Most of us here outside of Guyana are rendered speechless and tongue-tied by the recent murders in Guyana. We're calling and writing our relatives and friends in Guyana to try and get some feel for their reality, but all our calls and emails are so inadequate, so frustratingly inadequate.
So once again I rely on the connective power of this blogging media to help make some sense of it all.
The comments generated by the question at the end of this post about Guyana's future (based on a fictionalized vision in "The Visitor"-- Suspended Sentences) provided two views about the relationship between fiction and reality. And in some way, the commenters' distant exchange served to shorten the distance between my reality / location (and maybe yours too, my immigrant friends) and the reality of some who live in Guyana.
In response to my question about the vision of a future Guyana provided in the story, John (who lives here in the United States) wrote:
It's a pretty specific vision Marc has, and it's fictional, so I don't want to blur the line between fiction and reality.
One thing I would say is that the recent slaughter of the innocent 11 in Guyana is NOT my vision of Guyana, and I wish I would hear more Guyanese protesting. In that connection, it was good to see the excerpts from Balwant Bhagwandin's I Hear Guyana Cry on your website. Guyanese should be crying.
Then a few days ago, Anna (who lives in Guyana) wrote addressing John specifically:
John you are obviously not in Guyana. After another dozen dead, I for one do not cry non-stop any more. I sniffle then say earnest prayers . . . I for one, love his [McWatt's] vision of 2070 and fact inter-twined with fiction. He offers me hope. Parts are already occurring. There are so many mixed young couples. Black ladies named Persaud or De Souza, Amerindian ladies named Ali, Samuels, Williams or Hope, and Indian ladies named Hall or Smith. All permutations and combinations of mixed children--Douglas, Bufiandos, Sanatones, Mullatos, Chigroes, Eurasians! All hybrids and extremely good looking and can't wait for the race card generations to die out, with their foolish, tunnel visions!
I have to admit, as much as I admired Anna's eloquent, positive response to the vision in the story, I was less enthralled by it. Most of the "vision" was rather silly: A butt-jiggling greeting instead of a handshake, a death ritual involving a transvestite "wining" on top of a casket while a crowd of mourners chanted "wine him, wine him down to the Lord!" Unfortunately for me the silliness was too distracting to allow any appreciation for the saner moments in the vision. (Sorta like what my midget story did for the point I was making in this post.)
Now taking John's comment about blurring fact and fiction into consideration...
While I agree that fiction writing has its own creative constructs that could be understood outside of reality, I believe that good fiction (much of what I see in Suspended Sentences as a whole) does not occur in a vacuum; it comes out of a specific time, place, (sometimes an event) and sentiment--a specific set of realities. And more importantly, McWatt encourages us to remember that relationship between reality and fiction with the opening frame for the collection (to be discussed later in my review).
But like John, I too would never have envisioned Guyana's current crime horrors. The murders at Lusignan and Bartica are outside my realm of reality for Guyana (granted my own reality of Guyana is outside of it). And although the comments on this blog allow me to put my twist on things, I feel any further attempt to come to grips with it here would be even more frustratingly inadequate.
But as I continue to believe in (and marvel at) the power of this blogging media, I can hope that (in whatever small way) this helps bring more attention to what's going on in Guyana, and allows the distance between us and Guyana to be shortened by our communal outrage and desire for justice.
[My review of Mark McWatt's Suspended Sentences: Fictions of Atonement is next.]
