The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

In protest and in hope

Whether they were forced to do it, or opted to shut down to protect the identities of the bloggers, I, and some of the readers of this blog who have been emailing me with questions all day, am very concerned about the disappearance of Living Guyana, Guyana's most widely-read blog, whose authors have been the most critical of Government and media operations in Guyana.

Although I agree bloggers should adhere to the same code of ethics and standards for verifying sources of their stories as any credible media, I also believe that in order to fight corruption and the possibilities of retribution, one must rely on anonymous whistle blowers, and take risks with the stories they tell.  Living Guyana fought corruption bravely and honourably, and it seems as if they paid the price for the fight.

Nothing to be ashamed of there. 

I (and all the folks who have been harassing me with questions all day--what the hell do I know...really?) hope the bloggers return to the good work they have been doing very soon.

The Government of Guyana: "Guyana's financial system is stable"

Today's Guyana online newspapers carry several articles which repeat a statement issued by the government of Guyana denying stories that the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) is in a state of crisis, and is seeking a billion-dollar bail-out from the Central Bank.  The government's statement seems hell-bent on denying and on castigating the bearers of those stories about the state of GBTI, particularly those carried by Living Guyana and a VCT newscast (which were later retracted by both media).   

So here's the good news about Guyana's financial system as spread reported by the government of Guyana:

The Government further wishes to condemn in the harshest possible manner what appears to be a coordinated attempt to cast aspersions on the strength of our financial system. Such an approach is reckless and completely inconsistent with the practice of responsible journalism by knowledgeable professionals. As has been reiterated by the Central Bank, Guyana’s financial system continues to be stable and the financial institutions operating in Guyana remain well-managed and financially sound.

Meanwhile, CLICO clients are still worried about their policies, and there appears to be a lot of silence around the state of affairs over there.  Stabroek News couldn't get a comment from the Insurance Commissioner, Maria van Beek in response to customers' complaints about their policies and their concerns about an economic downturn.

And as the Government of Guyana seems intent on sending this message about financial stability, there appears to be more lack of confidence about their handling of money--this time from Canada.  In an effort to make its international assistance "more focused, more effective, and more accountable," the Canadian government (in a statement on Monday) recently dropped Guyana from its list of aid recipients.  A condition President Jagdeo claimed to be unaware of two days ago. 

Now given these internal and external concerns about Guyana's money dealings and management, one wonders who this emphatic talk about a stable state of financial affairs by the Government of Guyana is meant to pacify?

[More later] 

The Guyana Police Force investigates a blog

In the midst of what appears to be a major financial crisis in Guyana, which has Opposition leaders, Robert Corbin (PNCR) and Raphael Trotman (AFC) calling for the resignation of Guyana's Minister of Finance, Ashni Singh, and the Commissioner of Insurance, Maria van Beek, the Guyana Police Force is investigating two false stories carried by Living Guyana bloggers today. 

Now on the plus side, this is definitely an indication that bloggers in Guyana are being taken seriously, and as a result should behave like any responsible media and check sources carefully and so forth.  To their credit, they did the right thing and retracted the stories once they discovered they were false. 

On the negative side, Living Guyana (as I said somewhere on this blog last year) has become a largely credible place for giving us the stories other media in Guyana seem reluctant to carry.  So this investigation, which for the moment has quieted their voices over there, seems to me an attempt to keep the fallout stories from this financial crisis out of view.  This investigation is rather suspicious to me.  Highly suspicious.

Over at baiganchoka

Given all the talk and some recent action against "offensive" lyrics in Caribbean music, I wonder if the focus appears to be on the indicators of some very serious societal ills, rather than on the causes of those ills.  What do you think?

A lack of "West-Indian-ness" in Mittelholzer's work?

In an older version of the debate on the definition of the Caribbean novel (older than Ruel Johnson's and Michael Gilkes's--two recent voices featured somewhere on this blog), Juanita Cox writes that Edgar Mittelholzer (and others like Sam Selvon) argued that the role of the writer was to focus on universal concerns and qualities of human nature, while Alfred Mendes, Doreen Grayson, and others maintained that the focus needed to be more inward looking and regional.  Those in the latter group, Cox writes, championed the development of folklore over the possibility of becoming "the imitation of a British Council dummy." 

Naipaul, she adds, pronounced a lack of "West-Indian-ness" in Mittelholzer's work, and theorized that this was so because the books (generally) read by the professional West Indian novelist tended to be books of England and American and European writers.  Naipaul saw this as a detrimental condition where art followed art instead of life. 

Far away (in knowledge and emotion) from the jostling of that crowd, I contend that in Shadows Move Among Them, Mittelholzer was probably having a little fun with those who saw his work as devoid of West Indian-ness, particularly the folklore advocates.

Shadows Move Among Them is set in Berbice (called the Jungle in the novel), and is a story about a British missionary family who set up an experimental community, a utopia, in the Jungle among Amerindians, complete with its own rules and religion (all anti-Western, but certainly not devoid of Western influence), and over which they exercise authority.  The society set up by Reverend Gerald Harmston is a loosely hierarchical, spartan, communal one, in which the citizens are allowed to freely pursue their talents.  There are no prohibitions against (protected) sex, their religion is a casual unceremonious affair, as is their attitude towards all other types of typical milestones in peoples' lives--birth, marriage, death. 

Into this world comes Gregory, a visitor (family member of the Harmstons) from England who is seeking respite from his life there.  He is wealthy, mentally tormented, and sexually repressed, and he very quickly finds himself in an antagonistic relationship with the free-spirited members of the Jungle society.  This of course provides much of the novel's tensions. 

The depiction of this utopic, anti-Western, Jungle society is done with a realistic mix of humor, truth, and incredibility, a fitting combination for the period in Guyana.  The novel was published in 1951, a noteworthy year in Guyana's quest for independence.  In 1951, the PPP under the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the late Forbes Burnham was at its galvanizing point: 1951 was the year of the first PPP congress, and was the year when the British Colonial Office sent a commission to Guyana to examine proposals for constitutional changes.

As we know, the once promising union in the original structure of the PPP would dissipate and in its place would be much of what we see in Guyana's politics today.  The societal experiment in Shadows could be seen as mirroring (and foreshadowing) the larger societal experiment playing out in New Amsterdam (Mittelholzer's place of birth), and Georgetown in the 1940s, 1950s and onwards.

In addition to its messages about the possibilities of forming a society based on anti-Western ideals, Shadows, with its mysterious dark moments filled with folklore, which all turn out to be part of the reality of Jungle life, may well be Mittelholzer's attempt to poke fun at the ongoing debate on the true definition of literature from the region.  In Shadows folklore is dark, erotic, and comic, which would most likely have appealed to a wider audience outside of the region  After all, regardless of the way the writers sought to define their West Indian-ness, there were (still are for many) bigger marketability issues with which to contend. (Mittelholzer must have had some fun demonstrating the outside appeal of folklore.)

Shadows was a notable success, described as "foreign, hard-to-classify, showed skill with an out-of-the-way-locale" by Time Magazine in 1951.  And as much as some may cringe at the Time Magazine description today, it would certainly have been pleasing to a publisher, and would have taken precedence over any other description of the West Indian novel at the time, especially if the West Indian writer wanted to earn a living with his craft.

I found Shadows an entertaining combination of rich and strange (yeah even to me, Time Magazine), gothic and comical, sexy and romantic.  Its characters are full of depth and memorable, and I fully recommend it as a good read.  

And to bring both sides of the old debate together, I also found Shadows to be both a story of Guyana (a West Indian story), and a story with universal concerns and qualities of human nature. 

(Hmmmm...wonder if it's possible to do the same with the newer version of this debate on the Caribbean novel...) 

Meme: 25 writers who have influenced me

Geoffrey, thanks for the opportunity to do this.  In no particular order I list:

1.  Maxine Hong-Kingston: for Woman Warrior, and for every word she wrote / uttered in its defense.

2.  Maya Angelou: for every bit of her pain and triumphs she has shared with women all over the world.

3.  James Baldwin: for just about every angry, bitter word he dared to write.

4.  Raymond Carver: for his effortless combinations of strange and ordinary.

5. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels was a childhood favorite, and became even more significant when I read it as an adult.

6.  Margaret Atwood: Handmaid's Tale was my first introduction to "feminist dystopia."

7.  Chinua Achebe: for presenting a condition in Anthills of the Savannah in which I found solidarity.  And for Things Fall Apart, of course.

8.  Alice Walker: for the women in Color Purple

9.  Gloria Naylor: for The Women of Brewster Place.

10.  V. S. Naipaul: Miguel Street enlivened my high school lit. experience. 

11.  Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: for teaching me about the power of signifyin'.

12.  Richard Wright: Native Son is the most problematic and most memorable novel I've ever read about the condition of black men in America.

13.  Jamaica Kincaid: for ridiculing colonialism with plain-spoken eloquence. 

14.  Toni Morrison: The beauty of analyzing her work lies in my belief that no matter how much I dig I'll never exhaust any of it.

15.  J. M. Coetzee: for making a middle-aged, white, male South-African who sleeps with his female black student, and then stalks her until she drops out of school, appear sympathetic.

16.  Charles Dickens: for his male characters.

17.  Emily Bronte: I read Wuthering Heights as a young girl, and it helped me create an image of a man that no real man could match.

18.  Charlotte Bronte: I read Jane Eyre as a young girl as well (see comment above).

19.  George Orwell: for everything.

20.  George Eliot: for Mill on the Floss.

21.  T. S. Eliot: for The Wasteland, and "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock."

22.  Theodore Dreiser: for Sister Carrie.

23.  Anzia Yezierska: for her anger, and her female Jewish characters.

24.  Jean Toomer: for the voiceless "portraits" of women in Cane. 

25.  Grace Paley: for everything.

______________________

Tagged:  Andre, Annand, Blade Runner, Brass, Kwesi, Lloyd, Malcolm, Marcus, Nicholas, Raptus, Ruel, Silver Dragon, Stolid.  

[If I tagged you, you are now obligated to provide your list of 25, or the blog-meme demons will infest your site and make it impossible for you to write another intelligent word.]

A vision of utopia in Edgar Mittelholzer's Shadows Move Among Them

Before I even put one scared foot in the United States of America, a friend of mine who had a brother living here thought he'd do me a huge favor by relating didactic stories about busted illusions in America. 

He talked about well-packaged boxes which were supposed to contain the latest in television technology and instead turned out to be boxes full of heavy junk once the purchasers got home and opened them.  And he talked of out-of-business notices on the doors of stores discovered by the angry purchasers when they returned to get back their money.  He talked about muggings, and police raids which ended in dead people of colour, usually immigrant people of colour.  He talked about Americans who hated each other, but who joined forces in turning up their noses at "smelly" foreigners who were intent on taking their jobs and food off their tables.

He thought he was preparing me for America, but all he did was annoy me.  I felt all the people who had been tricked, mugged, despised, maybe even killed were probably deserving of such treatment. In my ignorance, I thought only stupid, greedy people get fooled and tricked.  That was until I was seduced by clever marketing schemes designed to prey on the weaknesses, desires, wants of even the most discerning consumer.

There was the one which promised an easy life of millions if you could write a simple letter (who can't write a simple letter, right?).  There was another that promised a life of travel to exotic places and all the world's exciting places of adventure if you could just write a simple, catchy story.  Then there was the one that promised (once again) easy millions while you made people's lives better.  Nice eh?  So all of us who thought we could do better than write a simple letter or who craved adventure or who wanted to be of some service to others, bought into the schemes hook, line, and sinker.  

And, to credit our intellect, these weren't cheap tricks like falsely packed boxes bought from shady store fronts.  Oh no!  We were too smart for that!  We had to get our shafting from high-priced, silken-packaged dicks. 

At the core of it all, what we have in common--the fools with the empty boxes, and the bigger fools with empty wallets--is that we bought into, still buy into, the promises of America. 

We all to varying degrees believe that anyone can start off with very little or nothing, and move his way up to great financial wealth regardless of his background.  So we immigrants get past the hurdles of "foreignness" or race or gender and position ourselves for financial success.  And then we get swept up in it.

It's no secret why most of the schemes designed to empty our wallets work.  They work because they prey on our belief in another of America's promises: that it is possible to achieve financial success in relatively little time.  One guru posits, "Seven Years to Seven Figures." Another says, "Why wait, If you could do it in less time?"  And they have the lifestyles and testimonials to prove that it can be done.  So we follow the rush rush path of America where everything is fast and delivered so quickly we're in too much of a head spin to analyze properly before we click on it or give our approval for payment.  Successful marketers know this and promise the quick way to big bucks so smoothly that we believe.

But, as we've seen too often in recent times, the quick way to big bucks only makes the downward plunge a harder fall.

There's good news though, and it lies in another of America's promises.  It is the promise that one can reinvent himself and live again.  So don't be too surprised if the Madoffs and Stanfords and Brassingtons and all the mythly-made tycoons who were recently busted, and those who justly or unjustly fell with them here in America recover and reinvent successfully once this is all over and appropriate (or inappropriate) time has been served.  It's the American way.

And while you ponder that, here's an excerpt from Mittelholzer's Shadows Move Among Them which describes part of the utopic vision of a society in Guyana's Interior that may be part antithesis to / part precisely descriptive of the myths of America.  I'll leave it to you to decide which is similar and which differs from that of America's myths.

. . . . Our idea is that life should savour of a sort of play--a perpetual minute-to-minute play.  We believe that the only way to achieve true happiness is to forget reality--forget that we're serious, intellectual, noble creatures--and just live our lives: enjoy the sunshine and the trees, and anticipate rain and thunder as the necessary shading in the picture.  Do just enough work to keep our minds and bodies healthily occupied and to provide ourselves with food and shelter and entertainment.  Don't aim at bossing it over your fellow-men, or dressing better than your neighbour or puffing yourself up like a sick frog.  Just be natural and create fun out of the stuff of life.  Believe in fairies and ghosts and jumbies and goblins and build up myths around them--but always in the spirit of play-acting. . .

[My final say on Mittelholzer's Shadows Move Among Them in three days.]

The 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize short lists (announced today)

Of interest to some of you (to me certainly) may be that one of the writers shortlisted for Best Book in the Canada/Caribbean region is Grenadian Jacob Ross for his novel, Pynter Bender.

See complete 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize short lists here.

Pynter Bender was included (along with a brief description) in Nicholas Laughlin's list of 2008 CRB books of the year.

To all versions of Marys and Johns, Marys and Marys, and Johns and Johns who read this blog...

From Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings":

John and Mary meet.  What happens next?  If you want a happy ending, try A.

A

John and Mary fall in love and get married.  They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging.  They buy a charming house.  Real estate values go up.  Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are devoted.  The children turn out well.  John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends.  They go on fun vacations together.  They retire.  They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging.  Eventually they die.  This is the end of the story.  

B

Mary falls in love with John but John doesn't fall in love with Mary.  He merely uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind.  He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you'll notice that he doesn't even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he's eaten the dinner he fucks her and after that he falls asleep, while she does the dishes so he won't think she's untidy, having all those dirty dishes lying around, and puts on fresh lipstick so she'll look good when he wakes up.... More here.

[To the wonderful folks who read this blog who are in relationships resembling the above types or worse or better or whatever or none, have a Happy Valentine's Day! Mmmmuah!]

A man with honest hands and heart?

Amidst the bawdy humour, the witty digs at Guyana’s politicians and politics, and the pointed observations on societal norms in Ian McDonald’s engagingly narrated “Pot O’Rice Horowitz’s House of Solace,” is the brief, but poignant story (or portrait) of an artist, Mohammed.  He is described as a house painter, but his role in the story may be seen beyond that of just painter.

 

You could hear hammering in the building and a house painter call Mohammed come to paint design on the walls of the parlor.  Cool designs, man.  Peacocks and palaces and bright moons and a test under a set of green trees with his feet cock-up and playing the old flute dreamy-eye as hell.  People have to wonder what funeral got to do with this, but nobody talking now, they only puzzling their heads and waiting to see what is what.  A couple of the boys standing up outside praising Mohammed's design.  "Oh God, man, that is good.  That is art, boy.  That is old art."  And Mohammed please as hell you could bet because he have a big desire to paint imprison in the heart like a sharp knife blade, and it only because it is Sparrow Town and he have a wife and six kids already and he is a sober man supporting them that he can't let the desire go like a hot piss and deluge the whole world with all the fire and the hot beauty and the rage of all the paintings lock up in the soul inside him and can't get out.

 

Mohammed paint a sign too, in gold letters all surround with wreath and stars and moon and thing: "Horowitz's House of Solace."  It look good.  It really look fine.  Mohammed really excel heself.  Discreet as hell but brave too, you know how.  It bound to make an impression.  "Horowitz's House of Solace."  The citizens of Sparrow Town glad to have a brain who could think ofa sweet name like that . . . Solace . . . Because of that word all the old people not so frighten to die anymore . . . It true no man in he guts really like to dead don't mind how brown things might be.  But if the setting is right, man, then at least the old people heavy like a stone with despair feeling a little music drowning out the terrible black eternal summons. 

 

Mohammed is the creative mind behind the house Pot O’ Rice funds to enable “economic development” in Sparrow town.  And while the purpose of this house is dubious, one gets a sense that the artist is sincere about his role in it all.  Many implications there of the role of the artist (or the labourer) in the building process of a country’s development, uh? 

Although I appreciated the powerful (feminist) moment when the old women storm the house, and take back their men (and the town’s morals to some degree), Mohammed’s story is probably my favourite moment overall.

If you read "Pot O' Rice Horowitz's House of Solace," what was your favourite (or least favourite) moment?