Moses Migrating

Sam Selvon's hilarious Moses Migrating, the last of the trilogy that began with Lonely Londoners, takes us back to Moses's roots in Trinidad. The comparison here is to Naipaul's The Mimic Men, in which a man from an island modeled on Trinidad, is similarly trapped between "homes" and mimicry. Here, however, Selvon playfully uses Carnival and mas as an extension of the critique of mimicry among West Indians. Moses, so obsessed with defending Brit'n, even in the face of racist immigration laws and Enoch Powell, plays Britannia for Carnival. Along the way, we learn more about the origins of Moses and Bob, his former white Friday from Moses Ascending, who may have more in common with Moses than he ever knew. Through the metaphor of playing mas, Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance is also an important Trinidadian reference, albeit one in which the Indo-Caribbean population of the island is more than just background to the plot, as we see in Moses Migrating. 

As one may expect in a novel based on dislocation and Carnival, up is down, white is black, and a changing Trinidad, appearing different to locals and tourists, reveal the problematic space in which people like Moses can inhabit, trapped as he is between colonial deference to the Mother Country and a world in constant movement, particularly the rise of Black Power, his own aging, and rootlessness. He barely recognizes Trinidad, had rarely left Port of Spain, thinks he is in love with a younger woman living with the same Tanty who raised him, but never finds the room for authenticity or honesty. Even his relationship with Galahad, a friend from the Lonely Londoner days, is not an authentic friendship as each lies or distrusts the other. Yet, with his characteristic wit, Selvon's balanced use of humor and satire allow for entertaining reading, despite the disappointing and pathetic end. In that sense, Moses could perhaps accompany the Indo-Caribbean narrator of The Mimic Men, Ralph Singh, in that London hotel with fellow transients. As Doris reminds him, his entire life is playing mas.

My Bones and My Flute

Mittelholzer's My Bone and My Flute is a well-written horror story that successfully transfers the reader back to Guyana in the 1930s. The narrator, Milton, bears an uncanny resemblance to Mittelholzer himself, and despite the dark themes and frightening suspense, there are moments when one cannot help but giggle because of the self-deprecating or absurd and self-referential references either made by Milton himself or some of the other characters. As for the horror genre within Caribbean literature, Mittelholzer is the main one who comes to mind for me, although Mayra Montero and a certain novel by the Marcelin brothers from Haiti also employ similar motifs and culturally or historically specific reference points for their mysteries. Mittelholzer did a better job with the genre than the Haitian brothers because his story is solidly within the confines of horror and does not take itself too seriously while The Beast of the Haitian Hills was all over the place. Both stories, to their credit, contain much of social import and reflect upon the rural-urban divides within both Guyana and Haiti (not to mention class and color) with some suggested morals for the reader. Much like Haiti, the slave revolutions of the past, really history in general, is never forgotten. 

A Morning at the Office

Edgar Mittelholzer's social realist novel set in a Port of Spain office in a Trinidad on the cusp of social change offers some useful insights on Trinidadian society and the author's own views on race, class, gender, sexuality, identity, and the human condition. Incorporating himself into A Morning at the Office and "telescopic objectivity," Mittelholzer's novel uses an inventive narrative framework to tie the racially diverse employees of the company into broader trends in Trinidadian society, not to mention objects that trigger memories and futures for the characters while reaffirming the objectification of individuals by their racial, gender, sexual, and class positions. Furthermore, Mittelholzer positions himself in opposition to some of the burgeoning forms of "faddist" nationalism that was evolving in Trinidad and the rest of the British West Indies at the time. Instead of valorizing Caribbean folklore or traditions from the plantation and African past, Arthur, a character presumably representing Mittelholzer as much as Mortimer Barnett, argues for an essentially Western orientation of the West Indian, a sentiment often expressed in his With a Carib Eye. 

But the real emphasis in A Morning at the Office concerns the multiple layers of social stratification in Trinidad and its "caste-like" system of subjugation. Of course, the order so adeptly described and satirized here (not to mention in the works of V.S. Naipaul or the tragicomic moments in Shiva Naipaul's work) is in flux because of growing anti-colonial sentiment, the labor movement, and black and Indian social mobility, but it is seen through the eyes of Portuguese, Spanish, English, black working-class, coloured middle-classes and gendered perspectives in the office of a company that is tied to larger themes of economics and labor in late colonial Trinidad. Each character broadly represents their social groups and the various nuances of the racial categories thrust upon them. And each character is haunted by something they cannot, for reasons of respectability, status, or happiness, attain. Each character likewise must confront their own class and racial biases in the office, with the top positions always given to whites while mixed-race members of the professional and political strata continue to look down on Indians and blacks who in turn have their own nuances (such as the wealthy creolized family of Miss Bisnauth versus the poor Jagabir who is never allowed to forget his origins on the sugar cane estates). 

For Horace Xavier, the poor black office boy hopelessly in love with the mixed-race Miss Hinckson from a respectable and influential family, his ambitious plans for the future, intelligence, and large-scale changes in Trinidadian society in the 1940s and 1950s will only propel him while the others must make sense of their different predicaments that block the road to happiness. For some, it is a question of interracial romance or forbidden love that is unacceptable to their families or society. In the case of others, it is thwarted hopes of success in writing, children, social climbing, or, as in the case of some English living in Trinidad, returning to Europe due to racism against the local population or a feeling of disdain and disgust at how white skin rewards mediocrity in a colonial context. Mittelholzer, with great humor and compassion, explores the minds of each of these characters during a few hours at the office and as much as the racialized class system appears rigid, the assertion of Horace, the career steps of Jagabir, or the promise of West Indian literature as exemplified in Barnett foreshadow the changes in Trinidadian social relations to come. 

A Brighter Sun

"He used to say that all this business about colour and nationality was balls, that as long as a man was happy that was all that mattered."

Selvon's first novel, A Brighter Sun, \tells the story of Tiger, the protagonist in Turn Again Tiger, the entertaining sequel which continues his story. Married off to Urmilla at age 16, Tiger struggles to understand manhood, or, better yet, adulthood and his place in an expanding world. Going to Port of Spain for the first time, becoming a father, working with the Americans on the Churchill-Roosevelt Road, learning to read, and gaining a deeper, nuanced understanding of knowledge, politics, and race, Tiger's vision of himself and his role as a man brightens as the sun. Of course, aspects of Trinidadian adult masculinity are certainly disturbing, such as Tiger and Joe beating their wives, but the community of Barataria and the various "characters" who populate Tiger's world illustrate nuance along race, class, gender, or political affiliations. 

Selvon, as mentioned elsewhere on this blog, is an expert at humor, the highlight of this novel being Sookdeo, the old Indian village drunk, selling his half-blind donkey that does not "look" well to another man. The vernacular dialogue also shines through this novel, which contains more than enough local colors, sites, and characterization of the countryside, village, and town. Joe Martin, Tiger's best friend in Turn Again Tiger, as well as Tall Boy, the Chinese shopkeeper, have their own backstories, too. Joe's origins in the barrackyards of George Street, for instance, or Rita and Urmilla's friendship which transcends the creole/coolie divide, remind one of Minty Alley by C.L.R. James. Like James, Selvon knows and empathizes deeply with the popular classes of Trinidad during the war, a time of tremendous change as Yankee bases hired local labor at higher wages than the sugar estates and government positions (rum and coca cola!). 

For any and everyone interested in Selvon or Trinidad & Tobago, A Brighter Sun is more than a worthwhile introduction. Although many events happen and Tiger's still unsure what exactly makes a man, the jokes aside will keep the reader enthralled by this rapidly changing world. Indeed, Tiger's growing interest in politics and the class and racial divisions, hint at greater change to come with keen attention to the facade of populist local officials in the legislative council who, despite their appeals to racial kinship, offer nothing but broken promises. Somewhat reminiscent of Naipaul's Suffrage of Elvira or the colonial politician in The Wine of Astonishment by Lovelace. 

Minty Alley

"He had, at sixteen, after much cogitation, but without preliminary, put his arm around a girl's waist and been soundly slapped. Since then he had never repeated the experiment, and often experienced difficulty in looking young women fully in the face."

Minty Alley, the only published novel of C.L.R. James, the Trinidadian Marxist, illustrates James's writing talent. Telling the story of Haynes, a sheltered middle-class young man, class, race, gender relations, and the rowdy characters in a boarding house on Minty Alley breathe life into a past Trinidad. James's great sense of humor shines throughout the text, as Haynes finally becomes a man as a "master of the house" and his relationship with the "fair sex" improves. Although very proper and English in prose as well as the dialogue for Haynes, the use of Trinidadian vernacular, one instance of patois, and the novel's colorful, determined, and newsworthy lower-class characters reveal early on how James always identified with the masses and "national" Trinidadian culture of the yard. 

The suffering of women, in particular, at the hands of the playboy, Benoit, reveal another side to James one does not find in The Black Jacobins or his other work, for example. One could rant ceaselessly without end on the complex gender dynamics of this short work, a project I may return to in the future. Moreover, Philomen, the abused Indian servant of the landlady, Mrs. Rouse, provides another example of racial and class stratification in the divided colony, a dynamic Naipaul and Selvon explore from different perspectives. Yet, here in a novel written in the 1920s, one senses where Naipaul's Trinidad fiction is coming from in describing the "Indian countryside" and the "Creole" or "Black" city. 

For those eager to read James's admirable attempt at the novel form highly recommended. Early Anglophone West Indian literature provides includes similar work to Minty Alley, which paved the way for explosion of literary production in the subsequent generation. Besides, reading Minty Alley demonstrates an early ancestor of Naipaul's Miguel Street and its comic sensibilities. One wishes James had completed that second novel, alas, but Minty Alley actually shows, from a literary angle, how James, himself not too different from Haynes in class background, came to identify with the popular classes and escape the sheltered world of petit bourgeois life. 

The Mimic Men

"We pretended to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life, we mimic men of the New World, one unknown corner of it, with all its reminders of the corruption that came so quickly to the new."

Harsh and somewhat unfair characterization of the Caribbean from Naipaul, although there was and is an undeniable mimicry of Europe and North America among some West Indians of Naipaul's generation. The Mimic Men seems like Naipaul's harsher way to distance himself from Trinidad and the postcolonial government through Ralph Singh as a deracinated Indian, uprooted from his ancient Hindu past by the sea, shipwrecked in the Caribbean or London. I think Patrick French's biography is right to emphasize Naipaul's personal life as shaping novels like The Mimic Men or A Bend in the River, which clearly draw from the author's personal frustrations and identity crisis as an "East Indian of the West Indies."

Moreover, one sees here, in The Mimic Men, the shift in Naipaul's writing from the comic satire of his previous Trinidad novels. There are a few good jokes interspersed here (sheet paper pronounced by a Maltese in London, Eden being so black out of spite that Spite becomes his nickname at school), but The Mimic Men represents a shift to sexually frustrated, anxious, protagonists of displaced Indian descent. Like Saleem, Ralph Singh is an East Indian shipwrecked in the Caribbean island of Isabella, modelled on Naipaul's origins in Trinidad. Much like the trees carried away by ocean and river currents which arrive on Isabella's beaches, Ralph Singh is displaced and caught as an 'intermediate' Asiatic in a slave island of blacks and whites. Like other people of the 'transplantation,' Singh is a mimic men in many ways, becoming what others see of him and, like the decolonized world, operating through borrowed expressions, ideas, and civilizations. 

The problem with Naipaul is one of imposing the center's view of the periphery, the Caribbean. Instead of seeing the region as transplantations and focusing on his displacement from his Indian roots, Naipaul does not engage the Caribbean as a region of History, not solely European colonies for profit. Naipaul should have spent more time reading J.J. Thomas instead of Froude, more time understanding the Haitian Revolution instead of falling into the trap of racial theory and obsession with the Metropole. Much like his Middle Passage, a travelogue whose casual racism was too much for me to complete it, The Mimic Men shares a similarly dismal view of the early postcolonial Caribbean. 

While there were certainly deep contradictions and a problem of 'mimicry' in the West Indies, and an issue of racial divisions which plagued Trinidad & Tobago, Naipaul's perspective as a postcolonial Mandarin who could not return for good to Trinidad, but accepts a sort of stasis in a London hotel through the fictional character of Ralph Singh, is quite disturbing and ignores how the societies of the Caribbean were only copies of the allegedly superior West. I could rant endlessly about this novel and its complexities, its memoir structure, how it moves back and forth chronologically or even its universal implications of mimicry and identity (Sandra, perhaps one of the most interesting female characters in Naipaul's corpus, or the university students at the School in London, for example, all are 'playing' in their own ways that mirror or differ from that of the 'half-societies' of the West Indies), but I shall leave that for future posts.

On another disturbing note, the colonial politicians (Browne, Singh, etc.) and the experiments at satisfying distress while ensnared in mimicry, actually reminded me of Idi Amin Dada. The Mimic Men was written in Uganda, where Naipaul met Theroux, and actually contains a reference to colonial politicians 'turning' the tables and having whites serve them, in a troubling portent of Idi Amin's photographs of whites carrying him. These kinds of token symbolic decolonisation did not work for the fictional Caribbean island of Isabella. They most definitely did little for Uganda under Idi Amin, who took power a few years after The Mimic Men was published.

Note: The Kindle Edition is full of grammatical or formatting errors, which made this a harder read than necessary. Fortunately, those formatting or editing mistakes for the Kindle edition were not as numerous as they could have been.

Some Favorite Quotes

"The career of the colonial politician is short and ends brutally. We lack order. Above all, we lack power. We mistake words and the acclamation of words for power; as soon as our bluff is called we are lost."

"Flight to the greater disorder, the final emptiness: London and the home counties."

"They talk of the pessimism of the young as they talk of atheism and revolt: it is something to be grown out of."

"I no longer seek to find beauty in the lives of the mean and the oppressed. Hate oppression; fear the oppressed."

"How right our Aryan ancestors were to create gods. We seek sex, and are left with two private bodies on a stained bed. The larger erotic dream, the god, has eluded us. It is so whenever, moving out of ourselves, we look for extensions of ourselves. It is with cities as it is with sex. We seek the physical city and find only a conglomeration of private cells. In the city as nowhere else, we are reminded that we are individuals, units. Yet the idea of the city remains, it is the god of the city that we pursue in vain."

"He was like me: he needed the guidance of other men's eyes."

"In London I had no guide. There was no one to link my present with my past, no one to note my consistencies or inconsistencies."

"We become what we see of ourselves in the eyes of others."

"For there is no such thing as history nowadays; there are only manifestos and antiquarian research."

"Politicians are people who truly make something out of nothing. They have few concrete gifts to offer. They are not engineers or artists or makers. They are manipulators; they offer themselves as manipulators."

"Those student associations! Playing at being students, playing at being questioning and iconoclastic, playing at being young and licensed, playing at being in preparation for the world! The dishonesty of the young!"

"To be born on an island like Isabella, an obscure  New World transplantation, second-hand and barbarous, was to be born to disorder."

"We came out into the Indian areas, the flat lands where rice and sugarcane grew. My father spoke of the voyage, so recent but already in our strange hemisphere so remote, which the fathers and indeed some of the people we saw had made from another continent, to complete our own little bastard world."

"But in our slogans, we assumed the role of metropolitan party-givers. We did so easily; at Isabella Imperial, we were natural impersonators."

"Eden was something of a buffoon. He was the blackest boy in the school and for some time was known as Spite because some boys said he was black for spite."

Ways of Sunlight

Trinidadian writer Samuel Selvon was an expert storyteller. Combining the West Indian vernacular, oral tradition, a great sense of humor, and a keen awareness of the dynamics of class, race, and colonialism, the short story collection, Ways of Sunlight, is an excellent collection of tales. Juxtaposing short stories set in Trinidad with stories set in London captures the zeitgeist of the rapidly changing postwar world. Much like his The Lonely Londoners, Selvon breathes life into his characters as they struggle, love, find happiness, experience trauma, and migrate to urban Trinidad or London. I highly recommend "Brackley and the Bed" for those seeking his great sense of humor. 

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?

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. 

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. 

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). 

Aunt Résia and the Spirits and Other Stories

"Like all the males in the area, Erminus is not too fond of Derisca. Like them, he had understood that Derisca did not need a man for all the normal reasons that other woman do. For him to tell her boring stories, for him to beat her sometimes or for him to lie on her when he feels like it and forcibly give her children."

The short stories collected in Aunt Résia and the Spirits and Other Stories, translated from the French by Betty Wilson, are thematically reminiscent of the work of Dalembert and Lyonel Trouillot. Like these two writers, Lahens captures the misery and downright degradation of life in Haiti, most effectively in Port-au-Prince settings. What distinguishes her, in my opinion, is her much stronger female characters, an ability to switch between narrators seamlessly, (one short story features second person narration) although Trouillot's Children of Heroes successfully does the same, and her metaphorical, loosely structured minimalist stories. The author's gift of prose, as translated by Wilson, illustrates this quite well, in addition to capturing the social, economic, political, gendered, and racial conflict of Haiti (the Diaspora, too, in one short story). I also appreciate Lahens comparison of the Jim Crow US South to political terror in Duvalierist Haiti, thereby connecting the struggles of Haitians at home with people of color abroad. Her stories encompasss Haiti and its complex relationship with the US.

The Beast of the Haitian Hills

"And he was annoyed by the realization that these superstitions were so strongly rooted because those of his own class had taken no serious steps to improve the pitiful living conditions of the Haitian peasant" (50).

La Bête de Musseau, the second novel of the Marcelin brothers, translated by Peter C. Rhodes, is quite similar to their first. The Beast of the Haitian Hills adds the class dynamics of Haitian society with horror, for an engaging story set in the peasant community of Musseau, in the hills outside of Port-au-Prince in the late 1930s. . Like the former work, the focus of the novel is on the community and the effects of intrusion or social disorder inevitably have. Naturally, themes of Vodou, class divisions, familial and community intrigue, and sorcery suffuse the novel, which follows the life of Morin Dutilleul, a mulatto, urban, educated Haitian of the elite. Morin Dutilleul romanticizes rural life in Haiti after spending summers in the hills with his family as a child, and dreams of becoming a planter like his free mulatto ancestors of the colonial era, eventually letting this dream and his amorous affairs cause his wife distress and death. Once free, he settles in Musseau, buys land, disrespects and insults the peasantry,  refuses to share his spring, loses his vision of idyllic life, and brings about disorder through his invasive presence (and disrespect for the loas), symbolized by the Cigouave, a mythical beast described as part dog, part man. 

What follows in the narrative is harsh social commentary on the Haitian elite (who distance themselves from the peasantry and are ultimately to blame for their ignorance and poverty), numerous instances of humorous dialogue, and division within the family and neighborhood as brothers turn against each other, greedy Vodou priests exploit the faith, and Morin himself never escapes his guilt over his wife's death, plunging into the abyss of alcoholism. Morin is presented as a highly unlikable figure, raping his servant, Sinette, talking down to Desilus, an experienced farmer he hires, insulting the justice of the peace, Delisca, and warring with Bossuet for trying to treat him as an equal. The ultimate sin of Morin is cutting down the mapou tree consecrated to Legba, and the powerful neighbor, Bossuet, a suspected bocor, disappears, and allegedly returns with the mythical Cigouave, a beast from the caves of Forban Gorge, to terrorize the community. As the characters turn on each other (Ti-Charles, brother of Bossuet, is even attacked by the 'beast,' which Morin initially believes to be no more than a dog, but then sees the beast himself), the the 'balance' of the community is thrown asunder as fear, ambition, greed, and violation of tradition leads to the downfall of multiple characters. 

Thus, I prefer to see the Cigouave as a metaphor for the destruction of the community's values and traditions, as Ti-Charles wants to marry his godsister (something forbidden in the community) and suffers an attack from the Cigouave, losing his genitalia, Morin is responsible for his wife's death, Horace turns his back on the loas solely for Catholicism (causing his wife to lose the child in her whom, for she does not obey the ancestor's instructions in her dream), and Sinette plotted with Desilus (who believes his own son, sent to Petionville, is a lougawou draining his life) to turn Morin into a lover she could exploit, only to be cursed by Baron Samedi and forced to flee. All suffer the consequences of possession, disfigurement, death, and family dissolution, with loas or 'evil spirits' such as the 'beast' (the Cigouave) representing the conflict of interests, neuroses, and emotional turmoil of the characters. 

The conclusion of the novel ends with the community restoring its balance, yet the character blamed for controlling the Cigouave somehow escapes judgment, and actually succeeds in taking on Irma, the young lover of the brother, Charles, he is suspected of killing with the 'beast.' Morin, the invading force of Port-au-Prince in this rural community, is haunted by his actions and meets an ignoble end, with the Cigouave on his trail. In a sense the novel seems to articulate a pro-peasant sensibility, with the urban mulatto, Morin, as nothing more than disruptive, a predator of 'beast' to the Haitian peasantry. Nonetheless, the novel contains so much nuance and personal stories from the residents of Musseau to hastily complicate this narrative, since Rossini, the houngan, is hardly impartial, nor is Delisca initially on the side of justice, but favoring the 'law' (which was made for and by people like Morin, which is why Delisca initially sides with Morin against Musseau when he cuts down Legba's mapou). Last but certainly not least, Bossuet himself exploits his image as a sorcerer to take what he wants, exert influence, and even attain prestige and friendships with members of the Haitian urban elite. Things are not so black and white in rural Haiti, as this author shows (even Delisca, in the end, allegedly sides with Bossuet, who reappears after Morin returns to Port-au-Prince).

Much could be said solely about the approach of the authors to Vodou in this text. Clearly, the worldview of the Vodouissants in this novel is not removed from reality, but part of it for the community, and clearly rooted in the peasantry's sense of self and health. When the loas 'mount,' even Morin is not entirely removed from the experience,  and fatalism is not unique to the followers of the loas, but also the 'strict' Catholics, such as Horace and Sinette, who suffer the consequences of not honoring the lwa. Baron Samedi's prominence in this story, as the head of the Gede spirits, is also noteworthy, given how Legba's anger should have been more central because of the mapou tree. Yet, Papa Legba seems conspicuously absent, despite references to the crossroads and his importance in all Vodou ceremonies, maybe symbolizing the lost of harmony and communication in the community, but even Morin comes to see himself as Baron Samedi in the horrific scene of rape and alcoholic excess. 'Ogoun Badagros' also surfaces in the novel's conclusion, as the guardian spirit of the dying Desilus who then mounts the son of Desilus, perhaps appropriate given how Desilus's temperant seems to match this loa. While some may emphasize the 'negative' treatment of the Haitian religion in this text, it reads to me as more nuanced and supportive of the faith, while critical of the Haitian elite and the forces that trap the peasantry in material poverty (which, unfortunately, includes some 'witchcraft' tied to avarice, as in the case of Bossuet or Tonton Bossa in the previous novel).

Here are some of my favorite quotations from the text, which illustrate the richness of proverbs, local wisdom, humor, and social commentary in this novel.

"The painful and savage struggle of the small mountain share-cropper with the elements was a closed book to him" (3).

"His ancestors, like all Haitians of their rank, had been planters long ago, and he remembered his with nostalgia, and considered his present status as a sign of decadence" (4).

"Since he had come into contact with the peasants, he now found them on close inspection, too uncouth and poverty-stricken and, despite this, 'without the slightest respect for well-to-do folk'" (17).

"He even deplored their presence in the countryside, though he knew perfectly well that it belonged more to them than to him and his class" (18).

"And Morin finally understood that, despite the modest air he put on, this peasant intended to deal with him on an equal footing, and this realization did not fail to irritate him"  (23).

"Appointed by the central government, the rural police chiefs are empowered with complete authority for the maintenance of order in the communities over which they preside" (30). 

"'You also forget many well-to-do people have long ago abandoned faith in their family gods. Just because they sometimes have a lighter skin than ours, they forget that they too are children of Yayoute, our common African ancestor, and assume they have no more obligations toward the gods. But the loas never forget what is their due'" (73).

 "The bull shits, thinking he will soil the pasture, but he only dirties his own hind quarters" (142).

"For some time now the atmosphere of this peasant setting―where the natural and the supernatural, far from being dialectically opposed to each other, were bound together in an indivisible whole―had made him extremely sensitive" (178). 

"The Cigouave never howled, and the village of Musseau, undisturbed, went on sleeping peacefully" (210). 

Canapé-Vert

Philippe Thoby-Marcelin, co-author of the novel

"Doesn't the proverb say that bad luck is the young brother of the wretched?"

Despite the translator's racist introduction to Haiti, Canapé-Vert stands out in Haitian literature as the first novel to be translated into English. Winner of a Latin American literary award, Canapé-Vert tells the story of a peasant community in the eponymous area, right outside of Port-au-Prince, sometime during World War II. Steeped in oral traditions, Vodou, and Creole phrases and song, the Marcelin brothers establish the encompassing narrative around the trials of the community after a prominent houngan makes a deal with Baron Samedi in return for wealth. His sons become zombies, his wife distraught, and the man's evil sorcery for greed and prestige costs the entire community their fragile equilibrium. 

While at times perpetuating a stereotype of the Haitian peasantry as superstitious, accepting of their lot, and fatalistic, the authors endeavor to show how the worldview of the peasantry is not divorced from that of the reader for explaining the 'curse' on the community and the toll it takes. While they may attribute some of the misfortune to their loas, or a failure to care for the loa, the characters are ultimately responsible for their actions and the authors show how greed, lust, love, depression, and power relations impact the community's harmony. At first, I was put off by the inclusion of numerous characters into the short novel (225 pages), but the large cast becomes inseparable to show how sorcery, greed, and social cohesion are all rooted in the familial and communal spaces of peasant society. 

Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how Catholicism is certainly not absent from the peasantry's world, given their 'bush priest,' attendance at Catholic services, and use of Latin in funerals and Vodou ceremonies. And while some Vodou priests are guilty of 'pious fraud' and and clearly not that devout (their desire for money often overrides concern for their followers), the case of the Breton priest called upon for the funeral of Grande Da's son shows how Christian religion can be a tool for personal ambition and avarice, too. Thus, in my opinion, the text approaches Vodou in a balanced and respectful way, showing how the 'supernatural' beliefs of the peasant community are not disconnected from their earthly world, but personified by the characters themselves. 

Despite the dissolution of families and numerous deaths in the novel, the author's include comedic relief, too. Previlon, the gambling drinker (and son of Grande Da) provides numerous instances of humor throughout the story, although quick to blame his misfortune in gambling on the 'mystère' haunting him. The riddles, cockfight, dances, coumbite, and wakes are depicted as moments of light-hearted solidarity and radiant positivity of the peasantry, which is completely lacking in the lower-class neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Bois-de-chêne, where most women are prostitutes, the police regularly beat and arrest Sanite's cousin, and the houngan is one of those 'pious frauds' who tries to dupe Sanite (which is one of the hilarious sections of the story, as the priest's friend masquerades as Nibo to fool Sanite for 50 gourdes). Thus, when one juxtaposes the urban versus rural dichotomy, the peasantry, despite the poverty, disease, and abuse by the authorities of the state, appear to have a stronger communal-basis to tackling their poverty. In addition, there is a light-heartedness and sense of humor in the narration and the peasant community that is absent from the gritty, dangerous neighborhood Sanite briefly resides in with her prostitute relative. 

In addition, the experience of Josaphat, who returns from Cuba after his father, Tonton Bossa, dies due to the failure of his to maintain his deal with Baron Samedi, becomes ensnared in this 'doom' the community faces as others become sacrificed to appease the loa. The abuse of power committed by the head of the rural police is also integral to this, given how he is behind the scenes, stirring emotions and exploiting the landless in order to find greater profits. Thus, sorcery in this tale is tied with greed, and a failure to sustain social cohesion. Josaphat, who returns to Haiti from Cuba as Jose, survived extreme exploitation as a cane cutter, also representing an uglier side to the Haitian countryside as it loses people to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, another form of family dissolution and communal breakdown (in this case, Josaphat was forced out of his family by his own father, who abandons him and his mother, Ti-Tante, to pursue the sister of Grande Da, the aforementioned manbo).

Last but certainly not least, the novel is interesting in its omission of the bourgeois families of the town, whose influence is certainly felt but are conspicuously absent. There are allusions to tenant farmers, and, as previously mentioned, corrupt government officials, but the elites living in Port-au-Prince never make an appearance in the novel. Some women from the peasantry are sent off to work as maids for these families, but the families of the same class background as the Marcelin brothers are never present, unless one counts the young houngan from a lower bourgeois family. Why is that? Perhaps it reflects a desire on the part of the authors to fully capture the realities of life of the peasantry in the countryside, without mentioning the elite families, who are written off as "not understanding" the worldview of the peasantry when Dorvilus never explains why he could not bring in his dog, rabid with rabies, after the murders in the novel's end. Nonetheless, I am eager to read the Marcelin brothers's next novel, which explores the topic of a Haitian upper-class man choosing to leave the city to live in a peasant community. 

Between Two Worlds

Simone Schwarz-Bart's Between Two Worlds, translated from the French original, Ti-Jean L'horizon, by Barbara Bray is an enchanting magical realist tale about slavery and identity in Guadeloupe, the author's homeland. While clearly specific to Guadeloupe and its rural communities, this postcolonial tale incorporates elements of pan-Caribbean culture and history (slavery, the zombi, a quote from Jacques Roumain, and a return to Africa) to tell the tale of Ti Jean, a young man from Fond Zombi who must return the Sun and save his community, which falls into reenslavement as eternal darkness reigns over the world. Along the way, Ti Jean experiences love, friendship, travels to Africa, France, and the Kingdom of Shades, and is forced to accept himself for what he is and take root in Guadeloupe. 

Although multilayered and at times a bit confusing (the numerous chapters where Ti Jean travels to Africa, for instance, and the dense mythological allusions and history can be hard to follow at times), Ti Jean's tale emphasizes the importance of Guadeloupe and its people's right to live free and with pride. The protagonist's grandfather, the 'Immortal One' who represents the maroons of the days of slavery, and the world of the descendants of slaves who meekly accept their condition, must learn to take pride in their land and free themselves of colonial thinking. Yet, the author does not fall entirely into negritude thought, since Ti Jean's return to Africa is not accepted by Wademba's people, thereby making the people of the Caribbean a branch of the African tree which must find roots in Guadeloupe. 

The text is full of local colors, supernatural events, travels across oceans and rivers, and last, but certainly not least, fully-fleshed symbolism and heroic archetypes. Ti Jean, compared to the Sun multiple times, ultimately frees it (metaphorically freeing the people of Guadeloupe from slavery and white domination) from the Beast (a cow with a pelican nesting in its ear), reminding one of Haitian literary giant Jacques Stephen Alexis, who also wrote of the Sun as an ally of the poor. In addition to ties with that tradition, the text quotes Jacques Roumain's Masters of the Dew in the final section, thereby linking itself with broader trends and a tradition of peasant novel and anti-colonial significance in the French Caribbean world. Needless to say, I could rant without end about the book, its cyclical message, the passionate critique of colonialism, and the numerous worlds the protagonist lives between, but I'll end here. Those eager to read of a fictionalized but highly integrated worlds of death, Africa before colonialism, and 20th century Guadeloupe should be highly interested in this novel. 

Favorite Quotes

"To tell the truth, it is a completely unimportant scrap of earth, and the experts have once and for all dismissed its history as insignificant."

"Moreover, it has a long history, full of wonders, bloodshed, and frustrations, and of desires no less vast than those that filled the skies of Nineveh, Babylon, or Jerusalem."

"Nor did they ask themselves whether Guadeloupe was of any importance in the world, they knew, they knew that rare happenings and unparalleled glories had been seen in the wretched forest they now haunted, and that these deeds had been the exploits of their ancestors."

"Instead of bringing everyone together under one shelter, darkness seemed to have stolen in between the living bodies, making them look just like dim shapes to one another, bereft of their weight of flesh and blood and old alliance."

"And our hero's heart was moved, moved by the living these familiar images as if the two worlds had held out their hands to each other, century after century."

"Being alive and dead at the same time, he belonged to both worlds yet was to both a stranger, as incongruous and out of place on earth as if he had fallen down from a star."

Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes

"The cycle will never end. Blood grows where blood is uprooted..."

Derek Walcott's Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes is an enjoyable tragedy that tells the fall of Henri Christophe's kingdom in northern Haiti. While not historically accurate (Boyer does not appear at all, and the author places most of the blame for the assassination of Dessalines on Christophe), the play uses verse and Shakespearean tragedy to explain the 'ruin' of Haiti at the beginning of independence. 

Greed, ambition, love of self, or whatever else you may call it, brings upon the inevitable end of Dessalines and Christophe as both declare themselves king and place themselves above their subjects. Vastey also appears in the text as a scheming figure who plots for Christophe, and the massacres of the remaining whites in Haiti by Dessalines is also presented as a horrible bloodbath of excessive vengeance. Indeed, Walcott subtly critiques the notion of racial divisions in the multicultural Caribbean, yet the characters in the play are never able to transcend color divisions, even in the grave (a particularly powerful scene near the play's conclusion includes a discussion of this between Vastey and Christophe). 

Thus, greed, ambition, and the conflict for suzerainty over the nation, and the failure to reverse the decay wrought by 13 years of war after the fall of the 'noble' Toussaint Louverture trap Haiti in a cycle of political conflict as generals plot intrigue. In truth, the author romanticizes Louverture as someone who would never declare himself king, and dies gracefully in the Jura Mountains, thereby leaving Haiti bereft of a leader who would allegedly espouse democratic principles and interracial harmony (again, Walcott uses history to suit the ethos of his time, Caribbean decolonisation in the 20th century). Furthermore, religion is presented in an interesting way in this text, as Christophe rejects Christianity and Vodou while Brelle, his archbishop, dies by Christophe's hand. 

Favorite Quotes

"Christophe loves Haiti, like himself, cruelly.

But like a well-intentioned physician, he bleeds

It too much."

"In death, Henri, the bone is anonymous;

Complexions only grin above the skeleton;

Under the grass the dust is an anthology of creeds and skins."

The Infamous Rosalie

"Only our gestures of revolt truly belong to us."

Trouillot's The Infamous Rosalie stands out as being one of the few works of Haitian literature to explore the experience of women in colonial slavery. Partly inspired by the true story of an Arada midwife who killed 70 infants to prevent them from becoming slaves, Trouillot's novel focuses on Lisette and the family of women who survived the horrors of the Middle Passage and slavery to care for her in the north of Saint Domingue in the mid-18th century. Drawing from history and her own imagination, the novel predicts Haiti, uses the Makandal-inspired poison hysteria, the Maroons, and the social structure of Saint Domingue to craft a believable and lyrical novel. Reclaiming the role of women in Saint Domingue as possessing agency in the face of unspeakable brutality is an impressive feat, and will, in time, be followed by future novels exploring women and slavery in Haitian history.