Like Water for Chocolate (Film)

The film version of Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate has one advantage over the book: the audience sees the delectable dishes prepared by Tita. Unfortunately, the film is less centered on the recipes than the novel, but retains the sensuousness of the source material. It's also interesting how the film addresses "race" in a way that's quite different from the novel. Gertrudis, the product of Mama Elena's affair with a mulatto (and, in the film, the cause of Tita's father), is supposedly 'black' and this causes a rife between Gertrudis and her general in the Mexican Revolution. Instead of addressing that issue of initial racism or obsession with bloodline purity, Gertrudis and her lover never separate because of her "mulatto" lineage. 

If I remember correctly, the film also changes the reason why Mama Elena's husband dies: he hears the rumors that Gertrudis is really the daughter of a black man, not his, and passes away. This is far from unusual in this magical realist love story. Ghosts, emotions, and seemingly supernatural things are expected, common occurrences for Tita and her world. As in the novel, everyone accepts it, with some humor for the reader or audience (the collective vomiting scene, for example). 

As a film standing on its own, I actually find it quite average. There is little ingenuity in the cinematography, so its strength comes from its adherence to the plot and some dialogue from Esquivel's novel. For those interested in learning about Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, cross-border relationships with Texas, or the gender roles of women. Again, I think the film, like the novel, reaffirms certain "racial" stereotypes about blacks and indigenous people, but overall, certainly worth watching for the delicious meals and appealing romance. 

White Teeth on TV: Incomplete Miniseries

I am not sure how to describe the White Teeth miniseries. It leaves one feeling incomplete, to put it bluntly. I understand how difficult it is to adapt a novel to film or television, and I respect the admirable attempt, but one cannot escape the feeling of a loss of wholeness. The miniseries hits most of the main plot points and retains much of the characteristic humor of Zadie Smith's first novel, but suffers from the loss of her witty narrative voice.

In addition, certain key parts of the novel, especially those pertaining to the Jamaican background of Irie, are silenced. Clara, after the first episode, becomes gradually less significant to the story, and while Irie does learn more about her 'roots' from talking to her Jehovah's Witness grandmother, all of the horror and critique of colonialism is lost by the lack of a flashback scene. The only time we are taken back to Kingston in 1907 is one single flashback, to the white colonial and his black lover who are the ancestors Irie desires to learn more about. None of the narrative voice's powerful critique equating colonialism to the poor treatment we give to our lovers is present in this miniseries, which is woefully incomplete.

Besides slightly changing the conclusion of the novel and omitting other plot developments, settings, and themes (such as the importance of the traditional pub for Irie's father and Samad, who never take their wives with them there), the miniseries could have benefited from illustrating the tense relations between ethnic minorities in London. Smith's novel is careful to display, for example, Alsana's racism towards Caribbeans and other minorities, but this brief miniseries only shows Alsana's homophobia towards her lesbian relative.

In spite of my aforementioned problems with the miniseries, I believe it's a worthwhile watch for any fans of Zadie Smith, multicultural London, or comedy. Again, much of the comedic voice has been changed because of the medium, but the actors carry it along quite well. All that would have been necessary to truly make this TV adaptation of Smith's novel a masterpiece is a few more episodes.

Besos Callejeros

Y qué me importa

que vivas con otra

que te da dinero,

si ya terminamos,

y ya no te quiero.

Amor comprado

el que tu has buscado

no hallarás conmigo,

prefiero un mendigo

a volver contigo.

Tu amor por dinero

es amor malvado

y a ti te han comprado

besos callejeros.

Y qué me importa

saber si tu tienes

una en cada esquina,

si esas son mujeres

de la mala vida.

A beautiful bolero that blows me away each time I hear it.  Blanca Iris Villafañe's lovely voice makes it my favorite version, but a surprisingly successful merengue adaptation works quite well. Check it out, sung by Las Chicas del Can..

The Sun, the Sea, a Touch of the Wind

"And so, like Christ's, Haiti's glory became her cross to bear, exemplified by Charlemagne being nailed to his cross by the American marines who occupied the island from 1915 to 1934."

Trinidadian-American writer Rosa Guy has written a challenging but worthwhile novel about Haiti. The Sun, the Sea, a Touch of the Wind is centered around a Hotel Oloffson-like establishment, Old Hotel, in Port-au-Prince during the 1970s. Nixon's Watergate Scandal has just started, Jonnie Dash, a middle-aged African-American artist is back in Haiti in search of lost dreams, and themes at the intersection of class, race, gender, and imperialism suffuse the text. 

While the text differs significantly from Graham Greene's illustrious novel, which targets Duvalier with relentless criticism, both novels share a similar setting, a diverse group of foreigners and locals frequenting a fictionalized Hotel Oloffson, and a keen understanding of social systems, or roles. Guy's novel surpasses Greene's for its much stronger anti-imperialist message, of course also including women characters who are compelling. 

The protagonist, Jonnie, eventually ends up subverting the US counselor, standing up against her own fears and US imperialism on the island while also removing the layers of nationality, class, gender, and race in her interactions with the diverse cast of characters at the Old Hotel. Unfortunately, Guy's narrative can be hard to follow at times, perhaps because she often uses Jonnie Dash's memory lapses as critical moments to advance the plot. This confused me a few times, and the novel eventually loses steam, meaning that at 305 pages, one was almost ready to give up halfway through. 

For those determined readers, the pay off is worth it. Guy's protagonist lives and breathes through Port-au-Prince and its environs, offering numerous moments of shame, disgust, horror, and crushing poverty on one hand, with the natural beauty, glorious symbolism of the Haitian Revolution, and search for meaning in life on the other. While the constant use of French in dialogue came off as a little silly (I am not sure if Guy is fluent in French, but it seems like she only knows a few phrases), and Guy's inclusion of a 'voodoo' ceremony struck me as too fake or fabricated, the novel is one of the few written from a Black feminist perspective on Haiti. Next on my reading list will be Guy's retelling of the Little Mermaid story that uses Haitian Vodou and Caribbean flavors.

Lolita Cuevas Sings Haiti

A beautiful rendition of "Haiti" by Puerto Rican singer Lolita Cuevas, accompanied on the guitar by Frantz Casseus. My favorite version of this song remains that of Issa El Saieh, but this is a very lyrical recording only worsened by the audio quality. It would be an interesting little side project to discover more about Puerto Ricans in Haiti, since Puerto Ricans like Cuevas spent much of her childhood in Haiti and established a career for herself singing in French, Creole, and Spanish. 

The Mystic Masseur: Ruined by Omission

The Mystic Masseur film adaptation omits some of the best aspects of Naipaul's humorous novel. The film completely omits Ganesh's father from the narrative, which in turn removes the whole context of culture/colonialism as Ganesh studies in college at Port of Spain. Moreover, the relationship between Ganesh and Leela is portrayed for more favorably than in the novel, where Leela is more shy, the courting lasts considerably longer, and there is domestic violence that is acceptable for Ganesh to 'control' his wife. I also despised the changes to Ganesh's Auntie, the Great Belcher (in the film she only occasionally hiccups, removing some of the absurd humor of an old woman constantly belching).

The novel also omits the Oxford-educated Indian Trinidadian Ganesh went to school with in Port of Spain. The screenwriter tried to merge that character with others from the novel, but then the whole context of the conflict within the Hindu Association and Trinidadian legislative elections loses some of its compelling aspects of narrative. On the other hand, the film captures the natural beauty of the Trinidadian landscape while including the general tone and thematic content of the novel. The scene depicting Ganesh and the other members of the Legislative Council dining at the Governor's Mansion is priceless! Despite its omissions, closely follow the book while perhaps exaggerating the anti-Indian bias and completely ruining Leela's character. 

In short, the film is a mess at times, runs too long while cutting out some of the better aspects of the book, and removes some of the most amusing or intriguing aspects of Naipaul's first novel. I disagree with Ebert's rating of 3 stars, but it is certainly worth watching for those interested in Trinidad, Naipaul, or colonialism. Ganesh's character certainly seems close to Naipaul himself, favoring Britain as the center of the universe and his notorious ambiguous or pro-colonial sentiment. 

The Suffrage of Elvira

''The people of Elvira, Dhaniram said, tightening his belt, 'have their little funny ways, but I could say one thing for them: you don't have to bribe them twice.''

V.S. Naipaul's second novel, The Suffrage of Elvira, is set in Elvira, a marginalized rural region of Trinidad with horrible roads. Taking place in the same universe as his previous novel, with Ganesh Ransumair already rising politically, Naipaul's humorous novel satirizes the changes in Elvira during elections for the Legislative Council. The community of Elvira includes Spanish people in Cordoba and a mix of Blacks, Hindus, and Muslims, and the main candidates running for office in the upcoming office have to forge alliances and bribe members of each different racial and religious group to ensure victory. The degree to which votes are bought by Harbans, the wealthy Hindu, and his committee (comprised of a mix of Hindus and Muslims), and how Elvira itself responds to the candidates along racial, religious, and material interests are the subject of humor and problematic social commentary. 

The Black teacher, Mr. Francis, the respected Hindu leader, Chittaranjan, and others question the need for democracy in this small corner of a small island in the British Empire. Mrs. Baksh, wife of the Muslim leader, as well as other members of Elvira, predict the loss of social harmony and peace between the community of different faiths and religions. Even the Indian community supporting Harbans eventually splinters before being united again by bribing the Muslim leadership, suggesting how farcical these early races were in postcolonial Trinidad. The residents, accepting bribery, gifts, and kickback deals, end up supporting Harbans for a landslide victory at the end of this shameful election (even the clerks at the ballot offices are bribed...). The campaign team of Harbans goes so far as to exploit fears of obeah, magic, and the Jehova's Witness missionaries (two white women) to ensure support for their candidate, without any discussion of the issues, anti-colonial goals, social programs.

Naipaul does not only criticize residents of this small, superstitious community for their "underdeveloped" understanding of democracy, but Harbans himself represents how dysfunctional electoral politics were in 1950s Trinidad. Instead of adequately representing his constituency after victory, Harbans only returns to Elvira once. He is dressed in a "proper" Port of Spain style, no longer communicates with his constituency, and refers to the community as a "bitch" (much like the black dog he kills when driving his car into Elvira during the beginning of the campaign). The type of Trinidadian politician represented by Harbans appears in Naipaul's first novel, The Mystic Masseur, and Lovelace's The Wine of Astonishment. Both authors share a disdainful perspective on the political class who serve free food, organize parades, and provide free rum, but once in the Legislative Council, become complacent and never challenge the social or economic conditions that leave their constituencies impoverished. 

In the case of Lovelace's excellent novel, it is freedom of religion for the Spiritual Baptists. In Elvira it is the need for better roads, with more general expectations of responsive government that immediately responds to the needs of the community (the fact that Harbans is asked excessively to visit the sick Jared indicates how the community of Elvira, despite its racial and religious antagonisms, does care for the collective). Unfortunately for Elvira, the promise of democracy under colonialism does not offer much, especially since all the candidates who run have to come from the upper classes to be able to afford the deposit fees to the government. Consequently, independence would seem a natural course to take, which eventually happens, but Naipaul avoids taking his criticism of the political system to that logical conclusion.

Indeed, Naipaul's scathing portrait of early democracy in Trinidad is fascinating for its omission of overt pro-independence sentiment. In fact, allusions to British culture and travels abroad are still valued by the community, such as Lorkhoor's obsession with speaking "standard" English or Nelly's obsession with going to London to escape the strict social expectations of Hindu womanhood (paralleled by the daughter-in-law of Dhaniram, abandoned by the latter's son and trapped in service to the family until running off to Port of Spain). The Black teacher, Mr. Francis, likewise shares pro-British attitudes like the local elite, going as far as denying the need for democracy in Elvira. 

Yet, in other ways, Naipaul does offer some criticism of colonialism. The anti-black prejudice of the Indian community, for example, is certainly a product of European colonialism in the Trinidadian case (not to exclude earlier color prejudice in Indian societies before colonialism). The conflict between Muslims and Hindus likewise subverts unity and assumes racial overtones, leading to the rather humorous exchange between Baksh and Chittaranjan, the highlight being the latter's ultimate insult to Islam being its Black members. The ghost of a Black baby haunts the old cocoa-house of the planter who once owned Elvira in the days of slavery, reminding residents of all racial groups of the history of slavery in their town. 

Despite its overall pessimistic tone and humor, Naipaul's novel does provide evidence of peaceful coexistence among the Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. Sure, Muslims and Hindus frown upon intermarriage, but the ways in which the three religions coexist and influence each other for Elvira is astounding. Hindus sing Christian hymns, every groups' fear of obeah and sorcery, non-Hindus seek healers from the Hindu tradition, and Muslims use the cross for burials. Before the intrusion of limited electoral democracy, there was a form of coexistence that brought people together. Mahadeo's budding friendship with Sebastian, the old Black man, or Sebastian and Haq, the Muslim, being close friends indicate how religious and racial divisions are transcended in a small community. The wake for Mr. Cuffee, exploited by Harbans politically, nonetheless brought together residents of all three faiths for consumption of rum, calypso, hymns, etc.

Overall, an amusing and fun read, Naipaul's second novel is lacking the deeper questions of colonialism or Britishness one finds in The Mystic Masseur. Arguably more complex by its specific subject matter of a political campaign in an entire community, the novel's numerous social classes provide ample fodder for humor and serious social commentary. Indeed, the story's multiracial community reminded me of Miguel Street, which is similarly rich in humor, an inventive combination of dialect and standard prose, and the multicultural world that brings people together. At the end of the novel, the narrator summarizes the aftermath of the election as one of some winners, some losers, with an uncertain future ahead. What better way to conclude a novel about democracy in a colonial society with a sort of moral ambiguity?

Luis Pie

Enjoy "Luis Pie," a cuento that won Dominican intellectual and future president, Juan Bosch, a prestigious literary award in 1943. The short story is fascinating for its sympathetic portrait of Haitian braceros, focusing on Luis Pie (Louis Pierre), who is blamed for a fire that breaks out in the canefield and killed. The short story uses some Creole, offers a powerful critique of the abuses Haitians faced in the sugarcane fields, and is noteworthy for not following the typical anti-Haitianism of Dominican intellectuals associated with Trujillo. 

Bosch would have, to put it frankly, a troubled relationship with Haiti during his bumpy presidential term. Yet this short story clearly provides a nice break from typical narratives of Haiti and the DR always being in a state of conflict, akin to a cockfight. 

Palace of the Peacock

"I had felt the wind rocking me with the oldest uncertainty and desire in the world, the desire to govern or be governed, rule or be ruled for ever."

Guyanese author Wilson Harris's Palace of the Peacock is extraordinarily complex, multi-layered, and perfectly responds to Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  Instead of the Congo, Harris takes us to the jungles of Guyana where Donne and his mixed-race crew pursue Mariella, his woman who left him to stay at the Mission. I had read elsewhere Harris's Hegelian dualism permeates the novel, but as it appears in Harris's prose, its relevance to the impact of colonialism on Guyana becomes ever clearer. Harris intelligently uses the indigenous population and their worldview with respect, too, forming an excellent rebuttal to Conrad. 

Donne and his crew are already dead, existing between life and death on the river (also identified as a river of life, stream of death), a significant theme for the novel's dualism. Alive and dead, heaven and hell, native and non-native, Harris uses dualism to argue for a synthesis of states of binary oppositions, an apt metaphor for colonial society. The 'palace of the peacock' is an astounding symbol for the novel's powerful conclusion, which ends with a seven day search for the indigenous population of Mariella Mission, the laborers Donne exploits and treats cruelly, in spite of his own dark skin. The novel's somewhat ambiguous ending of revelations for the deceased crew are highly suggestive of the colonial society in which Guyana exists. Will they share the land, for example? The ambiguous fate of the Guyanese society is left open to the reader's interpretation, but an optimistic future seems to be the overall message.  

Along the way the world of polar opposites, life and death, peace and conquest lead to trouble among the crew of the vessel. The unstable narration (the unnamed narrator, the Dreamer) mirrors the liminal space occupied by the characters, already dead, as they endeavor to catch up with the Arawaks who flee while dying again in pursuit (and pursued) of their various dreams. Love, race, incest, the search for fortune are some other themes important to the crew. Despite their mixed racial origins, they too perpetuate discriminatory views of the indigenous population, yet rely on an old Arawak woman as their guide along the river. 

Eschewing conventions of the novel form, Harris's first novel can be quite difficult to follow, but it's beautifully written, possesses all of the complex symbolism of Conrad's novel, and avoids any dehumanizing language. As a Caribbean writer of African descent who foregrounds the indigenous population of the region, Harris's novel is also conspicuous as one of the few from the Anglophone Caribbean for including Arawak characters and mythology, an untapped reservoir for Caribbean literature. 

The Lonely Londoners

"Wherever in London that it have Working Class, there you will find a lot of spades."

Samuel Selvon's short novel, The Lonely Londoners, expertly captures the Caribbean migrant experience in London. Chronicling the experiences of a group, consisting mostly of men, through a series of interconnected vignettes. The uprooting experience of migration, particularly as a stigmatized racial group, leads to numerous powerful, distressing stories of the cruel and inhospitable environment the early waves of West Indians faced in London. 

Despite being British subjects and serving in the War for Britain, racism in housing, labor, sex, and the Othering experience these West Indians face provide insurmountable obstacles that provoke deep reflection in the aptly named Moses, one of the leaders of the West Indian men in London for being there longer than most others. Due to his experience, Moses guides later arrivals, and the community of West Indians grows and emulates aspects of its past while being forever changed. 

Aspects of their West Indian societies remain (colorism, the lively market women tradition, calypso music), particularly their nostalgia for their homeland, but gradually the migrants accustom themselves to the bitter winter, fog, daily racism, and false promises of streets paved with gold. Like the best immigrant literature, the disillusionment or disappointment of the migrant experience is the overarching theme, exemplified by Moses's troubling indecisiveness about returning to Trinidad. 

The novel's key themes are undoubtedly universal, particularly in the alienation and social divisions that inhibit communities. The class system, for example, is powerfully invoked to place poor West Indians in a social context in which class identities are seemingly accepted by all. Gender, romance, and love are similarly deformed by the city, which turns to cheap thrills, prostitution, and sexual depravities as the only intimacy. Marriage is not seen as viable by these early Caribbean migrants, because marriage with white women leads to problems with racism from the spouse's family, and racism against mixed-race children. And like poor whites, when not able to find work, Afro-Caribbean migrants' only option was to try to get on welfare and barely subsist until they can find low-paying work below their qualifications.

Selvon's use of symbolism and inventive language (drawing on his Trinidadian vernacular English, of course) is also noteworthy, from the symbolic use of seagulls and pigeons to mirror the migrant experience of these black West Indians, to the chapter consisting of a single sentence lacking any and all punctuation. Selvon's brush with more experimental prose, clever combination of dialect and Standard English, and local slang add humor, context, and realism to a work of fiction. One can see how this novel influenced later multicultural writers from London, such as Zadie Smith, who also writes about Jamaican and West Indian communities in London, interracial families, etc. 

I must also add that this novel reminded me of two other novels, one by Tayeb Salih from Sudan (Season of a Migration to the North) and Gisèle Pineau, a French writer with parents from Guadeloupe. The former's novel features a character who spent several years in London, experiencing the same racism as Selvon's West Indians and African character (Cap) from whites who only see blacks as sexualized primitives, who are continually dehumanized. 

In the latter's work, Exile According to Julia, I see some similarities between the old Jamaican woman, Tanty, in The Lonely Londoners, and Julia, the grandmother in Pineau's novel. Both are older Caribbean woman living in European metropolitan cities who are described in rather humorous ways, which is suggestive of some of the parallels between Caribbean communities in different European countries as they struggle to grow accustomed to the climate, form families, assimilate, and survive.

Samuel Selvon Reads Brackley & the Bed

Enjoy a short story by Trinidadian author Samuel Selvon.

The Mystic Masseur

"I myself believe that the history of Ganesh is, in a way, the history of our times; and there may be people who will welcome this imperfect account of the man Ganesh Ramsumair, masseur, mystic, and, since 1953, M.B.E."

V.S. Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur is the funniest novel I have read since Ishmael Reed's Reckless Eyeballing. Telling the story of a Trinidadian man of Indian descent, Ganesh, who rises spectacularly in Trinidadian society and politics, Naipaul's characteristically condescending and humorous novel pokes fun at the Indian community of Trinidad, the literary scene of colonial Trinidad ("You ever hear of Trinidad people writing books?"), and the social and religious conflicts of the island. Written in a mixture of standard English prose for narration and Trinidadian vernacular, Naipaul's hilarious novel is a quick read, quite informative on Hinduism and Indian culture in this context, as well as broader social and political changes wrought by WWII. 

The rise of Ganesh as a writer (one of Ganesh's huge writing successes is a tract on constipation!), masseur, and mystic healer in the community and his eventual shift from "Socialinduism' and the working masses exemplifies the West Indian mimic men, those very Black and Indian men who took power in legislative councils and then absorbed themselves in English cultural ways, gaining favor with the Governor, or turning to complete corruption. For anyone interested in a short novel on the Indian aspect of the 'West Indian mimic men,' this is a highly entertaining read. The scene featuring the black and Indian legislators at the Governor's mansion in Port of Spain is more than amusing, it's downright tragic. Besides the obvious themes of colonialism and the shadow of US soldiers stationed in the island, the amazing numbers of time deception, manipulation, or exploitation occur within Ganesh's community is enough to make you laugh while crying. 

In addition, readers of Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas or Miguel Street might spot some intertextuality (one reference in the text alludes to a character on Miguel Street in Port of Spain) and similar themes about Hindu traditions, marriage, or gender relations. Indeed, Ganesh's relationship with his wife, Leela, is quite reminiscent of Mr. Biswas and his wife. Like Mr. Biswas, the problem of race also complicates this narrative. While Indians are depicted as always against each other's mutual interests, their relationship with the black population of Trinidad is problematic and difficult in the instance of the labor unrest in the novel's end. Earl Lovelace's omission of Indians from his classic, The Wine of Astonishment, likewise bodes poorly for the future of race relations, but at least Lovelace avoids any racial slurs. 

A Portrait of the 'Typical' Madisonian

The following is a short satirical piece written in honor of my time in Madison. The caricature of the typical Madisonian, Leaf, is based on several people I encountered and knew too well. Enjoy!

"Hi, my name is Leaf. I am a vegan whose favorite meal is bean soup with bay leaves, kale chips, and quinoa. I only shop at the food co-op for obvious reasons. My preferred gender pronoun is they, and while I can excuse racism, I draw the line at animal cruelty. My hobbies include biking, camping, and brewing kombucha. On Friday nights I enjoy discussing institutional racism in a whites-only party while drinking PBR. Oh, and the only music I listen to is stuff so underground you probably haven't heard it yet."

The Wine of Astonishment

"And we really blind not to see that to these people we is just a joke that come in fashion once every five years when they come with pen and paper and take our names, promising to bring down the moon and the stars, feting us on rum and roti so we could ride their car on election morning and mark a X next to their name."

Earl Lovelace's The Wine of Astonishment is an interesting read for those who gravitate toward Caribbean literature. Employing the Trinidadian vernacular English through Eva, the peasant woman who narrates the tale, Lovelace tells the story of the tribulations Spiritual Baptists face in Bonasse as they struggle to express themselves and their religion in a colonial context. World War II, the negative social impact of the Yankees, the colonial government's discriminatory outlawing of the Spiritual Baptist church, urbanization, class, and the betrayal of the black political leadership are just some of the obstacles to freedom of religion and asserting the humanity of Trinidadians of African descent. 

Because of its postcolonial themes and assertion of a communal basis for black advancement in a Trinidadian context, the novel is quite similar to the only other novel by Lovelace I have read, The Dragon Can't Dance. Both use local traditions and themes (Carnival, stickfighting, Afro-Christian Spiritual Baptist traditions)  and an unmistakable solidarity with the lower classes for social advancement. In this novel, the push for the colonial government to ensure freedom of worship for the Spiritual Baptists is inseparable from their dignity, pride, and African roots, just as Carnival and stickfighting also represent the black creole culture of Trinidad. Through these traditions, which survive rural to urban migration and (Western) education, one can arguably see the survival of these cultural forms and the assertion of human dignity by the people of Bonasse after all their trials and tribulations. 

That is why the novel's conclusion is so powerful. The Spiritual Baptists celebrate their freedom to worship but the Spirit does not descend. Instead, on the way to an election event for Ivan Morton, the politician who has betrayed Bonasse by trying to live as a white man for years, they find the Spirit in a steelband performance. The Spirit of this syncretistic Afro-Trinidadian church is found in the culture of the everyday people, in their celebration of themselves as uniquely Trinidadian for empowerment. This allows the novel to transcend any superficial attempt to limit it solely to religious expression. The novel is a defense of the peasantry of Trinidad, of stickfighting and the African-derived warrior. This realization among Eva's community, this acknowledgement of their own pride, power, and ability to defend themselves, despite failing to do so against the self-sacrifice of stickfighting hero Bolo, is what will allow their community to become more than the earth, to reach for the skies and reveal their agency. 

For anyone searching for a difficult but short read on Trinidad, The Wine of Astonishment is an excellent literary feat. One will finish this novel with a much greater appreciation of Trinidad's cultural heritage, as well as the pervasive landscape that defines the community. While Indo-Trinidadians are largely absent(The Dragon Can't Dance is more inclusive), the historical context in which labor organizing, social change, migration to Port of Spain, and the burgeoning anti-colonial movement are key themes which increases the relevance of the novel to the broader Caribbean or Africa. Trinidad, with its black creole traditions that evolve as in the case of stickfighting or the Spirtual Baptists, is highly suggestive of the optimism that characterizes both The Wine of Astonishment and The Dragon Can't Dance. 

In the Palm of Darkness

"When his house ends, that's when a man dies."

Cuban-born Puerto Rican author Mayra Montero continues a long tradition of Caribbean writers fascinated by Haiti. In this novel, In the Palm of Darkness, Montero weaves together the stories of two men searching for a nearly extinct frog in the mountains of Haiti, the grenouille du sang. Along the way, the two characters, Victor, the American herpetologist, and Thierry Adrien, the guide from Jérémie, take turns narrating chapters about how their roads eventually crossed and explaining the context of the plot. 

Thierry Adrien and his incestuous family, torn apart by extramarital affairs, violence, and political affiliation (Julien, the youngest, becomes a macoute) gradually die off, just as the elusive frog sought by Victor, coming from a failed marriage (with hints at lesbianism of his wife, Martha) and completely possessed by his research on frogs, is lost forever. The book includes numerous short chapters on the disappearance of frogs all over the world, and the causes are deeper than deforestation or pollution, just as the causes of Haiti's poverty are more complex. 

Unfortunately, while capturing the horrific violence quite well, the novel does not include Cito Francisque or anyone in the Haitian military who overthrew Aristide (the novel takes place in the early 1990s) as integrated characters. Instead, Thierry Adrien alludes to the drug deals, a Secret Society modeled on the Abakuá of Cuba (ultimately derived from West Africa), a series of brutal massacres and mutilated corpses across the country (a work of the macoutes, thugs) and the general atmosphere of fear in Haiti. Without any overt references to Duvalier or the first coup that unseated Aristide, Montero's novel successfully criticizes the social, economic, and political conditions of Haiti, but leaves the reader wanting more, such as a confrontation between Cito Francisque's gang and Victor and Thierry in Casetaches. 

The novel naturally includes numerous references to pwazon rat, zombies, Vodou, secret societies, and the dying way of life that characterizes the Adrien family. The various types of frogs used for poison and Vodou symbolism likewise add nuance, as does the explanation of Haitian doctor Emile Boukaka, alleging that Agwe has called the frogs back beneath the sea, which contains overtones of another world beneath the sea that is core to Vodou. 

Victor, on the other hand, can relate to the gradual disappearance of Thierry's world in that he is also experiencing loss, so the two become quite close. The novel's strongest character, however, and whose reflections form the bulk of commentary on Haitian social relations, are in the flashbacks of Thierry Adrien as told to Victor. Thierry's father was a member of a group that hunted zombies, yet somehow all of the local Caribbean and Haitian colors and Vodou beliefs are integrated with the text's secular herpetologist, Victor. Ganesha, a woman of Indian descent from Guadeloupe also plays a large role in the novel, adding pan-Caribbean dimensions to the novel about the loss of amphibian life. 

Besides Vodou, folklore, and Western science, the novel also subtly critiques the widespread denigration of women and women's bodies. Women are raped, massacred, forced into prostitution (one disturbing chapter discusses a teenage prostitute kissing her smelly client in Marfranc), and women are the first of the amphibian species to disappear, surely no coincidence. Like the female frogs of Haiti's shrinking forests, local women are often the most affected by crushing poverty and violence, the first to bear the burden of destruction.

I must admit that one of the things that drew me to this novel was a story my great-aunt used to share about the frogs of the Haitian countryside, back in her Bainet childhood, in the 1930s. It was common for her two brothers to chase after frogs, pick them up, and play with them, but she always laughed about how the "devils" would urinate on her brothers! My even greater surprise about frogs in Haiti was to hear the song of the coqui on the road to Jacmel, a tropical tree frog I had previously associated solely with Puerto Rico. Their beautiful call does indeed seem otherworldly, particularly special on the nightly paths through the hills of Haiti. The resourceful Caribbean amphibians are nonetheless dying off, disappearing like frogs all over the world, but they're resilient, powerful symbols of Afro-Caribbean spirituality, as well as notions of water and fertility. Montero manages to capture this perspective through the spiritual worldview of Thierry in a tasteful manner, without overdoing it with tales of zombi hunters or lougawou. 

Other Space

"Be a buddy, not a bully."

For fans of Community, The Office and Red Dwarf, Other Space is like a dream come true. Paul Feig's show possesses the sci-fi comic genius of shows like Red Dwarf with the meta-ness of Community for a strong, albeit short, first season. The show is so wacky and full of potential, from James Franco's little brother parodying a certain famous actor to a coffee machine leading a robot coup, there is something for everyone. Unfortunately, an 8-episode run is not the most conducive for character development, so relationships are a little rushed instead of the usual sitcom approach of longer story arcs. There are creative ways in which the show's writers manage to get around this issue, however, with the aid of science fiction tropes. Definitely worth watching for any fans of Feig or science fiction comedy, so check it out on Yahoo Screen.

Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life

"After he left, there is a debate about what to do with the teacup. The custom, it appears, is that after a person of colour has drunk from a cup the cup must be smashed. He is surprised that his mother's family, which believes in nothing else, believes in this. However, in the end his mother simply washes the cup with bleach."

Coetzee's fictionalized memoir of his boyhood days is fascinating to compare with similar works by other South African authors. Although born before the official beginning of apartheid, the legacy of racial discrimination obviously preceded that, as Coetzee's youth indicates. Although coming from a white and on the surface, well-to-do background, John Coetzee (and the book is written in the third person, to distance the 'real' Coetzee from the fictionalized version of his younger self) experiences family dysfunction, loss, sexual discovery, a keen awareness of the suffering of animals, and acknowledgement of racial and class discrimination. 

Of course, anyone looking for a factual account of apartheid and white-minority rule in South should read Down Second Avenue or Kaffir Boy for insights into the Black South African experience, but it's interesting to see the evolution of Coetzee's identity and attention to social inequality from a sympathetic white perspective. The earliest reference to racial or ethnic discrimination is in the casual anti-Semitism of Worcester, something Coetzee's supposedly 'liberal' and English-minded mother and uncles participate in. "Natives" are rare in young Coetzee's world (except for the delivery 'boy,' a man, who is seen by Coetzee's parents as representative of a wasteful new generation of 'Natives'), but clearly inhabit the shadows. The Coloured (multiracial) inhabitants of Worcester, the Karoo, and Cape Town are clearly the major Other in the text, yet presented as being closer to the 'earth' and romanticized by a young Coetzee.

The numerous allusions to impoverished Afrikaans whites without shoes (and bearing brutish behavior patterns from the Anglophile point of view of John), the Coloured children abused and beaten, the Coloured children who cannot afford to see the circus but peer through the flaps of the tent, the Coloured farm workers who are the "real" inheritors of the land yet are forced to work it for white owners, or the absurd customs that Coetzee's supposedly 'English'-minded and nontraditional parents preserve about the need to smash a teacup used by any person of color in one's home indicate how before the Nationalists took power, white society in South Africa instituted a class/color hierarchy. Coloureds were not to touch guns, nor were they given the access to education that whites possessed.

The young John's hatred of his father, life in the dusty development of Worcester, and complete breakdown of the family by his teen years (back in Cape Town, after his father's wastefulness and foolish drove the family into deep debt) presents parallels with many other works by authors exploring their childhood. The archetypal loss of innocence, death, disillusionment, and constant search for identity are present here in this short memoir. Certainly, huge themes such as the aforementioned importance of race, as well as shame, disgrace, guilt, love (is it a prison, as a young Coetzee ponders) are also suggestive for the novels Coetzee wrote before and after the publication of Boyhood in the late 1990s. 

It's touching that only in the veld, or on the farm, where John can be free, is where he seems happiest, not afraid, feeling no shame, fear, or confines of family or society. On the Voelfontein farm of his father's family in the Karoo, where anything that grows in that arid landscape is blessed, he is most happy, yet, like all children facing adulthood, he knows life on the farm is not his future. Instead, the memoir ends on a rather unfortunate note in Cape Town, where John is attending poorly staffed  Catholic school, his alcoholic father, after driving the family into debt, does not look for a job, and his mother's willingness to sacrifice herself for the family (as well as see through her love, forcing John to realize his mother is an independent being with disillusionment, disappointment, hardship) propels him into adolescence.

As a short read in the three-part 'autobiography' of Coetzee, Boyhood is undoubtedly useful for fans of Coetzee's work and for a serious reading endeavor on an era in South Africa (the Western Cape in the 1940s). For anyone interested in the rise of Afrikaner nationalism and the divisions among white South Africans, Coetzee's embellished memoir also attests to the seemingly impenetrable divisions wrought by class, language, religion, culture, nationalism, war, and race. Indeed, many Afrikaans words or phrases permeate the text, in addition to the cultural and linguistic divides that separate English South Africans from the Afrikaans-speakers. A family like Coetzee's, of Afrikaans origins yet English speakers in the home, they are caught in the interstices of white South Africa, offering a unique vantage point on the nation's looming social inequities that ushered in the Nationalists and apartheid.

Favorite Quotes

"I'f being a Christian means singing hymns and listening to sermons and then coming out to torment the Jews, he has no wish to be a Christian." (24)

"Being a Catholic is a part of his life reserved for school. Preferring the Russians to the Americans is a secret so dark that he can reveal it to no one. Liking the Russians is a serious matter. It can have you ostracized." (26)

"Soon every one in his class knew about it: the new boy was odd, he wasn't normal. From that mistake, he has learned to be more prudent. Part of being prudent is always to tell less rather than more." (29)

"Afrikaans children are almost like Coloured children, he finds, unspoiled and thoughtless, running wild, then suddenly, at a certain age, going bad, their beauty dying within them." (56)

"There are white people and Coloured people and Natives, of whom the Natives are the lowest and most derided. The parallel is inescapable: the Natives are the third brother." (65)

"He does not see the point of having elections if the party that wins can change the rules. It is like the batsman deciding who may and who may not bowl." (68)

"With Coloured people in general, and with the people of the Karoo in particular, he simply does not know when they cease to be children and become men and women. It seems to happen so early and so suddenly: one day they are playing with toys, the next day they are out with the en, working, or in someone's kitchen, washing dishes." (86) 

Fred Khumalo's Bitches' Brew

Bitches’ Brew by Fred Khumalo, is an entertaining, gritty gangster novel about Zakes, a jazz trumpeter, pimp and his lover, Lettie, a woman from Lesotho. It’s sort of a hustler-love novel filled with allusions to South African and African-American jazz, particularly Miles Davis. The novel encompasses numerous aspects of South African history, urbanization, and social relations, informing the reader of the 1949 race riot between Zulus and Indians in Durban, for instance. It was also quite hilarious at times for its tone and ending, with Lettie still unsure if it’s the size or feel of a man’s penis which makes sex pleasurable. Moreover, the rise of these gangsters under apartheid and the racial mixing present in the novel, though fictional, definitely reflect the looseness of racial divisions even under the height of apartheid rule. Jazz music, a symbol of freedom, is undoubtedly part of this process of destabilizing racial barriers, a role it similarly played in the US.

Puerto Rico-Congo Musical Routes and Roots

One of my favorite things about listening to classics of Congolese music is the covers and allusions to popular songs from Cuba or the Caribbean. In this case, a classic from African Jazz (one of my favorite groups who recorded numerous songs praising Congolese independence), one hears a horn arrangement from Cortijo y su Combo that is quoted by African Jazz. Although it's only the horn arrangement, it's excellent to hear music from Cuba and Puerto Rico taking on 'local' colors and distinctive style in the Congo. El chivo de la campana!

Daniel Morillo

Lovely bachata music for today by Daniel Morillo. Enjoy!

Vale of Tears

"What does one more dead woman and one less poor person matter to the Republic?"

Paulette Poujol Oriol's Vale of Tears, translated from the French by Dolores A. Schaefer, is one of the most depressing novels I have read since Last Exit to Brooklyn. Set in Port-au-Prince on New Year's Eve, the plot follows the life of Coralie Santeuil, a white-skinned Haitian woman who suffered a decline in economic and social status, reduced to a destitute, disfigured, old woman who walks the streets of Port-au-Prince from slums to affluent communities to beg for the money she needs to avoid being homeless. Making her way across the fourteen stations (an obvious Christian allusion, further expounded on by the narrator who compares Coralie to Mary Magdalene), she struggles to find the money she needs and retain the generosity of former friends, landladies, pimps, and family while her weak legs struggle to carry her. 

As a prominent feminist in Haiti, Paulette Poujol Oriol's novel is a complex tale that juxtaposes the 'present' tense of Coralie's journey through Port-au-Prince with the events in her traumatized childhood and adulthood that brought her to this point of utter poverty. The marginalization, discriminatory double standards, and strict social conventions on proper "conduct" (socially, sexually, and professionally) for Haitian women are similarly criticized in conjunction with the class system that renders the majority of the population lives of misery. Through Coralie's fall from "grace" and the small world of the Haitian elite, to her position as a prostitute, beggar, laundress, factory worker, one sees a direct correlation in the status of women and the widespread poverty of the island. Given the central importance of women in Haitian society in a variety of roles, the so-called potomitan, the novel does include powerful women of the elite and lower classes, but all end up reinforcing the same sexist rules regarding sexual expression and "proper" behavior.

Indeed, women characters are just as likely as the men to support patriarchal notions of gender relations and sexuality, but, as mentioned before, this is brilliantly tied in with the subjugation of all women in Haiti and the pervasive class inequality. Numerous women who were once close with Coralie want nothing to do with her, including Magritte, a former prostitute now married to a man who cheats on her with young bouzen but she accepts as the cost of "respectability." Likewise, Coralie's best friends from her days at the Catholic boarding school (an abusive environment that mirrored her childhood experience with Aline, her stepmother), distant themselves from her because of her reputation for "misconduct" and loose morals, made worse by the amazingly swift grapevine and rumormill of Port-au-Prince society. Coralie's own children want nothing to do with her, too, the first son refusing to see her at all and the second one, Robert, believed  by Coralie to truly love her, does not even have the respect to identify Coralie as his mother to his lady guest. 

In many ways, Coralie's wounded psyche as an abused child sets her on a path of abusive relationships with men. Her distant, indifferent father does nothing to prevent her cruel and unusual treatment by her stepmother, paving the way for a plethora of negative relationships with men who use her, do not fulfill her needs beyond the superficial, and suffer unscathed from the "moral" dilemmas their relationships create. From her father to Marcel, every so-called meaningful relationship Coralie is one of men ignoring her, exploiting her naivete, or spoiling her with material goods, which becomes a degraded cycle of prostitution and loss of dignity in society's eyes. Her affair with a high-ranking German officer during WWII, her scandalous pregnancy from a former servant, her mistress status with Maurice, the lawyer, and her ultimate degradation as a prostitute in Carrefour illustrate this cycle of abuse which is traced back to her childhood.

Furthermore, the moral complexity of Coralie's character calls into question how one should identify Coralie. It is only after her ultimate fall from high society that she begins to understand and identify with the Haitian poor, particularly during her five "calm" years working at a baseball factory (symbolizing the ways in which gender oppression transcend class, and could lead to solidarity across class or color lines) after giving up her second son to a successful friend, Lise, a doctor whose husband perished in the Holocaust. Throughout her life, the relative material comfort and wealth of her father's business, her husband's coffee exports and property, and her failure to learn any household or professional work (in addition to her love for Parisian clothes, fashion, and expensive lifestyle) exemplify the restricted, materialistic pursuits of the idle Haitian elite. Moreover, Coralie's refusal to try to love her first son (and her abandonment of him for 8 years, 1938-1946), her affair with a Nazi military official, her affair with Mario, the secretary at the Dominican embassy and her elitist assumption that Marcel will marry her because of her pregnancy with Robert establish her reputation as questionable at best. 

Yet, despite these aforementioned flaws (and there are certainly more), Coralie is a victim of society's grasp on female sexual agency, as well as class confines. Not given a chance to succeed, victimized, manipulated, and tricked by her conniving stepmother, she never had much of a chance. A Haitian upper-class woman with no skills or career prospects struggles to get a job, does not last long in the few positions she finds, and, after becoming a supervisor in the baseball factory, gets her right hand paralyzed in the unsafe working condition by a perforator machine. Even when trying her best to be on the "right" path for a woman in Haitian society, not selling her body for money or favors, the obstacles facing the lower-class Haitian women are numerous. The closed world of the elite does not help Coralie, whose own family essentially banishes her under the influence of Aline. Her only "escape" as an upper-class woman was through marriage, which, ended in marital bliss but cut short by her older husband's death (and this husband, Gratien Nivel, was paternal figure for Coralie she never found in her father).

As a highly nuanced text in which all the social classes of Port-au-Prince are included, from Waney and Martissant to Petionville and Musseau, this novel endeavors to locate the entwined results of both rigid class and gender identities. Furthermore, the novel manages to avoid simple condemnation of prostitution (certainly an inevitable path for far too many women in Haiti's miserable economic opportunities) and portrays the highly nuanced role of gender, class, status, and reputation as self-replicating processes that prolong inequality. Just when one thinks Coralie finds love and acceptance, from her beautiful granddaughter who feeds her at the house of her first son, and her second son, Robert, adopted by Lise, who promises to pay for her to find a new home, her painful life ends because of a military man (who is about to start an affair with the wife of Coralie's first son, Felix) who sees his political and socio-economic status as placing him above women and the poor. 

For an interesting novel by a Haitian woman that shares this work's concern with Haitian society's attempts to control the "grave danger" of female sexuality, Katia D. Ulysse's Drifting offers a similar perspective in a Diasporic setting. This patriarchal aspect of Haitian society and the fear of a loss of respectability or daughters becoming bouzen proliferates among the lower-class Haitian immigrants in the US within the world of Drifting. Similar works by Haitian women writers also tackle this theme, though none (with the possible exception of Amour, Colère, Folie) as forcefully and with such nuance as Vale of Tears in hitting the trifecta of class, color, and gender. What's more, the English translation retains much of the Creole dialogue of the original text, adding another dimension and playful use of language for satire and humor in this novel. 

Favorite Quotes

"Coralie finally goes away with bent shoulders and a heavy heart. Rita is dead. Only Magritte remains" (69).

"She, the poor outcast, Cora la Manca, the beggar woman, cries for a long time about the fate of an unknown woman who resembles her like a sister, she cries about the child who will never have known the love and the tenderness of a mother's heart. Cora, the reprobate, cries for a long time" (78).

"Anything, even misery, rather than bringing out into the open the sordid, seamy side of the Santeuils' lives" (104).

"What would his guests say if they knew that the mother of the powerful Gratien-Felix Nivel, the extremely rich potentate, is a former brothel prostitute turned public beggar to boot?" (152)

"Coralie too abandoned the borrowed language, this French which too often is more of a barrier than a communication between Haitians" (157).

"From Felicien she gets her passive character, this tendency to submit to any will stronger than her own and to let herself be overwhelmed by adversity. That is the only legacy he has left her" (162).

"Something resembling hope quivers in a corner of her ravaged soul" (164).

"She is going to start out again calmly, slowly. She moves shakily from Morne Hercule to the exit of Petion-Ville's cemetery. Then she begins the Delmas road. She smiles thinking about Robert, the womanizer, who, up there in his isolated villa, has undressed the young foreigner" (168). 

La Parcela

Sexist song that objectifies women, but incredibly catchy bachata. I am in love with older styles of bachata for the lyrical guitar playing, something I don't usually find in contemporary bachata out of New York.

When I Was Puerto Rican

"That's part of being an imperialist. They expect us to do things their way, even in our own country."

Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican is a beautiful memoir. It's always interesting when writers return to the magical world of youth and the experience of loss, which is inevitable in one's younger days. Her moving personal story takes her from the poor barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn in the 1960s, chronicling her migrant experience, the bitter fights between her parents, and the colorful, tropical delights of her 'jibara' romanticized lifestyle. Her 'life' story during her youth seems to encompass every aspect of growing into adulthood, but I wonder how vivid and accurate can the memories of a four year-old child be? She surely embellished certainly memories with fiction literary techniques to enhance her story, which is really a tribute to a loss of life and culture due to urbanization, migration, and family discord. 

Despite some of her perhaps romanticized notions of Puerto Rican rural life (then again, I think I would rather live in rural Puerto Rico than a filthy slum like El Mangle), the other strength to this work is the attention to the experience of women as central to the narrative. Women work non-stop and get little recognition or respect, as Esmeralda Santiago's mother illustrates perfectly. The sexist, patriarchal world of Puerto Rico and New York affect young Esmeralda in ways she only begins to understand in her teen years, and highlight a factor lacking in other Puerto Rican writers, like Piri Thomas, whose famous work does not highlight themes of gender at all despite Puerto Rican women being the potomitan of Puerto Rican culture and society, too.

This memoir also reminded me of works by V.S. Naipaul, Patrick Chamoiseau and Dany Laferrière which also explored their childhoods in Martinique and Haiti. Overall, Laferrière's short fictionalized novel of his childhood in Petit-Goave is my favorite, but the parallels in all three's work is remarkable. Laferriere also shares with Santiago a narrative rooted in the influential women who raised him and the world of a child in provincial Haiti. Chamoiseau, on the other hand, shares a political subtext in his School Days that is present in Santiago's work but muted in An Aroma of Coffee. Naipaul's Miguel Street (arguably, A House for Mr. Biswas, too) also explores life in the Caribbean, provincial and urban, with similar local color, language, cultural miscegenation, and identity (including some rather humorous and intriguing conflicts along lines of gender).

Perhaps would be an interesting research topic to analyze Caribbean writers on the subject of childhood, because I am sure there are other writers who have returned to their youth and reached similar conclusions or observations on Caribbean societies, migration, gender, race, or language. There is something magical about nostalgia and youth, and I intend to read more on the subject.