The Other Side of the Sea

"In the possibility of changing life into the dew of hope for all."

Louis-Philippe Dalembert's The Other Side of the Sea, translated by Robert H. McCormick, uses magical realism, Biblical allusions, and Vodou symbolism to tell the story of Port-au-Prince and exile from the time of US Occupation to Titig, or Baby Doc. Falling under what some scholars refers to as the aesthetics of degradation, the novel contains numerous metaphors and breath-taking prose that describe the fetid decay of Haiti's capital city. The 1937 Massacre (which seems to compare it to the Babylonian Captivity as Haitians fled for their lives across the Massacre River), the Duvalier dynasty, and the plight of Haitian boatpeople and the persistent desire to emigrate permeate the text, across time. 

Given how centered the narrative is on the city and the sea, Port-au-Prince (and its gradual decay) emerges as a character in the text that symbolizes the nation, just as Noubot and Jonas, the grandmother and her grandson, symbolize Haiti. McCormick also translates Dalembert's stream of consciousness (maybe that is not the correct term, correct me if I am wrong) sections on the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage in each chapter of the story, connecting the plight of Haitians abroad with that of the dehumanizing Middle Passage. Vodou also infuses the text by drawing on Vodou and African cosmology for "the other side of the sea" and describing a return to Ginen although most of central characters are not Vodou practitioners. 

As for magical realism, it is used with a light touch, and is particularly powerful for satirical purposes when Dalembert criticizes the Duvalier dictatorship or the US government's response to the boatpeople crisis and how the sharks and killer whales feasted on Haitian bodies (again, tied to the Middle Passage and the sharks that followed the slave ships across the Atlantic). This is probably the most powerful and rich book on the breakdown of Port-au-Prince and the family and communities contained therein, torn asunder within and without as the young, the fruit, are forced to leave and the elders, symbolized by Grannie, wither and take the past with them. 

Again, this is consistent with the Biblical themes and reality of decline in Port-au-Prince, as its overcrowded, filthy, and divided residents live a bleak existence and the others, on the other side of the water, are gradually forgotten or forget. Port-au-Prince as Sodom and Gomorrah, if you will, struck by hurricanes, disasters, inequality, and terror from Duvalier, Trujillo, and the US. As a novel, this is quite an interesting literary exploration of Port-au-Prince's history with strong Biblical overtones.

Favorite Quotations

"As for the whites, they would stay in the city for a whole generation. They had serious expressions on their faces. They were arrogant, disrupting our customs without excusing themselves, putting everyone on the military rhythm of their language." (12)

"The trouble with this story was not so much the bitter experience nor the other language over there that made us feel more like foreigners. It was rather staying on the same land. In short, to not really have left" (32).

"The Syro-Lebanese, the Jews, and the Palestinians, having arrived poorer than Job, made their fortune and brought their families over" (32).

"During that time, either you toed the line or his thugs would turn you into a diversion to beat the heat" (41).

"He wasn't part of that group of men who take their house for a hotel-restaurant, only entering to eat, sleep, and yell at wife and kids" (42).

"The entire city was living withdrawn into itself in a fear until then unknown. Formerly so beautiful, the night of the city belonged from then on to silence, one punctuated from time to time by calls for help from a mother, a female companion, a brother whom everyone pretended not to hear. Tongues seemed cast in lead while individual disappearances took place at vespers" (50).

"The city, if you can call it that, this morass where millions of humans live together, and three times as many pigs. All wallowing in the shit. One on top of the other. And that desire to vomit, in the name of God, that never comes to pass. He reels. His gait wavers" (61).

"These two women provided an equilibrium for me that I hadn't known until then. Grannie was the roots, Maite the branch that invited me, every day, toward new adventures in the sky" (96).

"But the city would be plagued for a long time after the events with the aftereffects of that period where an entire family would disappear on a simple anonymous denunciation" (100).

"The government of the Promised-Land-in-Spite-of-Itself wasn't long in reacting, either. It gave the green light to its naval commander, who launched dozens of gunboats filled with soldiers, armed to the teeth, with orders to shoot on sight. By all means possible, the invaders had to be turned away and the local population reassured since the presidential election was drawing near" (113).