Kozo's Waltz

As a fan of the jazz waltz, Lee Morgan's "Kozo's Waltz" has long been a personal favorite. Blakey manages to insert a seamless drum solo into a song in waltz time. That inimitable vamp, so clearly a product of the funky Morgan, features Morgan as well as another personal favorite horn player, Wayne Shorter. 

Antoine Innocent's Mimola

Antoine Innocent's innovative novel, Mimola, offers a sympathetic portrait of Haitian Vodou and popular religion in a Haiti that appears to take place during the second half of the 19th century. Julie Georges, daughter of Rosalie, an African woman from Dahomey or the Gold Coast, loses her husband and six of her seven children. Her last child, Mimola, nicknamed Lala, also becomes sick and nearly dies, but speaking with another old African woman cognizant of things Creoles (those born in Saint-Domingue or Haiti, not Africa) do not know, tells her that she and Mimola must pay their respects to the ancestral spirits of Rosalie in order to cure Mimola. 

Assigned several tasks that require her and her daughter to embrace Vodou rituals and services, Madame Georges and Mimola eventually make the pilgrimage to Saut d'Eau, near Mirebalais, and while doing so, meet the "mulatto" cousin of Madame Georges, Francine Dajobert. Dajobert's mother, the enslaved African-born twin sister of Rosalie, was raped by a French colon. Her daughter's son, Leon, was the product of Francine and a wealthy man, which made it possible for him to be educated in France. Most of the novel is an overview of the promesse made by Madame Georges to appease the ancestral spirits in order to save the life of her daughter, who eventually becomes a manbo, or Vodou priestess herself.

However, as a realist novel that foreshadows Haitian indigénisme through its intimately detailed Vodou ceremonies, customs in the countryside, and social world of its characters, it, like the work of Lhérisson, creatively uses Haitian Creole and playful names, puns, as well as Port-au-Prince and the rural landscape to bring to life a not so distant past. As someone who has also made the trek to Saut d'Eau, (in an automobile, of course), one cannot help but be moved by Innocent's prose and the calm beauty of the waterfalls at the holy site. Innocent goes to great length to describe the trek to Saut d'Eau, the candles, vigils, prayers, music, dancing, and other customs of pilgrims seeking the miraculous from the Virgin Mary and/or the spirits. 

What's fascinating here is how Innocent manages to find the beauty and respectful elements of Vodou while using it as a metaphor for a united Haiti. Wealthy "mulattoes" and their "pure" black relations find each other through this religion, and through it a respect for their African forebears and its social value for the lower classes. Thus, through Vodou ceremonies, a respect for charity and others is maintained, as well as veneration of filial ties, which cost Madame Georges and Madame Dajobert their social standing among the elite who look down on Vodou or anything reminding them of Africa. Unfortunately, Leon, the son of Madame Dajobert, continues to reject Vodou and suffers the consequences, all the while dreaming of his cherished France. 

Meanwhile, his friend Albert, who was also educated in France and a firm believer in progress, saw the value of Vodou and related its origins to the lares of the Roman world and classical antiquity, to the religions of "primitive races" and ancestral cults. While Albert is almost certainly wrong about the influence of ancient Mediterranean religions on Vodou, it brings to mind a point raised by an academic who told me that many Haitian authors who broached the subject of Vodou were influenced by Fustel de Coulanges's study of classical antiquity, perhaps explaining in part why Innocent falsely presents the origin of the word lwa (or, loua) as lares. Perhaps positivism's three stages and Firmin's legacy also influenced Innocent, who refers to Vodou as a religious stage found all over the world, from the Celts, the ancient East, Africa, and beyond. 

Nonetheless, despite his defense of the religion from the extreme disdain of Leon, he also hopes that education, schools, theaters, and gradual change will lead to the religion's decline, although such a development will take a very long time. Moreover, as Albert wisely tells Leon, attempting by force to eradicate Vodou will cause the masses to cling to it more tightly. This brings to mind Roumain's critique of the anti-superstition campaign of the 1940s, which cruelly attempted to uproot the faith while ignoring the conditions in which it is cultivated. And despite his Marxism, Roumain, like Innocent, urged respect and honor for Vodou, even as the latter designates it as primitive and from a previous stage of religious thought.

Thus, Innocent, like the successive generation of indigénistes, saw the value of Vodou in terms of its link to the African past, respect for the origins of Haiti, and as a social glue, even if they personally disagreed with its tenets from a theological point of view. In consideration of the unstable conditions of Haiti at the time of its original publication, and the context of the Generation de la Ronde's nationalism, Mimola offers the reader a penetrating literary exercise in the importance of the religion of the masses for rehabilitating the nation's identity. If the argument of Fustel de Coulanges is relevant at all here, this disdain and rejection of the popular class's religion constitutes a key factor in the implacable social divide and lack of solidarity plaguing the country during the later half of the 19th century. 

Salem's Lot

Finally reading a Stephen King is an enlightening experience. Salem's Lot appears to encapsulate much of what is great in King's work as well as horror fiction, a genre I have not dabbled much with besides Poe and Lovecraft in the distant past. Thus, playing catch up with a classic King tale of vampires in a small New England town was a useful learning activity. King's prose is direct, life-like, and builds its setting through nearly flawless exposition. The masterful use of suspense juxtaposed to seemingly excessive description of Salem's Lot and its residents works excellently to persuade readers to invest themselves emotionally into the characters of Ben, Mark, and others. Nonetheless, as a fan of Castle Rock, this novel excels in its depiction of small town life and its intersecting personalities, families, conflicts, and relationships. There is much more to the narrative than vampires taking over a declining Maine town. Themes of loyalty, sacrifice, courage, corruption, as well as war occupy a central role, as numerous references to Vietnam and other contemporaneous events make clear. 

Macho Camacho's Beat

Macho Camacho's Beat is a hilarious satirical look at Puerto Rico through the entwined lives of 4 people in San Juan. Their lives are all shaped by a hit song that is constantly on the air, while confronting the social inequality of the 1970s through race, class, gender, and colonial lines. Rabassa's English translation was riveting, yet, the constant puns and post-modern style could be a little tiring at times. However, Macho Camacho's Beat recreates life in the capital quite vividly, bringing to mind the better satire of one of this blogger's favorite authors, Ishmael Reed. This is undeniably hilarious, with tragic undertones for the conditions of women in this Americanized (i.e. cheap) society.

J'ai peur

Beautiful.

Pfrancing

Forgot about this bluesy gem from Someday My Prince Will Come. Endless delight from this, also known as "No Blues."

Rambling Thoughts on La Charca

Although the translation of La Charca has its problems, it's a wonderful way to learn about rural Puerto Rico in the 19th century through literature. The peasantry depicted in this highland barrio are depicted as sick beings under colonial society. However, author Manuel Zeno Gandia included the landowner elites as part of the problem of this stunted, ailing society. Blackness is largely omitted here, although the racially mixed campesinos, presented as descendants of the indigenous population and European conquerors, are the racialized others who are compared to black slaves.  In many respects, this novel brings to mind Salvador Brau's writings about the mixed-race peasantry of Puerto Rico and their indolence inherited through indigenous forebears. And though the novel's critical of the Spanish colonial period, it's also critical of greed and unbridled capitalism, represented by Andujar and Galante. 

However, for this blogger, this tragic novel, in which Silvina appears to be an allegory for the island of Puerto Rico, beaten, abused, violated and manipulated by others, brought to mind Zoune in Justin Lhérisson's novel. Like Silvina, her peasant upbringing was one of abuse, illness, and ignorance, but Haitian writers, for the most part, were less likely to invest themselves in racial theories of degeneration to explain the appalling conditions in which post-emancipation Caribbean peasants often faced. But the narrator of Lhérisson's novel, when commenting on the improvements in the physical, mental, and social development of Zoune after living in a proper home, suggests optimism. In the case of La Charca, Juan, Padre Esteban, and the town doctor debate different solutions for the Puerto Rican peasant "problem," never coming to an agreement on if the solution will be found in "public" wealth, religion, or physical health and nourishment. Needless to say, hacendados like Juan are part of the problem, despite their self-proclaimed liberalism. 

Yet, despite the pessimism and theories of racial miscegenation operating in the novel, one cannot help but feel that there is some hope of change for Puerto Rico, even as the rising world of business and profit did proceed to further immiserate the Puerto Rican countryside. Moreover, as part of realist and naturalist literature, the novel is a priceless document of the daily lives, customs, entertainment, and conflicts of the campesinos in Puerto Rico's highlands. This author couldn't help but think of Bonó's El montero, which is set in a rural Dominican peasant setting, although the influence of Romanticism is stronger. The florid prose vividly brings to life Puerto Rico's beauty in the midst of its anemic, diseased coffee world. 

In the Flicker of an Eyelid

After reading the praise of Alexis's last novel in Le cri des oiseaux fous from the Dominican prostitute Mercedes, one felt compelled to read Alexis's tale of a Cuban prostitute in 1940s Port-au-Prince during Holy Week. Translated by Coates and Edwidge Danticat, one can feel satisfied knowing Danticat's lyrical voice and storytelling would capture the voice of the author. Alexis creates a vivid portrait drawing on all the senses to bring Port-au-Prince to life, particularly the crossroads of Portail Leogane and the heterogeneous Caribbean working-class. Jamaicans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, and others mingle in a society on the cusp of change as the upcoming Bicentennial Exposition and labor unrest in Cuba and Haiti foreshadow social and political change. Furthermore, unlike General Sun, My Brother, which felt occasionally overly didactic, this tale of love and redemption features the author's unavoidable socialist politics without the sounds of a protest novel.

Nonetheless, as a pivotal figure in the annals of Haitian Left, Alexis' novel provides some interesting opportunities to see how his literary imagination and Marxist inclinations coalesced. Here, it seems that the Caribbean woman La Niña, cannot find true sexual pleasure or love and, due to capitalism and imperialism, finds her options limited. Becoming a prostitute who rejected any pimp did afford a certain amount of power to her, since she was able to save her earnings, but the brutalized nature of her work (including servicing of American marines, which naturally brings to mind the US Occupation of Haiti as well as US imperialism across the region) prevents this virginal sex worker from finding any form of happiness. However, as she and her fellow residents of the Sensation Bar indicate, all women in sexist, capitalist societies are reduced to a similar status, regardless of bourgeois morality and religion denigrating sex workers. Indeed, Alexis's pro-labor politics even has a character contemplate a labor union of prostitutes. 

El Caucho, the Cuban mechanic (also, of Haitian descent through his mother) who needs La Niña just as much as she needs him to reawaken, or resurrect her past self in this Holy Week where rara drums are inescapable, represents the insurgent Caribbean worker on the move. However, he, like La Niña, is searching for love, something to complement his socialist vision of a greater future where love and reason unite for a post-capitalist order. Perhaps this is the marvelous realism of a socialist aesthetics and politics in the Caribbean, where love is selfless and the Caribbean unites. El Caucho as an allegorical Caribbean proletarian, particularly in his critiques of the Haitian political system, the limitations of the Bicentennial Exposition (millions wasted that could have been used to build factories and create jobs for La Saline or other slums of Port-au-Prince), the confused garbling of Marxists in the Fédération des Travailleurs Haitiens, or his own need for true friendship and intimacy, is seeking a rebirth or redemption like La Niña.

The novel is truly an engaging read that sensually walks one through the romance as two bodies (re)discover themselves and contemplate their place in a larger Caribbean world. Cuba's Oriente, unsurprisingly, is central here, especially as a region with strong links to the rest of the archipelago. The sun, sea, flora, fauna, landscape, colors, aromas, sights, religious fervor, and music are vividly described in great detail. This pattern resembles General Sun, My Brother but within a pan-Caribbean universe that rejects easy conclusions or answers. The novel seems to function as proof that marvelous realism, finding the marvels of everyday reality, could be the necessary component for Caribbean socialist literature to embrace local ways of knowing and being in the world. As an example of the working-class literature in the years after 1946, it also serves as a testament to a changing Port-au-Prince in which organized labor was on the rise while transitioning to the urban behemoth it is today with its semi-employed or unemployed living in ever-growing slums.