this is so interwoven int the novel that the reader, at least this one, accepts it.
To cover a span of probably 40 years in less then 200 pages in a way that seems full and complete is remarkable enough. To do so in such a vivid, entrancing, compelling, and complex way is Carpentier's gift.
The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier
I read this deceptively simple novel about the Haitian revolution, the first and only time enslaved Africans liberated themselves in the Americas, and its aftermath in almost one setting. Through the eyes of Ti Noël, who is a young slave at the beginning and an old free man at the end, and with lush but spare prose, Carpentier portrays a period of great harshness and turmoil, from the period of slavery through revolution and upheaval to the reign of Henri Christophe who effectively re-enslaved the people and to his overthrow and beyond.
The reader first meets Ti Noël as he picks a new stallion for a his master, a horse bought for breeding, and then accompanies his master to a barber, staying outside and observing wax heads with wigs in the barber's windows and skinned calves' heads in a neighboring shop. What a preview of some of the themes of this novel in just the first two pages: sex and violence, and the interactions of animals with humans. Needless to say, although Ti Noël's master, a French plantation owner, respects his kill in selecting horses, he considers him a work animal, just like the horses.
Soon, Ti Noël is working with Macandal, a slave who remembers and tells others about the wonders of former African kingdoms (the Africans enslaved in Haiti come from a variety of places and a variety of tribes) and the powerful gods there. After a horrific accident in which he loses an arm, Macandal flees to the mountains where the plot is set in motion: he gathers plants, both healing and poisonous, studies with a witch, and secretly plots with slaves on plantations around the country. And so the revolution begins.
For the most part, there are few historical characters in this novel, with the exception of Henri Christophe, who later crowns himself the first king in the western hemisphere, forces Haitians with cudgels and whips and overseers to build his palaces and his supposedly impregnable citadel high in the mountain clouds, and emulates Europeans until he recognizes the powers of the African gods, transmuted into voodoo, just before his death. Nevertheless, Carpentier's research into Haiti, his imagination, and above all his gorgeous writing bring to life Ti Noël, Macandal, and the other fictional characters, the often harsh but nevertheless beautiful landscape of Haiti, the vivid reality of the the African gods, the barbaric treatment of the slaves and attitudes of their owners, the sexual sleaziness of some of the French, and the thrill and horror of the revolt. Not all is "real" in this book: Macandal, when burned at the stake, transforms himself into a variety of animal forms and lives on in the Kingdom of This World, for example. But this is so interwoven int the novel that the reader, at least this one, accepts it.
To cover a span of probably 40 years in less then 200 pages in a way that seems full and complete is remarkable enough. To do so in such a vivid, entrancing, compelling, and complex way is Carpentier's gift.
16cammykitty
I just finished reading In the Time of the Butterflies too. It's a bit kinder than some of the books on similar subjects. It doesn't shy away from the awfulness of Trujillo's regime. For me, it seemed to focus more on how do you keep a family together and live your own life when your country is so oppressed. I definitely enjoyed it.
17katrinasreads
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
This was a reread for me and I think I prefer it the second time around. I am rereading this and Jane Eyre as I am witing an essay about the voices in these two text this month.
The novel is a prequel to Jane Eyre which tells the history of Bertha/Antionette, a glimpse at her life in Jamaica, the life of a Creole family who live between the Black people who despise them for their wealth and the White people who despise them as they are of mixed race. The family live against the vivid backdrop of the Caribbean islands. The family madness, which is recounted in JE is shown developing and being provoked by this hatred of the Creole people and their treatment.
The text has mixed narratives between Antionette's memories, dreams and that of her husband. The voices of gossip, obeah and a stream of consciousness also haunt the text.
The text is split between Jamaica, Dominica and the UK, but the largest section is set in Dominica.
This was a reread for me and I think I prefer it the second time around. I am rereading this and Jane Eyre as I am witing an essay about the voices in these two text this month.
The novel is a prequel to Jane Eyre which tells the history of Bertha/Antionette, a glimpse at her life in Jamaica, the life of a Creole family who live between the Black people who despise them for their wealth and the White people who despise them as they are of mixed race. The family live against the vivid backdrop of the Caribbean islands. The family madness, which is recounted in JE is shown developing and being provoked by this hatred of the Creole people and their treatment.
The text has mixed narratives between Antionette's memories, dreams and that of her husband. The voices of gossip, obeah and a stream of consciousness also haunt the text.
The text is split between Jamaica, Dominica and the UK, but the largest section is set in Dominica.
18kidzdoc
Trinidad
The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
The chip-chip, formally known as Donax variabilis, is a tiny edible mollusk which populates the Eastern United States and the Caribbean. The meat from these sea creatures is considered to be a delicacy in Trinidad, the country in which Shiva Naipaul’s second novel is set. The chip-chip serves as excellent metaphor for the poor inhabitants of the island: their lives are “nasty, brutish and short”, as they struggle against both the recurrent waves that wash them from their sea bed communities, and the birds and humans that thoughtlessly consume them en masse.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers, the winner of the 1973 Whitbread Prize, is set in the Settlement, a community of poor Indians that is so insignificant that it doesn’t appear on any maps of Trinidad. The dominant character is Ashok (Egbert) Ramsaran, a ruthless and eccentric tyrant whose successful trucking company and extortionary money lending business has made him the most powerful man in the community. Egbert is a self made man who turned his back on his aimless parents and wayward brothers, and he refuses to lift a finger to help them or anyone else. He has one son, Wilbert, who he grooms to take over the business after his death. Despite his wealth, Egbert adamantly refuses to provide his son with a formal education, as he views doctors and lawyers as lying cheaters, and he regularly belittles and harangues Wilbert into submission.
His estranged best friend from childhood, Vishnu Bholai, works as the community’s local grocer, after failing in his dream to become a lawyer. Vishnu’s strikingly handsome and rather vain son Julian is a promising student who plans to gain a scholarship to England to pursue a career in medicine. Vishnu seeks reconciliation with Egbert, and fervently desires for Wilbert and Julian to become close friends, but the boys, like their fathers, have little in common.
Egbert’s long suffering and nearly invisible wife Rani dies of a heart attack, which initially provides her husband with relief and freedom. However, he soon finds himself lonely, as he has no friends and has lost his only companion. Rani’s mother Basdai, realizing that her financial link to Ramsaran has been severed upon her daughter’s death, cleverly creates a plan to keep her financial pipeline intact. She cajoles her wayward niece Sushila, who is strikingly attractive and single, to offer her services as a housemaid to Egbert, and lure him into taking her on as his mistress. Sushila has a daughter out of wedlock named Sita, a moody, bookish and determined girl who also strives to escape the influence of Basdai, her daughters and daughters-in-law, and her mother, who left her in the care of Basdai to seek favors in the larger cities of San Fernando and Port of Spain. Basdai’s plan is successful at first, but ultimately she derives no benefit from it, and later the relationship between Egbert and Sushila takes a tragic turn that has wide ramifications on the others.
The main characters are linked by their ruthless desire to escape from the others in the community in order to achieve success, like a crab that seeks to crawl out of a barrel while the others pull him back in. Love and happiness are viewed as foolish pursuits that only lead to failure. They are desperate and fatalistic, and their extreme individualism blinds them toward any thoughts of working with each other to achieve common goals.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers is a deceptively simple novel, filled with humor and pathos, compelling characters , and evocative descriptions of the Settlement and its inhabitants. Shiva Naipaul mines the same fertile soil as his far more successful older brother Vidya (V.S.) did in his novels A House for Mr. Biswas and The Mystic Masseur, but this novel stands on its own and is a unique and captivating view of a postcolonial culture that is nearly the equal of Vidya’s early novels. Sadly, Shiva died of a heart attack in 1985 at the age of 40 and did not achieve much recognition or success during his lifetime, but hopefully the recent reissuing of The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Penguin Classics (UK), along with his 1970 debut novel Fireflies, will permit a new generation of readers to experience and enjoy the work of this talented and largely forgotten writer.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
It was at this time, when the tide was out, that the beds of chip-chip were exposed and squadrons of women and children from the village would come down to the beach armed with buckets and basins to gather the harvest of shells. The women wore petticoats but the smaller children would be naked. Separate working parties fanned out along the beach. Squatting on their haunches, they labored long and assiduously, shoveling and raking over the wet sand with their hands; filling the buckets and basins with their pink and yellow shells which were the size and shape of a long fingernail. Inside each was the sought-after prize: a miniscule kernel of insipid flesh. A full bucket of shells would provide them with a mouthful. But they were not deterred by the disproportion between their labours and their gains. Rather, the very meagreness of their reward seemed to spur them on. Quarrels were frequent, their chief cause being the intrusion of an alien group into the staked-out territory of another. Some of these border conflicts could flare into violence. Tempers sparked easily in the scorching sun.
The chip-chip, formally known as Donax variabilis, is a tiny edible mollusk which populates the Eastern United States and the Caribbean. The meat from these sea creatures is considered to be a delicacy in Trinidad, the country in which Shiva Naipaul’s second novel is set. The chip-chip serves as excellent metaphor for the poor inhabitants of the island: their lives are “nasty, brutish and short”, as they struggle against both the recurrent waves that wash them from their sea bed communities, and the birds and humans that thoughtlessly consume them en masse.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers, the winner of the 1973 Whitbread Prize, is set in the Settlement, a community of poor Indians that is so insignificant that it doesn’t appear on any maps of Trinidad. The dominant character is Ashok (Egbert) Ramsaran, a ruthless and eccentric tyrant whose successful trucking company and extortionary money lending business has made him the most powerful man in the community. Egbert is a self made man who turned his back on his aimless parents and wayward brothers, and he refuses to lift a finger to help them or anyone else. He has one son, Wilbert, who he grooms to take over the business after his death. Despite his wealth, Egbert adamantly refuses to provide his son with a formal education, as he views doctors and lawyers as lying cheaters, and he regularly belittles and harangues Wilbert into submission.
His estranged best friend from childhood, Vishnu Bholai, works as the community’s local grocer, after failing in his dream to become a lawyer. Vishnu’s strikingly handsome and rather vain son Julian is a promising student who plans to gain a scholarship to England to pursue a career in medicine. Vishnu seeks reconciliation with Egbert, and fervently desires for Wilbert and Julian to become close friends, but the boys, like their fathers, have little in common.
Egbert’s long suffering and nearly invisible wife Rani dies of a heart attack, which initially provides her husband with relief and freedom. However, he soon finds himself lonely, as he has no friends and has lost his only companion. Rani’s mother Basdai, realizing that her financial link to Ramsaran has been severed upon her daughter’s death, cleverly creates a plan to keep her financial pipeline intact. She cajoles her wayward niece Sushila, who is strikingly attractive and single, to offer her services as a housemaid to Egbert, and lure him into taking her on as his mistress. Sushila has a daughter out of wedlock named Sita, a moody, bookish and determined girl who also strives to escape the influence of Basdai, her daughters and daughters-in-law, and her mother, who left her in the care of Basdai to seek favors in the larger cities of San Fernando and Port of Spain. Basdai’s plan is successful at first, but ultimately she derives no benefit from it, and later the relationship between Egbert and Sushila takes a tragic turn that has wide ramifications on the others.
The main characters are linked by their ruthless desire to escape from the others in the community in order to achieve success, like a crab that seeks to crawl out of a barrel while the others pull him back in. Love and happiness are viewed as foolish pursuits that only lead to failure. They are desperate and fatalistic, and their extreme individualism blinds them toward any thoughts of working with each other to achieve common goals.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers is a deceptively simple novel, filled with humor and pathos, compelling characters , and evocative descriptions of the Settlement and its inhabitants. Shiva Naipaul mines the same fertile soil as his far more successful older brother Vidya (V.S.) did in his novels A House for Mr. Biswas and The Mystic Masseur, but this novel stands on its own and is a unique and captivating view of a postcolonial culture that is nearly the equal of Vidya’s early novels. Sadly, Shiva died of a heart attack in 1985 at the age of 40 and did not achieve much recognition or success during his lifetime, but hopefully the recent reissuing of The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Penguin Classics (UK), along with his 1970 debut novel Fireflies, will permit a new generation of readers to experience and enjoy the work of this talented and largely forgotten writer.
19rebeccanyc
CUBA
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier
Originally published 1962; English translation 2001.
Warning: Some plot spoilers ahead!
In this fascinating novel, the historical tale of Victor Hughes (the "Caribbean Robespierre") and the fictional story of a young sister, brother, and cousin anchor a sweeping look at the natural and social history of the colonial and even precolonial Caribbean. Victor Hughes, a man of action who has been a baker, sailor, and trader, appears one night pounding on the doors of young Carlos, Sophia, and Esteban, who have been in mourning since their father and uncle died. It is the late 1780s in Havana, and the young people have kept to their home and lived quite eccentrically, exploring the arts and new ideas inside the four walls of their large house, allowing the executor to manage the family's warehouse and trading business. Hughes brings them back to the world, introduces them to Ogé, a mulatto (in the language of the day) who cures Esteban, the cousin, of his terrible asthma by removing the plants that are causing it, and also to various masonic ideas. A hurricane hits (what would a Caribbean novel be without a hurricane?), word of the French Revolution reaches Havana and foreigners begin to be distrusted, and Hughes, fleeing with Ogé, takes Sophia and Esteban with him to Haiti. Thus begin the travels and travails of Hughes and Esteban (Sophia is eventually sent back to Cuba), first to revolutionary France, then back to the Caribbean.
After a dangerous journey, avoiding an English blockade off the French coast and then fighting them when they reach the Caribbean, they arrive in Guadeloupe where Hughes has been designated the Commissioner of the convention, the revolution's representative and local man in charge. But they have not come alone: a guillotine is with them.
With all the insignia of his authority sparkling, Victor Hughes stood motionless, turned to stone, his right hand resting on the upright of the Machine, suddenly transformed into a symbolic figure. Together with Liberty, the first guillotine was arriving in the New World." p. 131
After Robespierre's own execution, Hughes falls out of favor with the powers that be, but carries on as if nothing has happened, turning the French fleet into profiteering buccaneers. He lets Esteban, who has long become disillusioned with Hughes, flee to Cayenne in Guiana, then another French colony. There, and along the jungle-covered rivers of Guiana, the detritus of the French Revolution has washed up, men who have been sent there to exile and/or imprisonment, facing certain death. But Hughes himself is a survivor, and ultimately becomes Napoleon's representative in Guadeloupe, while Esteban return to Havana, finding things quite changed.
The story, as event-filled as it is (with revolution, pirates, sexual exploits, and more), is really just a backdrop for a novel of ideas, ideas about slavery and freedom, colonialism, the role of art and the role of action, religion and masonry, integrity, and more. Victor Hughes is, as noted, a man of action, but he is also a man who loves power. When the wind from France blows with freedom, saying that all people, black and white, are free citizens, nobody is more avid than Hughes in enforcing the law, despite the horror and resistance of the colonial elite (the "big whites"). But, eight years later, when the wind blows the other way, he is just as eager to enforce the new law, sending the freed black people back into slavery. Beyond the obvious, the novel also explores people's freedom of action as it depicts Esteban's and Sophia's reactions to Hughes and his behavior. In some ways, this is Esteban's coming-of-age story..
Lying beneath all of this is the Caribbean itself -- the sea, the islands, the mainland, and the people. The novel sweeps from Cuba and Haiti at the northern end of the Sea to Guiana in the south, with much action on boats traveling through it. Carpentier's writing is gorgeous as he describes the water and the sea shores, as for example when Esteban explores rocks along the shoreline:
There were the pulpy leaves of the madrepore; the speckled, pitcher-shaped apples of the cowries; the slender cathedral architecture of certain snails, which, with their winged and needle-pointed shells, could only be seen in terms of the Gothic; the beaded whorls of the sea periwinkles, the Pythagorean convolution of the spindle-shell, the simulation with which many shells concealed in their depths the splendor of an ornate palace, under the humble plaster of their exterior. At his approach, the sea urchin proffered its black spines, the timid oyster closed, the starfish shrank, and the sponges, attached to some submerged rock, swayed among rippling reflections. p. 175
He also beautifully depicts the northern journey of the Caribs and their encounter with European ships. Much is told in almost mythical language, often involving unfamiliar (to me) masonic terminology. This is a book written on many levels, and I have only scratched the surface. Carpentier has achieved the remarkable feat of intertwining compelling story-telling with psychological insight, historical and social perspective, and beautiful writing.
As a final note, the translation I read (which I believe to be the only English translation) is a translation from the French translation of the Spanish original. I have no reason the think the translation is a bad one, but I have no idea why the publisher (the University of Minnesota Press) couldn't have obtained a translation from the Spanish as easily as one from the French. Additionally, I think a more literal translation of the Spanish title, (El siglo de las luces) as something like "The Century of Light" or (as Timothy Brennan suggests in his introduction) "The Age of Enlightenment" would have been more meaningful than "Explosion in a Cathedral" (which is the title of a painting that hangs in the Havana house).
Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier
Originally published 1962; English translation 2001.
Warning: Some plot spoilers ahead!
In this fascinating novel, the historical tale of Victor Hughes (the "Caribbean Robespierre") and the fictional story of a young sister, brother, and cousin anchor a sweeping look at the natural and social history of the colonial and even precolonial Caribbean. Victor Hughes, a man of action who has been a baker, sailor, and trader, appears one night pounding on the doors of young Carlos, Sophia, and Esteban, who have been in mourning since their father and uncle died. It is the late 1780s in Havana, and the young people have kept to their home and lived quite eccentrically, exploring the arts and new ideas inside the four walls of their large house, allowing the executor to manage the family's warehouse and trading business. Hughes brings them back to the world, introduces them to Ogé, a mulatto (in the language of the day) who cures Esteban, the cousin, of his terrible asthma by removing the plants that are causing it, and also to various masonic ideas. A hurricane hits (what would a Caribbean novel be without a hurricane?), word of the French Revolution reaches Havana and foreigners begin to be distrusted, and Hughes, fleeing with Ogé, takes Sophia and Esteban with him to Haiti. Thus begin the travels and travails of Hughes and Esteban (Sophia is eventually sent back to Cuba), first to revolutionary France, then back to the Caribbean.
After a dangerous journey, avoiding an English blockade off the French coast and then fighting them when they reach the Caribbean, they arrive in Guadeloupe where Hughes has been designated the Commissioner of the convention, the revolution's representative and local man in charge. But they have not come alone: a guillotine is with them.
With all the insignia of his authority sparkling, Victor Hughes stood motionless, turned to stone, his right hand resting on the upright of the Machine, suddenly transformed into a symbolic figure. Together with Liberty, the first guillotine was arriving in the New World." p. 131
After Robespierre's own execution, Hughes falls out of favor with the powers that be, but carries on as if nothing has happened, turning the French fleet into profiteering buccaneers. He lets Esteban, who has long become disillusioned with Hughes, flee to Cayenne in Guiana, then another French colony. There, and along the jungle-covered rivers of Guiana, the detritus of the French Revolution has washed up, men who have been sent there to exile and/or imprisonment, facing certain death. But Hughes himself is a survivor, and ultimately becomes Napoleon's representative in Guadeloupe, while Esteban return to Havana, finding things quite changed.
The story, as event-filled as it is (with revolution, pirates, sexual exploits, and more), is really just a backdrop for a novel of ideas, ideas about slavery and freedom, colonialism, the role of art and the role of action, religion and masonry, integrity, and more. Victor Hughes is, as noted, a man of action, but he is also a man who loves power. When the wind from France blows with freedom, saying that all people, black and white, are free citizens, nobody is more avid than Hughes in enforcing the law, despite the horror and resistance of the colonial elite (the "big whites"). But, eight years later, when the wind blows the other way, he is just as eager to enforce the new law, sending the freed black people back into slavery. Beyond the obvious, the novel also explores people's freedom of action as it depicts Esteban's and Sophia's reactions to Hughes and his behavior. In some ways, this is Esteban's coming-of-age story..
Lying beneath all of this is the Caribbean itself -- the sea, the islands, the mainland, and the people. The novel sweeps from Cuba and Haiti at the northern end of the Sea to Guiana in the south, with much action on boats traveling through it. Carpentier's writing is gorgeous as he describes the water and the sea shores, as for example when Esteban explores rocks along the shoreline:
There were the pulpy leaves of the madrepore; the speckled, pitcher-shaped apples of the cowries; the slender cathedral architecture of certain snails, which, with their winged and needle-pointed shells, could only be seen in terms of the Gothic; the beaded whorls of the sea periwinkles, the Pythagorean convolution of the spindle-shell, the simulation with which many shells concealed in their depths the splendor of an ornate palace, under the humble plaster of their exterior. At his approach, the sea urchin proffered its black spines, the timid oyster closed, the starfish shrank, and the sponges, attached to some submerged rock, swayed among rippling reflections. p. 175
He also beautifully depicts the northern journey of the Caribs and their encounter with European ships. Much is told in almost mythical language, often involving unfamiliar (to me) masonic terminology. This is a book written on many levels, and I have only scratched the surface. Carpentier has achieved the remarkable feat of intertwining compelling story-telling with psychological insight, historical and social perspective, and beautiful writing.
As a final note, the translation I read (which I believe to be the only English translation) is a translation from the French translation of the Spanish original. I have no reason the think the translation is a bad one, but I have no idea why the publisher (the University of Minnesota Press) couldn't have obtained a translation from the Spanish as easily as one from the French. Additionally, I think a more literal translation of the Spanish title, (El siglo de las luces) as something like "The Century of Light" or (as Timothy Brennan suggests in his introduction) "The Age of Enlightenment" would have been more meaningful than "Explosion in a Cathedral" (which is the title of a painting that hangs in the Havana house).
20kidzdoc
HAITI/DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Massacre River by René Philoctète
"What isn't possible when power turns stupid?"
We people from over here and over there—we are, in the end, the people of a single land.
The Caribbean island of Hispaniola is shared by two countries, Haiti to the west and the much larger Dominican Republic to the east. The two nations are separated by a latitudinal border, part of which is formed by the Dajabon River, which is also known as Massacre River. Haiti is populated primarily by its African descendants, and it is the poorest country in the Caribbean and the Americas; the Dominican Republic contains a much richer mixture of people from Spain and other European countries, East and West Asia, and other Caribbean countries, including Haiti, and it has the second largest economy in the Caribbean.
Both countries have longstanding histories of colonization and subjugation by Western powers, violent civil wars, oppressive dictators, and bloody border battles. Because of the long porous border and the marked difference in the economies and standards of living of the two nations, Haitians have for years crossed over to the Dominican Republic to find work and better lives for themselves, and particularly in the border towns they often established friendship and not infrequently found love with their Dominican neighbors.
In 1930 the notorious dictator General Rafael Trujillo was "elected" president of the Dominican Republic, after a violent campaign in which many of his opponents were eliminated. Trujillo held great admiration for Adolf Hitler, particularly his views on racial purity, and later in that decade he declared the Dominican Republic was a country of white people, in stark contrast to its black neighbors to the west but also in opposition to his country's mixed race majority. The blancos de la tierra (whites of the land) were revered and rewarded, whereas darker skinned Dominicans were reviled and punished.
As part of this effort, Trujillo embarked on a campaign to rid the country of as many Haitians as possible, supposedly to prevent them from robbing their Dominican neighbors, but in actuality to achieve greater racial purity. He focused this effort on the border between the two nations, especially the region adjacent to Massacre River, and in a six day campaign of terror in October 1937 tens of thousands of Haitians were brutally murdered by soldiers in the Dominican Army. This act of genocide became known as the Parsley Massacre, as Dominican soldiers would show dark skinned residents of the border towns a sprig of parsley, and ask them to say the word for it in Spanish, perejil. The Creole speaking Haitians often could not pronounce the word properly, and those who failed to do so were beheaded with machetes on the spot, or taken to fields where they were executed by firing squads.
Massacre River is a novel about the Parsley Massacre, which is centered around a young couple who are deeply in love with each other, the Dominican Pedro Brito and his beautiful Haitian wife Adèle, who live close to the river. A premonition of the massacre comes in the form of an ominous large raptor, which swoops over and shadows the town and its residents. As the townspeople become aware of Trujillo's plans, Adèle becomes fearful for her own safety. Pedro attempts to comfort her and allieviate her concerns, and leaves her at home to go to work on the fateful day that soldiers enter the town. As word comes in on the radio of the massacre that is taking place, with the death toll in each town enthusiastically announced by broadcasters, Pedro rushes to get back home to find out what has happened to Adèle. When he returns he and other workers are met with a surreal and horrific scene, as the heads of the massacre's victims bounce around the bloodied town, giving voice to the day's events and demanding justice for the atrocities inflicted upon them by singing machetes swung by men loyal to Trujillo, "the Lord of demented death".
Massacre River is a superb story, which uses magical realism to both blunt the gruesome details and highlight the profound effects of the Parsley Massacre on Haitians and their Dominican neighbors. It is also a touching love story and, oddly enough, it contains an element of humor, which would seem to be inappropriate in the face of genocide but actually permits a view of the humanity of the Haitian and Dominican people and their respect and love for each other, which is unaffected by this tragedy. René Philoctète was one of the most revered authors in Haiti, but to date this is the only novel of his that has been translated into English, and he is not well known outside of the Caribbean. I enjoyed this unique and entertaining novel, and I hope that more of his work will be available in the near future.
Massacre River by René Philoctète
"What isn't possible when power turns stupid?"
We people from over here and over there—we are, in the end, the people of a single land.
The Caribbean island of Hispaniola is shared by two countries, Haiti to the west and the much larger Dominican Republic to the east. The two nations are separated by a latitudinal border, part of which is formed by the Dajabon River, which is also known as Massacre River. Haiti is populated primarily by its African descendants, and it is the poorest country in the Caribbean and the Americas; the Dominican Republic contains a much richer mixture of people from Spain and other European countries, East and West Asia, and other Caribbean countries, including Haiti, and it has the second largest economy in the Caribbean.
Both countries have longstanding histories of colonization and subjugation by Western powers, violent civil wars, oppressive dictators, and bloody border battles. Because of the long porous border and the marked difference in the economies and standards of living of the two nations, Haitians have for years crossed over to the Dominican Republic to find work and better lives for themselves, and particularly in the border towns they often established friendship and not infrequently found love with their Dominican neighbors.
In 1930 the notorious dictator General Rafael Trujillo was "elected" president of the Dominican Republic, after a violent campaign in which many of his opponents were eliminated. Trujillo held great admiration for Adolf Hitler, particularly his views on racial purity, and later in that decade he declared the Dominican Republic was a country of white people, in stark contrast to its black neighbors to the west but also in opposition to his country's mixed race majority. The blancos de la tierra (whites of the land) were revered and rewarded, whereas darker skinned Dominicans were reviled and punished.
As part of this effort, Trujillo embarked on a campaign to rid the country of as many Haitians as possible, supposedly to prevent them from robbing their Dominican neighbors, but in actuality to achieve greater racial purity. He focused this effort on the border between the two nations, especially the region adjacent to Massacre River, and in a six day campaign of terror in October 1937 tens of thousands of Haitians were brutally murdered by soldiers in the Dominican Army. This act of genocide became known as the Parsley Massacre, as Dominican soldiers would show dark skinned residents of the border towns a sprig of parsley, and ask them to say the word for it in Spanish, perejil. The Creole speaking Haitians often could not pronounce the word properly, and those who failed to do so were beheaded with machetes on the spot, or taken to fields where they were executed by firing squads.
Massacre River is a novel about the Parsley Massacre, which is centered around a young couple who are deeply in love with each other, the Dominican Pedro Brito and his beautiful Haitian wife Adèle, who live close to the river. A premonition of the massacre comes in the form of an ominous large raptor, which swoops over and shadows the town and its residents. As the townspeople become aware of Trujillo's plans, Adèle becomes fearful for her own safety. Pedro attempts to comfort her and allieviate her concerns, and leaves her at home to go to work on the fateful day that soldiers enter the town. As word comes in on the radio of the massacre that is taking place, with the death toll in each town enthusiastically announced by broadcasters, Pedro rushes to get back home to find out what has happened to Adèle. When he returns he and other workers are met with a surreal and horrific scene, as the heads of the massacre's victims bounce around the bloodied town, giving voice to the day's events and demanding justice for the atrocities inflicted upon them by singing machetes swung by men loyal to Trujillo, "the Lord of demented death".
Massacre River is a superb story, which uses magical realism to both blunt the gruesome details and highlight the profound effects of the Parsley Massacre on Haitians and their Dominican neighbors. It is also a touching love story and, oddly enough, it contains an element of humor, which would seem to be inappropriate in the face of genocide but actually permits a view of the humanity of the Haitian and Dominican people and their respect and love for each other, which is unaffected by this tragedy. René Philoctète was one of the most revered authors in Haiti, but to date this is the only novel of his that has been translated into English, and he is not well known outside of the Caribbean. I enjoyed this unique and entertaining novel, and I hope that more of his work will be available in the near future.
21rebeccanyc
GUADELOUPE
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
Originally published 1972; English translation 1974; reissued 2013.
This heartbreakingly beautiful novel is at once a celebration of human survival and joy, a meditation on the evil and tragedy and sorrow that are also an integral part of life, a vivid description of a time, place, and way of life, and a penetrating look at what it means to be black and a woman in post-slavery but still colonial Guadeloupe. In prose that can be poetic, mythical, and down-to-earth, Simone Schwarz-Bart tells the tale of four generations of women in the Lougandor family. The tale is narrated by the youngest, Télumée, who focuses on her life and that of Toussine, the grandmother who raised her and who is also know as Queen Without a Name. By portraying Télumée's life from her early childhood through young womanhood, love found and love betrayed and lost, foster motherhood, and into old age, Schwarz-Bart also portrays the life of the communities in which she lives.
The women in this book experience a world of contrast: the bliss of love and the heartache when it is no more, the blessing of children and the unbearable pain of their loss, the pleasures of tending their crops and gardens and taking care of their homes and the viciousness of working on the sugar plantations and their factories and in the homes of white colonialists, the richness of the natural world and the poverty of their homes and lives. The beauty and lushness of the landscape, its sounds and smells, are ever-present, mythical tales are interwoven with the story of the Lougandor women, some women are witches and healers, and death is always waiting. Queen Without a Name and her friend, the witch Ma Cia, are fascinating and deep and wise women. This is an intense book, and I had to read it a little bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed.
Early in the book, soon after Télumée meets her first love, Elie, Queen Without a Name tells her:
" 'My little ember," she'd whisper, 'if you ever get on a horse, keep good hold of the reins so that it's not the horse that rides you.' And as I clung to her, breathing in her nutmeg smell. Queen Without a Name would sigh, caress me, and go on. 'Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn't ride you; you must ride it.' ", pp. 72-73
This metaphor is carried throughout the book, as is another about needing the wind to lift the sails of one's boat and move forward in life no matter how deep and paralyzing the sorrow and the pain. "And so, throughout all her last days, Grandmother was whistling up a wind for me, to fill my sails so I could resume my voyage." In fact, the original tile of the book is "Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle," or "Rain and Wind on Télumée Miracle" ("Miracle" is a nickname she gets late in life).
Schwarz-Bart's writing is so beautiful and so wise that I marked many passages as I read. Here are two.
The Queen to Télumée:
" 'My child, you will feel just like one deceased, your flesh will be dead flesh and you will no longer feel the knife thrusts. And then you will be born again, for life were not good, in spite of everything, the earth would be uninhabited. It must be that something remains after even the greatest sorrows, for men do not want to die before their time. As for you, little coconut flower, don't you bother your head about all that. Your job is to shine now, so shine. And when the day comes that misfortune says to you, Here I am --- then at least you'll have shone.' " pp. 138-139
Télumée reflecting in old age.
"It's a long time now since I left off my battle robe, and a long time since I've been able to hear the battle's din. I am too old, much too old for all that, and the only pleasure left me on earth is to smoke, to smoke my old pipe here in my doorway, curled up on my little stool, in the sea breeze that caresses my old carcass like soothing balm. Sun risen, sun set, I am always there on my little stool, far away, eyes gazing into space, seeking my time through the smoke of my pipe, seeing again all the downpours that have drenched me and the winds that have buffeted me. But rains and winds are nothing if first one star rises for you in the sky, then another, then another as happened to me, who very nearly carried off all the happiness in the world. And even if the stars set, they have shone, and their light still twinkles there where it has come to rest: in your second heart." p. 238
As a side note, one aspect of the language of this book took some getting used to: Schwarz-Bart's characters refer to themselves, proudly, as Negresses and Negroes. The edition I read was just reissued by NYRB, but the translation is the original 1974 one (based on the 1972 French original), and my assumption is that these are literal translations of what Schwarz-Bart wrote, and of how her characters really would have talked, although they sound odd to modern ears.
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart
Originally published 1972; English translation 1974; reissued 2013.
This heartbreakingly beautiful novel is at once a celebration of human survival and joy, a meditation on the evil and tragedy and sorrow that are also an integral part of life, a vivid description of a time, place, and way of life, and a penetrating look at what it means to be black and a woman in post-slavery but still colonial Guadeloupe. In prose that can be poetic, mythical, and down-to-earth, Simone Schwarz-Bart tells the tale of four generations of women in the Lougandor family. The tale is narrated by the youngest, Télumée, who focuses on her life and that of Toussine, the grandmother who raised her and who is also know as Queen Without a Name. By portraying Télumée's life from her early childhood through young womanhood, love found and love betrayed and lost, foster motherhood, and into old age, Schwarz-Bart also portrays the life of the communities in which she lives.
The women in this book experience a world of contrast: the bliss of love and the heartache when it is no more, the blessing of children and the unbearable pain of their loss, the pleasures of tending their crops and gardens and taking care of their homes and the viciousness of working on the sugar plantations and their factories and in the homes of white colonialists, the richness of the natural world and the poverty of their homes and lives. The beauty and lushness of the landscape, its sounds and smells, are ever-present, mythical tales are interwoven with the story of the Lougandor women, some women are witches and healers, and death is always waiting. Queen Without a Name and her friend, the witch Ma Cia, are fascinating and deep and wise women. This is an intense book, and I had to read it a little bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed.
Early in the book, soon after Télumée meets her first love, Elie, Queen Without a Name tells her:
" 'My little ember," she'd whisper, 'if you ever get on a horse, keep good hold of the reins so that it's not the horse that rides you.' And as I clung to her, breathing in her nutmeg smell. Queen Without a Name would sigh, caress me, and go on. 'Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn't ride you; you must ride it.' ", pp. 72-73
This metaphor is carried throughout the book, as is another about needing the wind to lift the sails of one's boat and move forward in life no matter how deep and paralyzing the sorrow and the pain. "And so, throughout all her last days, Grandmother was whistling up a wind for me, to fill my sails so I could resume my voyage." In fact, the original tile of the book is "Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle," or "Rain and Wind on Télumée Miracle" ("Miracle" is a nickname she gets late in life).
Schwarz-Bart's writing is so beautiful and so wise that I marked many passages as I read. Here are two.
The Queen to Télumée:
" 'My child, you will feel just like one deceased, your flesh will be dead flesh and you will no longer feel the knife thrusts. And then you will be born again, for life were not good, in spite of everything, the earth would be uninhabited. It must be that something remains after even the greatest sorrows, for men do not want to die before their time. As for you, little coconut flower, don't you bother your head about all that. Your job is to shine now, so shine. And when the day comes that misfortune says to you, Here I am --- then at least you'll have shone.' " pp. 138-139
Télumée reflecting in old age.
"It's a long time now since I left off my battle robe, and a long time since I've been able to hear the battle's din. I am too old, much too old for all that, and the only pleasure left me on earth is to smoke, to smoke my old pipe here in my doorway, curled up on my little stool, in the sea breeze that caresses my old carcass like soothing balm. Sun risen, sun set, I am always there on my little stool, far away, eyes gazing into space, seeking my time through the smoke of my pipe, seeing again all the downpours that have drenched me and the winds that have buffeted me. But rains and winds are nothing if first one star rises for you in the sky, then another, then another as happened to me, who very nearly carried off all the happiness in the world. And even if the stars set, they have shone, and their light still twinkles there where it has come to rest: in your second heart." p. 238
As a side note, one aspect of the language of this book took some getting used to: Schwarz-Bart's characters refer to themselves, proudly, as Negresses and Negroes. The edition I read was just reissued by NYRB, but the translation is the original 1974 one (based on the 1972 French original), and my assumption is that these are literal translations of what Schwarz-Bart wrote, and of how her characters really would have talked, although they sound odd to modern ears.
22rebeccanyc
US VIRGIN ISLANDS
Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique
Published 2014
This book cast a spell on me, and I found it difficult to put down. Some years ago, I read How To Escape from a Leper Colony, a collection of stories by Yanique, who is from the US Virgin Islands, and although I did enjoy it, it is nice to see how she has grown as a writer since then.
Principally, this is the story of two troubled sisters, as they grow from infancy into girlhood, young womanhood, and ultimately old age, and the men, children, and magic (both good and bad) in their lives. However, the novel also encompasses what is happening in the Virgin Islands and the US starting from the "transfer" of St. Thomas, St. John, and some other islands from Danish to US rule, going through World War II when US VI men were drafted as they were now US citizens and discovered racism in the US south, and into the Civil Rights movement and the turmoil of the sixties (finally brought to the residents of St. Thomas through the new medium of television) and a parallel movement on the islands to resist new efforts by "continental" white people to privatize the beaches. For the most part, the more political parts of this novel are handled deftly and well integrated into the plot and character development.
Yanique tells the stories of the sisters, Eeona and Anette, from multiple points of view, including their own (Eeona tells her story in schoolbook "proper" English, while Anette speaks with the voice of the islanders). In some sections, written in the third person, occasionally the narrator refers to herself as "we old wives," almost a Greek chorus effect. Eeona and Anette are the daughters of Owen Arthur Bradshaw, a ship captain and wealthy man, before Prohibition interferes with the rum trade, and his wife Antoinette, a powerhouse in her own right. To try to escape from his improper love for his own daughter, Eeona, Owen starts a relationship with an "outside" woman, the "witch" Rebekah, and fathers a son, Jacob Esau, with her who is born at almost the same time as his and Antoinette's daughter Anette. The relationship between these two children will reverberate through the novel. And Rebekah is not the only "witch," as mythical tales of strange beings and strange powers course through the novel, particularly for those who, like Antoinette and her descendents, come from the coral reef island of Anegada, named "the drowned land" because it is so flat but also because it is the site of so many shipwrecks. The sea, the beaches, the islands themselves also play a role in this book.
At the beginning of the book, Yanique describes the complex essence of the islanders.
"The people who had come together to make Captain Owen Arthur Bradshaw could be traced back to West Africans forced to the islands as slaves and West Africans who came over free to offer their services as goldsmiths. Back to European men who were kicked out of Europe as criminals and to European women of aristocratic blood who sailed to the islands for adventure. Back to Asians who came as servants and planned to return to their Indies, and to Asians who only wanted to see if there was a western side to their Indies. And to Caribs who sat quietly making baskets in the countryside, plotting a way to kill all the rest and take back what their God had granted them for a millennium." p. 4
These are the "we," but they are always in relationship with what is going on in the world, especially in the United States, the "continent".
A lot happens in this book, including a hurricane (does every Caribbean novel have to have a hurricane?) and, while I was totally caught up it, it is not perfect. The loose ends were wrapped up a little too comfortably for me towards the end, and some of the supernatural events didn't quite work for me, although I could accept most of them within the realm of the characters' understanding of events. I also found it irritating that FEMA (which was created in 1978) was described as providing relief for a hurricane that happened in the 60s, and there were several inexcusable typos, including "gate" for "gait" and "site" for "sight". Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book and will be excited to see what Yanique writes next.
Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique
Published 2014
This book cast a spell on me, and I found it difficult to put down. Some years ago, I read How To Escape from a Leper Colony, a collection of stories by Yanique, who is from the US Virgin Islands, and although I did enjoy it, it is nice to see how she has grown as a writer since then.
Principally, this is the story of two troubled sisters, as they grow from infancy into girlhood, young womanhood, and ultimately old age, and the men, children, and magic (both good and bad) in their lives. However, the novel also encompasses what is happening in the Virgin Islands and the US starting from the "transfer" of St. Thomas, St. John, and some other islands from Danish to US rule, going through World War II when US VI men were drafted as they were now US citizens and discovered racism in the US south, and into the Civil Rights movement and the turmoil of the sixties (finally brought to the residents of St. Thomas through the new medium of television) and a parallel movement on the islands to resist new efforts by "continental" white people to privatize the beaches. For the most part, the more political parts of this novel are handled deftly and well integrated into the plot and character development.
Yanique tells the stories of the sisters, Eeona and Anette, from multiple points of view, including their own (Eeona tells her story in schoolbook "proper" English, while Anette speaks with the voice of the islanders). In some sections, written in the third person, occasionally the narrator refers to herself as "we old wives," almost a Greek chorus effect. Eeona and Anette are the daughters of Owen Arthur Bradshaw, a ship captain and wealthy man, before Prohibition interferes with the rum trade, and his wife Antoinette, a powerhouse in her own right. To try to escape from his improper love for his own daughter, Eeona, Owen starts a relationship with an "outside" woman, the "witch" Rebekah, and fathers a son, Jacob Esau, with her who is born at almost the same time as his and Antoinette's daughter Anette. The relationship between these two children will reverberate through the novel. And Rebekah is not the only "witch," as mythical tales of strange beings and strange powers course through the novel, particularly for those who, like Antoinette and her descendents, come from the coral reef island of Anegada, named "the drowned land" because it is so flat but also because it is the site of so many shipwrecks. The sea, the beaches, the islands themselves also play a role in this book.
At the beginning of the book, Yanique describes the complex essence of the islanders.
"The people who had come together to make Captain Owen Arthur Bradshaw could be traced back to West Africans forced to the islands as slaves and West Africans who came over free to offer their services as goldsmiths. Back to European men who were kicked out of Europe as criminals and to European women of aristocratic blood who sailed to the islands for adventure. Back to Asians who came as servants and planned to return to their Indies, and to Asians who only wanted to see if there was a western side to their Indies. And to Caribs who sat quietly making baskets in the countryside, plotting a way to kill all the rest and take back what their God had granted them for a millennium." p. 4
These are the "we," but they are always in relationship with what is going on in the world, especially in the United States, the "continent".
A lot happens in this book, including a hurricane (does every Caribbean novel have to have a hurricane?) and, while I was totally caught up it, it is not perfect. The loose ends were wrapped up a little too comfortably for me towards the end, and some of the supernatural events didn't quite work for me, although I could accept most of them within the realm of the characters' understanding of events. I also found it irritating that FEMA (which was created in 1978) was described as providing relief for a hurricane that happened in the 60s, and there were several inexcusable typos, including "gate" for "gait" and "site" for "sight". Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book and will be excited to see what Yanique writes next.
23kidzdoc
JAMAICA
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
This novel is centered around the attempted assassination of the legendary Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley (referred to as "The Singer" throughout the book) at his home in Kingston on December 3, 1976, two days before he was set to perform in the "Smile Jamaica" concert organized by Prime Minister and People's National Party (PNP) leader Michael Manley. The free concert was aimed at cooling tensions between the PNP and its main rival, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), which had been building throughout the year in advance of the contentious election that was held in mid-December. Each party supported gangs in Kingston, which controlled neighborhoods and districts within the capital and used whatever means were necessary to get residents to vote for their candidate, and as JLP gang leaders fought to gain power, PNP leaders fought just as hard to maintain what they had, in a country beset by poverty, corruption and violence. Along with these two factions was a far more lawless segment of brazen young men, who operated outside of the normally accepted boundaries and brutally murdered anyone who crossed their path.
The initial scene shifts from 1976 to 1979 Kingston, to 1985 NYC, when the city was in the middle of a vicious crack epidemic with violent gangs from Jamaica and Colombia who fought viciously to control the booming drug trade, and to its fateful end in 1991.
The novel consists of narratives from numerous colorful characters in the book, including the gang leaders Papa-Lo, Weeper, Josey Wales and Bam-Bam; Alex Pierce, a writer for Rolling Stone who manages to get inside information about the attempt on the Singer's life, but finds his own life in danger as a result; "Doctor Love", a Colombian CIA consultant who is also involved in the drug trade centered in Medellín; and Nina Burgess, a young shape shifting woman who appears throughout the book, in different roles and with different names. The author did a masterful job in maintaining this reader's interest throughout its nearly 700 pages, as the violence and suspense increase during the book's last chapter to its sudden, shocking ending.
A Brief History of Seven Killings is a literary tour de force that tells the story of Jamaican politics and culture in the last quarter of the 20th century, which is filled with interesting characters and details. Reading it was a wild but fascinating ride, and it certainly deserves its spot on this year's Booker Prize longlist, and I think it would be a good candidate for the shortlist as well.
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
This novel is centered around the attempted assassination of the legendary Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley (referred to as "The Singer" throughout the book) at his home in Kingston on December 3, 1976, two days before he was set to perform in the "Smile Jamaica" concert organized by Prime Minister and People's National Party (PNP) leader Michael Manley. The free concert was aimed at cooling tensions between the PNP and its main rival, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), which had been building throughout the year in advance of the contentious election that was held in mid-December. Each party supported gangs in Kingston, which controlled neighborhoods and districts within the capital and used whatever means were necessary to get residents to vote for their candidate, and as JLP gang leaders fought to gain power, PNP leaders fought just as hard to maintain what they had, in a country beset by poverty, corruption and violence. Along with these two factions was a far more lawless segment of brazen young men, who operated outside of the normally accepted boundaries and brutally murdered anyone who crossed their path.
The initial scene shifts from 1976 to 1979 Kingston, to 1985 NYC, when the city was in the middle of a vicious crack epidemic with violent gangs from Jamaica and Colombia who fought viciously to control the booming drug trade, and to its fateful end in 1991.
The novel consists of narratives from numerous colorful characters in the book, including the gang leaders Papa-Lo, Weeper, Josey Wales and Bam-Bam; Alex Pierce, a writer for Rolling Stone who manages to get inside information about the attempt on the Singer's life, but finds his own life in danger as a result; "Doctor Love", a Colombian CIA consultant who is also involved in the drug trade centered in Medellín; and Nina Burgess, a young shape shifting woman who appears throughout the book, in different roles and with different names. The author did a masterful job in maintaining this reader's interest throughout its nearly 700 pages, as the violence and suspense increase during the book's last chapter to its sudden, shocking ending.
A Brief History of Seven Killings is a literary tour de force that tells the story of Jamaican politics and culture in the last quarter of the 20th century, which is filled with interesting characters and details. Reading it was a wild but fascinating ride, and it certainly deserves its spot on this year's Booker Prize longlist, and I think it would be a good candidate for the shortlist as well.
24margd
>22 rebeccanyc: Land of Love and Drowning
I read this more than a year after winning a quick visit to the US Virgin Islands. With Yanique's description of tourists, it reinforced my impression of not really knowing the people, in spite of a day tour and staying at small St. Thomas hotel, not popping in off a cruise ship. A very beautiful place.
I read this more than a year after winning a quick visit to the US Virgin Islands. With Yanique's description of tourists, it reinforced my impression of not really knowing the people, in spite of a day tour and staying at small St. Thomas hotel, not popping in off a cruise ship. A very beautiful place.
25rebeccanyc
CUBA
Originally published 1979; English translation 1990.
The Harp and the Shadow by Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier has been one of my favorite authors since I read The Lost Steps, and this book, essentially about Christopher Columbus, does not disappoint.
The story opens in the late 19th century, with pomp and circumstance, as the pope of the era, Pius IX, is escorted to his personal chambers where he will consider signing a document that will set in motion an investigation into whether Columbus should be made a saint. (This is tricky, because usually people are beatified soon after they die, so people who knew them can testify about their miracles.) As he reflects on this, he recalls his time in Peru as a young priest (he was the first pope to have spent any time in America) and by implication the political machinations that he engaged in to set him on the road to advancement within the church.
The majority of the book is set some 400 years earlier, as Columbus lies on his deathbed. Awaiting the confessor, he recalls his life, and vows to tell all to the confessor. The reader sees through Columbus's eyes as he learns of a land to the west (which he still thinks is the Indies) and builds up a spiel to try to convince ruler after ruler to finance ships for him to explore further south than the Vikings did. Although Ferdinand and Isabella first turn him down, after they conquer Granada and drive the Muslims out of Spain, they decide to sponsor him. It is Isabella who really is in charge, and Carpentier makes Columbus and Isabella lovers. (He also vaguely impleis that Columbus has "mixed" origins, i.e., Jewish. Various "new Christians" make appearances in the novel.) Once on the seas and in America, Columbus turns out to be obsessed by gold (or GOLD), and treats the people he encounters (who he calls cannibals, although he never sees them) cruelly and shamefully. The novel presents his dramatic return to the court in Spain with "Indians" and very little gold, but he is still received very grandly. Despite his lack of loot, the rulers send Columbus on another voyage (because basically they don't want him to go to other countries and have them sponsor him), and in this one he develops the idea of enslaving the "Indians" since there isn't gold, an idea which on practical and religious grounds doesn't fly. The books skims over his two other trips. But at the end of reviewing his life, Columbus hears the step of the confessor on the stair and decides not to tell him much.
Then the scene shifts and Columbus is a spirit, the Invisible One, at the meeting reviewing the proposal to make him a saint. This is an hilarious section, as the meeting participants include the Devil's Advocate and spirits of famous people like Victor Hugo (most of the others I had to look up on Wikipedia), with comments by the Invisible One on his chances; ultimately, as we know, the committee voted against making Columbus a saint. The novel closes with Columbus encountering another Genoan, and another famous sailor, Andrea Doria.
What holds this book together is the power of Carpentier's writing. With his dazzling prose, he creates worlds.
Originally published 1979; English translation 1990.
The Harp and the Shadow by Alejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier has been one of my favorite authors since I read The Lost Steps, and this book, essentially about Christopher Columbus, does not disappoint.
The story opens in the late 19th century, with pomp and circumstance, as the pope of the era, Pius IX, is escorted to his personal chambers where he will consider signing a document that will set in motion an investigation into whether Columbus should be made a saint. (This is tricky, because usually people are beatified soon after they die, so people who knew them can testify about their miracles.) As he reflects on this, he recalls his time in Peru as a young priest (he was the first pope to have spent any time in America) and by implication the political machinations that he engaged in to set him on the road to advancement within the church.
The majority of the book is set some 400 years earlier, as Columbus lies on his deathbed. Awaiting the confessor, he recalls his life, and vows to tell all to the confessor. The reader sees through Columbus's eyes as he learns of a land to the west (which he still thinks is the Indies) and builds up a spiel to try to convince ruler after ruler to finance ships for him to explore further south than the Vikings did. Although Ferdinand and Isabella first turn him down, after they conquer Granada and drive the Muslims out of Spain, they decide to sponsor him. It is Isabella who really is in charge, and Carpentier makes Columbus and Isabella lovers. (He also vaguely impleis that Columbus has "mixed" origins, i.e., Jewish. Various "new Christians" make appearances in the novel.) Once on the seas and in America, Columbus turns out to be obsessed by gold (or GOLD), and treats the people he encounters (who he calls cannibals, although he never sees them) cruelly and shamefully. The novel presents his dramatic return to the court in Spain with "Indians" and very little gold, but he is still received very grandly. Despite his lack of loot, the rulers send Columbus on another voyage (because basically they don't want him to go to other countries and have them sponsor him), and in this one he develops the idea of enslaving the "Indians" since there isn't gold, an idea which on practical and religious grounds doesn't fly. The books skims over his two other trips. But at the end of reviewing his life, Columbus hears the step of the confessor on the stair and decides not to tell him much.
Then the scene shifts and Columbus is a spirit, the Invisible One, at the meeting reviewing the proposal to make him a saint. This is an hilarious section, as the meeting participants include the Devil's Advocate and spirits of famous people like Victor Hugo (most of the others I had to look up on Wikipedia), with comments by the Invisible One on his chances; ultimately, as we know, the committee voted against making Columbus a saint. The novel closes with Columbus encountering another Genoan, and another famous sailor, Andrea Doria.
What holds this book together is the power of Carpentier's writing. With his dazzling prose, he creates worlds.
26gypsysmom
>23 kidzdoc: I am just reading A Brief History of Seven Killings now and I am blown away by how good it is. No wonder it won the Man Booker Prize this year. I haven't yet read any of the other short-listed novels but this book is so good that I can't see how any others would be better. Bravo Marlon James.
28rocketjk
Haiti
I finished Foreign Shores by Marie-Hélène Laforest, who is Haitian-American. This is a slim collection of wonderful, haunting short stories deal with life in Haiti, the perils, joys and regrets of those who immigrated to America, and the lives of those who had either stayed behind or returned to Haiti. Many, though not all, of the stories deal with poverty and longing. The tales that take place in the U.S. usually add strong themes of displacement. Parents in the U.S. try desperately to save enough money to bring their children out of Haiti, or grown children to bring their elderly parents. Meanwhile, back in Haiti, life becomes more dangerous, political murders more frequent, in the stories dealing with the DuValier regime. The stories are grouped into four sections: Island Life, Some Drifted, Many Stayed, A Few Returned.
Says George Lamming in his Foreward to the collection, the stories speak of "the more somber theme of involuntary migration and slave labor on arrival at the metropolitan ports that promise rescue from the grim legacy of the Duvalier regimes. The name, Duvalier, defines an epidemic which extends its blight on the expectations of those who have never surrendered to despair."
Here, from the story "Language of the Gods" (from Part II: Some Drifted) is a longish excerpt to give an idea of Laforest's use of language and imagery to get at the dislocation many of her characters feel. Marinette's husband Charles has just died of a heart attack. She walks through their New York City apartment afterward, waiting for her two children, May and Roger, to return home from grocery shopping:
She walked to Roger's room. A picture of his football team hung up alongside the triangular banners that read Chess Club, Book Club, Softball Club. Charles insisted that they place a desk in the room for the large dictionary paid in installments. She needed both hands to lift it when she dusted. A room in black and white Roger had asked for. Too funereal for her. But what did her children know about funerals and mourning until two days ago? About wearing black for a year, then white and black or gray for another six months? Mourning then half-mourning, that's what they said back home. She ran a hand down the front of her black dress to smooth out a crease that was not there. Death in a family, black dresses ready overnight. A sewing machine stitching black cambric white cotton . . . long ago . . . for a ceremony to the wrong gods, those that come from Guinea, the mecreants their followers, white head ties, white dresses in swirls around a pole, spinning, whirling. Goatskin drums, the deep sound of hollow bamboos resounding in the countryside, beating in her head now. In the dark night flashes of red kerchiefs in the shadows of vast trees. Invoke the spirits. The Iwa comes. White forms thrash to the ground. The other gods, which her family renounced.
Mariette brought her hands to her temples. That disorder in her head, those strands of memory, they had come so unexpectedly, so wrongly. "Mourning," she said aloud to hear her voice, "then half-mourning," she added for the sound of her voice to stop that reeling out of a skein in the mind, to wind up all those threads somehow, to pin them somewhere.
I will think of this collection often, and may even read it again soon. It seems that Laforest has spent much more of her career in research and academia than in fiction writing, which is sad for us. I couldn't find reference to any other fiction other than these stories, in fact.
Book notes: Foreign Shores was published in Quebec in 2002. I bought the collection in a wonderful bookstore in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami during a trip there a couple of years back. At this moment I am the only LT member with the book listed in his/her library.
I finished Foreign Shores by Marie-Hélène Laforest, who is Haitian-American. This is a slim collection of wonderful, haunting short stories deal with life in Haiti, the perils, joys and regrets of those who immigrated to America, and the lives of those who had either stayed behind or returned to Haiti. Many, though not all, of the stories deal with poverty and longing. The tales that take place in the U.S. usually add strong themes of displacement. Parents in the U.S. try desperately to save enough money to bring their children out of Haiti, or grown children to bring their elderly parents. Meanwhile, back in Haiti, life becomes more dangerous, political murders more frequent, in the stories dealing with the DuValier regime. The stories are grouped into four sections: Island Life, Some Drifted, Many Stayed, A Few Returned.
Says George Lamming in his Foreward to the collection, the stories speak of "the more somber theme of involuntary migration and slave labor on arrival at the metropolitan ports that promise rescue from the grim legacy of the Duvalier regimes. The name, Duvalier, defines an epidemic which extends its blight on the expectations of those who have never surrendered to despair."
Here, from the story "Language of the Gods" (from Part II: Some Drifted) is a longish excerpt to give an idea of Laforest's use of language and imagery to get at the dislocation many of her characters feel. Marinette's husband Charles has just died of a heart attack. She walks through their New York City apartment afterward, waiting for her two children, May and Roger, to return home from grocery shopping:
She walked to Roger's room. A picture of his football team hung up alongside the triangular banners that read Chess Club, Book Club, Softball Club. Charles insisted that they place a desk in the room for the large dictionary paid in installments. She needed both hands to lift it when she dusted. A room in black and white Roger had asked for. Too funereal for her. But what did her children know about funerals and mourning until two days ago? About wearing black for a year, then white and black or gray for another six months? Mourning then half-mourning, that's what they said back home. She ran a hand down the front of her black dress to smooth out a crease that was not there. Death in a family, black dresses ready overnight. A sewing machine stitching black cambric white cotton . . . long ago . . . for a ceremony to the wrong gods, those that come from Guinea, the mecreants their followers, white head ties, white dresses in swirls around a pole, spinning, whirling. Goatskin drums, the deep sound of hollow bamboos resounding in the countryside, beating in her head now. In the dark night flashes of red kerchiefs in the shadows of vast trees. Invoke the spirits. The Iwa comes. White forms thrash to the ground. The other gods, which her family renounced.
Mariette brought her hands to her temples. That disorder in her head, those strands of memory, they had come so unexpectedly, so wrongly. "Mourning," she said aloud to hear her voice, "then half-mourning," she added for the sound of her voice to stop that reeling out of a skein in the mind, to wind up all those threads somehow, to pin them somewhere.
I will think of this collection often, and may even read it again soon. It seems that Laforest has spent much more of her career in research and academia than in fiction writing, which is sad for us. I couldn't find reference to any other fiction other than these stories, in fact.
Book notes: Foreign Shores was published in Quebec in 2002. I bought the collection in a wonderful bookstore in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami during a trip there a couple of years back. At this moment I am the only LT member with the book listed in his/her library.
29rocketjk
I finished The Comedians by Graham Greene. The Comedians is Greene's novel of Haiti during the dark days of the Papa Doc regime. Greene presents intertwining themes of the value of loyalty and compassion, bravery and absurdity, and the quicksand of despair that self-loathing, jealousy and mistrust may throw in one's path. The plot moves quickly and the characters are, mostly, believable. The constant sense of horror and dread help the reader understand what life in that time and place was about. Greene actually did spend time in Haiti during this era in its history. Naturally, there is a difference between reading an account, fictional or otherwise of these times written by a Haitian and reading one written by an Englishman, by definition here an outsider. Within those limitations, I felt that Greene did an admirable job, here.
30Trifolia
Antigua & Barbuda My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid (1997)
...
In this book Jamaica Kincaid describes the death of her younger brother from aids and all the feelings that accompany this tragic event. J.K. lives in the US with her husband and her children but when she hears that her brother is seriously ill, she travels to Antigua, the country where she grew up in. She finds her brother on the verge of death but manages to find adequate medical treatment which prolongs his life and its quality significantly.
This non-fiction-book is autobiographical which makes it difficult to comment or criticize. I could comment on the style – which is beautiful – and the structure – which is well-balanced –, but that would be inadequate, because the most important thing about this book is its contents. This book is packed with complicated feelings, unresolved issues and introspection. By writing the way she does, the author puts herself in a vulnerable position, because she seems very harsh towards her brother and her mother who she hates for reasons that are not quite explained in this book, at least not enough to feel unequivocally sympathetic towards the author. Okay, it may not have been relevant to this story to know the background of this feud between a daughter and her mother, but the way she puts it now, makes the author look harsh and selfish, while I sense she's frustrated and disillusioned about the whole situation. Apart from one incident which puts the mother into a bad light (and even then, one might understand the mother), she admits that her mother has always taken care of her children, prepared their food, looked after them when they were ill, while she had very little income to make ends meet. The author claims that her mother could get along with her children as long as they were depending on her, but was incapable of letting them go. But I wonder if that is such a horrible thing, moreso, isn't it normal for a mother to have difficulties in letting her children go? Again, I don't know what really happened between the author and her mother, but by omitting this vital information, she does not make herself all too likeable and makes me wonder what kind of woman the mother really is.
After reading this book I thought what she might have achieved if she had written a book from three different points of view: herself, the mother and the brother. I think, with the author's writing-skillls, this might have become a classic with clashes between generations, cultures and genders. Now, it's just a testimony of a resentful woman who has not come to terms with her own grief. In short, it's not a bad book, but it could have been so much better if she's stepped away from the autobiography.
I read this book for this challenge on Antigua (thanks to Carrie (cbl_tn) for suggesting it to me!) and it's excellent for that purpose: the author's originally from Antigua, the book is set in Antigua and it gives some insight into Antiguan ways. Cautiously recommended.
...
In this book Jamaica Kincaid describes the death of her younger brother from aids and all the feelings that accompany this tragic event. J.K. lives in the US with her husband and her children but when she hears that her brother is seriously ill, she travels to Antigua, the country where she grew up in. She finds her brother on the verge of death but manages to find adequate medical treatment which prolongs his life and its quality significantly.
This non-fiction-book is autobiographical which makes it difficult to comment or criticize. I could comment on the style – which is beautiful – and the structure – which is well-balanced –, but that would be inadequate, because the most important thing about this book is its contents. This book is packed with complicated feelings, unresolved issues and introspection. By writing the way she does, the author puts herself in a vulnerable position, because she seems very harsh towards her brother and her mother who she hates for reasons that are not quite explained in this book, at least not enough to feel unequivocally sympathetic towards the author. Okay, it may not have been relevant to this story to know the background of this feud between a daughter and her mother, but the way she puts it now, makes the author look harsh and selfish, while I sense she's frustrated and disillusioned about the whole situation. Apart from one incident which puts the mother into a bad light (and even then, one might understand the mother), she admits that her mother has always taken care of her children, prepared their food, looked after them when they were ill, while she had very little income to make ends meet. The author claims that her mother could get along with her children as long as they were depending on her, but was incapable of letting them go. But I wonder if that is such a horrible thing, moreso, isn't it normal for a mother to have difficulties in letting her children go? Again, I don't know what really happened between the author and her mother, but by omitting this vital information, she does not make herself all too likeable and makes me wonder what kind of woman the mother really is.
After reading this book I thought what she might have achieved if she had written a book from three different points of view: herself, the mother and the brother. I think, with the author's writing-skillls, this might have become a classic with clashes between generations, cultures and genders. Now, it's just a testimony of a resentful woman who has not come to terms with her own grief. In short, it's not a bad book, but it could have been so much better if she's stepped away from the autobiography.
I read this book for this challenge on Antigua (thanks to Carrie (cbl_tn) for suggesting it to me!) and it's excellent for that purpose: the author's originally from Antigua, the book is set in Antigua and it gives some insight into Antiguan ways. Cautiously recommended.
31Tess_W
HAITI/CUBA
Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
The story of Zarite, a mulatto slave on the island of Haiti, from age 11 until her "older" age. Zarite was moved from Haiti to Cuba, and finally New Orleans. She had a hard life, but was a survivor. This spanned the time of about 1790-1830? (Through Haitian independence, but not American abolition.) As will all the Allende books I have read, magic realism played a part, this time in the form of voodoo. In general, this was a good read. I have only a minor complaint: Too much French! For a non-French reader, there were 2-3 sentences of French in several paragraphs that I had no idea how to interpret. I tried Google translator, but as in Spanish, I'm sure the translation was very off! I hope I didn't miss anything important. The title refers to the place voodooists go after death. 595 pages 4 stars
Warning: lots of sexual violence
Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
The story of Zarite, a mulatto slave on the island of Haiti, from age 11 until her "older" age. Zarite was moved from Haiti to Cuba, and finally New Orleans. She had a hard life, but was a survivor. This spanned the time of about 1790-1830? (Through Haitian independence, but not American abolition.) As will all the Allende books I have read, magic realism played a part, this time in the form of voodoo. In general, this was a good read. I have only a minor complaint: Too much French! For a non-French reader, there were 2-3 sentences of French in several paragraphs that I had no idea how to interpret. I tried Google translator, but as in Spanish, I'm sure the translation was very off! I hope I didn't miss anything important. The title refers to the place voodooists go after death. 595 pages 4 stars
Warning: lots of sexual violence
32Tess_W
CUBA
The Price of Paradise by Susana Lopez Rubio
This was a free Kindle read of 2019. I also borrowed the audiobook from the library. It was billed as a historical fiction; although I would disagree. It is PERHAPS a historical romance, but that is even stretching the historical sense. This book takes place in Cuba during the 1950's and deals with the lives of those involved with the Mafia. I found it to be fantastical and little is mentioned of history at all. Che does make an appearance for three pages and one sentence about Batista. This book does not evoke place or time for me. The writing is rudimentary while the reading was the perfect Castilian accent. (The main character was an emigre from Spain) 385 pages Meh
Susana Lopez Rubio is a Spanish writer and producer. She seems to be more known for her screen writing than book writing. Known for Vainilla (2015), The Time in Between (2013) and Hospital Central (2000).
The Price of Paradise by Susana Lopez Rubio
This was a free Kindle read of 2019. I also borrowed the audiobook from the library. It was billed as a historical fiction; although I would disagree. It is PERHAPS a historical romance, but that is even stretching the historical sense. This book takes place in Cuba during the 1950's and deals with the lives of those involved with the Mafia. I found it to be fantastical and little is mentioned of history at all. Che does make an appearance for three pages and one sentence about Batista. This book does not evoke place or time for me. The writing is rudimentary while the reading was the perfect Castilian accent. (The main character was an emigre from Spain) 385 pages Meh
Susana Lopez Rubio is a Spanish writer and producer. She seems to be more known for her screen writing than book writing. Known for Vainilla (2015), The Time in Between (2013) and Hospital Central (2000).
