The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

United States Census 2010: I hope this counts

A message from the Director, U.S. Census Bureau...

This is your official 2010 Census form. We need your help to count everyone in the United States by providing basic information about all the people living in this house or apartment [There's room to list and describe up to 12 people in my house or apartment] . . .

Census results are used to decide the number of representatives each state has in the U.S. congress. [Thanks, not that I have any particular problem with the many in NJ who are currently doing a bang-up job representing me and my inclusive views about gays and lesbians...].

The amount of government money your neighborhood receives also depends on these answers. That money is used for services for children and the elderly, roads, and many other local needs . . .

The answers you give on the census form cannot be obtained by law enforcement or tax collection agencies [Bet you there's a loophole for that in the case where 'national security' or some such may be at risk]. They cannot be obtained with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request [Well that's kinda dramatic, but good to know we're protected against that at least--'you can't pull that FOIA shit on me mr. lawman, but you can quite legally get the info from my employer, thank you'].

As allowed by law, census data becomes public after 72 years [I'll be too old to care, or I'll be dead by then anyway. Hope my progeny don't mind though.] . . . This information can be used for family history and other types of historical research [Sweet! Someone can write my biography--the true one--when I'm old and defenseless! Oh death would be kind then!]

And so with my usual skepticism, I proceeded to fill out the form.

It was quite straightforward at first: sections 1 through 7 required easily obtainable facts about numbers and genders. But then sections 8 and 9 got hairy; they were the "identity" sections. Now, according to this Carib I-D petition form, I can choose to state my country of birth, my ethnic origin--Afro, Indo, Chinese, Indigenous, e.t.c.--and I can even state that I am of mixed heritage. But my options on the census form were not exactly that broad.

In section 8 I'm asked, 'Is Person of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?' That's easy. No. Then in section 9 the usual categories: White, Black / African-American / Negro (umm...nevermind), American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorrow, Samoan, Other Asian, Other Pacific Islander, and Some other race.

Some other race, with nineteen little boxes below. Is this where I'm supposed to tell them I was born in Caribbean-Guyana, and I'm of African descent? Oh well, I'll squeeze it in as best as I can and hope it counts. G-U-Y-A-N-A-A-F-R-O-C-A-R-I-B-B-E-A-N!

Rethinking free access

Dear Online Journal Editors,

If you currently allow free viewership of the content of your journal, why bother to insist on copyright?

Copyright (in my understanding) not only allows a person an actionable course in the event someone uses his or her intellectual property without permission, it also allows that person an actionable course if someone steals and profits from such property. (Correct me if I'm wrong about this.)

So here's what I'm puzzling over editors, when a person chooses to offer his / her intellectual property for free viewership and dissemination (as in the case of free online journals, and other types of free online publications--not talking about blogs, they're too messy) isn't that person essentially doing away with his / her copyright protection?

And here's something else I've been puzzling over.... Okay, I get that the person offering his or her work for free may not really care how it is shared, as long as it is shared. Trust me, I understand the nobility in sharing without borders, but isn't there nobility in asking the viewer to pay a fee for viewing as well?

Are we to assume that the writers / poets / critics / artists whose fare we read and enjoy in these free access journals are all wealthy and can afford to disseminate their hard work for free? Isn't there a monetary cost involved in writing, painting, photography, crafting, and publishing? Don't these people have bills to pay? And if they do, wouldn't it be nice if a fee from the publication and viewership of their work could pay a bill or two?

I ask these questions because I'm rethinking my original belief in free access to everything and all internet. The internet is without a doubt a credible place for certain information and a legitimate place for an artist to publish his or her work, so why not let it be a credible, legitimate place to pay for such information and for the pleasure of viewing an artist's work? Some journals already require a fee for viewing, and readers pay. Might those journals that offer free viewing be sending the message that they are either afraid of competition--that readers will go somewhere else rather than pay--or the work they publish is not good enough for folks to shell out a fee for?

I'm not asking these questions to criticize any online journal in particular; I absolutely love the ones I linked to (see left sidebar), and I'd readily pay a fee (a small one, don't kill me now) to view their content. You see, I'm considering all the possibilities and impossibilities involved in starting an online journal of writing on and about Guyana... I raise these questions and invite responses so I can decide whether or not it's a crappy idea.

How would "signifyin' " work if applied to the Caribbean text?

It is probably true that critics of African and Afro-American literature were trained to think of the institution of literature essentially as a set of Western texts. The methods devised to read these texts are culture-specific and temporal-specific, and they are text-specific as well. We learn to read the text at hand. And texts have a curious habit of generating other texts that resemble themselves . . . Black writers, like critics of black literature, learn to write by reading literature, especially the canonical texts of the Western tradition. Consequently, black texts resemble other Western texts . . . But black formal repetition always repeats with a difference, a black difference that manifests itself in specific language use. And the repository that contains the language that is the source--and the reflection--of black difference is the black English vernacular tradition. -- --Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Signifying Monkey (1988).

In the above quote, Gates gives the essence (emboldened) of his theory on the black signifyin' text. If "African" and "Afro-American" were to be replaced (though not ignored since some of the writers in question are of African descent) with a less ethnic-based "Caribbean," or more specifically "Anglo-Caribbean" text, how might the concept of signifyin' apply?

First of all, what can be understood by the term "Anglo-Caribbean" text? Would there be a clear tradition of language usage in these texts?

And in the cases where there is evidence of their repetition of Western texts, are there notable differences from such texts? If so, what are those differences? 

Those are some of the questions I set out to explore in the books by Guyanese writers I had gathered to read and share when I began this journey in 2007. Of course, I have since broadened into works by other Caribbean writers, and I have digressed from that academic-focused approach. I now mostly say what the book is about and how I (and sometimes how others) feel about it, and occasionally I compare it to others like it and such...I review them, rather than dig for signifyin' elements or purposes. That's not to say those elements aren't there. That's to say I have reserved that particular quest for another forum.

These days, I have adapted signifyin' to a more blogabble approach, which now loosely describes the way I interpret what I read--I do examine language to some degree--and my overall goal to participate in signifying the work of Caribbean writers. But those initial signifyin' questions remain close by.

Enjoy the moment

I am sure it's been raged and ranted on before, but today as I read and enjoy Raymond Ramcharitar's The Island Quintet, I feel the need to add my voice to the others who have raged and ranted against the unfairness of a "Canada and Caribbean" region in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize categories. Now how on earth did that come about? Which governing body decided that Canada (with all its resources for writers) and the Caribbean (with its limited resources) should be joined in competition for a literary prize?

Can anybody explain the logic there please?

And while I wait for a plausible explanation, I'll take this opportunity to once again applaud Trinidadian Raymond Ramcharitar on being shortlisted in the aforementioned category for his work in The Island Quintet. Hurray!

These lines from the first page of his "The Artist Dies," are a good reminder that despite the inequities we face, we should pause to enjoy the moment...

My mind caresses these moments, stroking each one that still holds its shape, that hasn't been deformed by the stretching of the years, or by the weight of other moments.

The early morning of the dance...

Annie Paul posts a video and pictures taken by Jamaican photographer Marlon 'Biggy Bigz' Reid. In the video, Reid talks about his "A Picture called Death," which he shot in the early morning of a dance that had gone horribly wrong.

Peter Sam comments on the video...

We seeing that everyday; that’s not new. It aint new it is as old as the famine in Africa or tribal war in Nigeria. Our photo shoots always have desolation and dust, bare foot and white mouth,  death in the ghetto or the hood. We story nice if we kill each other, it nice when we belly big like a blimp and we foot look like Gaulin own.

I see the circulation of this shoot as a way of encouraging black film makers to look at all the dutty, stinking things that are among us. It will see a new rush to make documentaries about murder and poverty; that will be our signature.

We called ourselves nigger and dawg in such a way that it became fashionable to say it, then when a white man said it then we stopped to realise how much mud we ourselves had placed out there. I will not support any more documentaries that only show the negatives about our behaviour. I am not going to be stupid and say it is not there; I am just not going to write about it or lend support for it.

Why is talent respected from black people when we talk about the violence we inflict on each other? Is that all we can showcase? It reminds me of years ago when all our films were based on dire poverty and injustice. You always saw a woman in old cast off dress and she worked in Massa house. Now how different it is? A killing? Blackman killing Blackman? He is now becoming something of a star, all the attention, what about some lil black boy who invent something or did well at Harvard?

There must be a time when I want to see a black man (meaning African) doing something other than playing basketball or in a gang. We need more films depicting us in NASA and in the labs finding cures for some of the very ailments that affect African people.

Pauline Melville's Eating Air

Most of the reviews of Pauline Melville's Eating Air so far have remarked on the many characters introduced in the novel:

Eating Air has a wide-cast of characters and the story moves seamlessly from one to another . . . Despite the wide cast of characters I found it easy to remember who was who (not always the case in my experience!) -- commonreader.

Technically, the novel is a virtuoso performance, playing with a gallimaufry of characters... -- Independent.

...for 407 pages we’re jumping from character to character, scene to scene, at a pace that is exhilarating (if slightly dizzying).   Melville has created the literary equivalent of a Cirque de Soleil performance... -- Booksexy.

The number of characters (one person counted over 18; I didn't bother to count) may prompt this question: Does the novelist have to introduce several characters to give us a wide story? Marlon James's Book of Night Women covers roughly two plantations of people, and we meet several of them. But, arguably, the many minor characters we meet never take our attention away from the novel's few major characters. They either help the plot along, or give us something additional to think of the major characters.

Pauline Melville's Eating Air, on the other hand, gives us a kaleidoscope of characters and plots, and though the characters and plots intertwine--which helps keep them all in one place, so to speak--what we get is essentially an artistic realism where plots are sometimes planned, sometimes incidental, and the outcomes are never quite predictable. It's a realistic panoramic view of a cross section of society and folk that may require some metal exercise to remember who is who, but the questions raised may be more intriguing than the characters themselves. And we are guided through it all by a narrator who pops up in the narrative occasionally to (among other purposes for such narrators) remind us that we are reading a work of fiction.

The novel is set mostly in England and spans a few decades of activism against ruling societal principles--from anti-establishment marches and other forms of activism in the 1960s and 1970s, to modern-day suicide bombers--and the major source of the novel's development concerns several possible questions: If one chooses revolution, what form should it take? How does one decide when revolution is effective? Can art remain pure, unaffected by politics? What is an older revolutionary to do when he's still revving to go, but he disapproves of the ways of younger revolutionaries?...... A bomb or a novel?

The most dominating plot in the novel is the love story between Ella, a dedicated dancer (part Surinamese) who sees her art as separate from and unaffected by the revolutionary activism around her, and Donny, a roamer who declares that he doesn't believe in anything. Together they create the novel's best ironies and statements about the nature and effect of revolution.

But although Donny and Ella's story dominates, we are treated to other characters whose dramatic quirkiness give the novel a cinematic feel: a transvestite pilot; a pill-popping, social-climbing American woman with a penchant for telling tall tales and stealing; a heart-broken capitalist who ends up in a mental institution... And whether they are large (a plane crash into a housing estate) or small (a trek through a harsh Omaha landscape, or a dinner gathering), the exorbitantly detailed events in the novel also add to its cinematic feel.

Conclusion

Eating Air is an overall revelry of folk, art, common matter, and world affairs--a combination of substantive fulfillment and intangible ethereality (as its title suggests) that would be a delight to the reader who eyes its 400+ pages and decides to read it anyway. And if you'd like the chance to read it and see for yourself, be the first to comment and I'll send you a copy.

_______________________

Eating Air, by Pauline Melville (Telegram, 2009, 407 pp).

Animals at work

Recently on National Geographic TV (I have cable, so I usually look for the documentaries on the History channel or on Nat Geo), I saw the wild Serengeti, tropical rain forests, the strange animals of Madagascar, large snakes from Guyana, migratory birds and fish in an underwater paradise. As I was taking it all in I suddenly realise it was my office they were showcasing. That was my work place they were talking about.

Now don’t stop reading. I am sure you have seen this too and realise that that funny squirrel is that girl from the office. That’s her, always running with chatter to and from some hole in the front desk, like she storing nuts. Is news and gossip she carrying.

There is the Capybara. No wait a minute, it’s that girl, all two hundred pounds of her, always have something eating and using the people phone to talk to somebody. She is the telephone operator.

Look! There is an Anaconda about to jump on a victim and strangle it and swallow it whole. Noooo! That’s the guy from the admin office. He wants to be promoted every year and he will choke you if you get into his way. He is not efficient but thinks he can swallow the competition, get rid of rivals.

What’s this? Looks like a stampede, a herd of something...wait let the dust clear. Is it a herd of Gazelles? No it’s not, is them girls from registry. They always running behind any new man that reach the office, them expatriates. Lawd look at them, the new man can’t walk in peace or eat in peace.

And here comes the mountain Gorilla, big strong and hairy ill tempered beast, master of all he surveys...so he thinks.  Ya crazy! That is the handy man, argue to the death even though he wrong like hell, void of all knowledge of most things other than cleaning the compound and emptying the trash.

Get your Binoculars, is that a Baltimore Oriole? Wow! with yellow and black plumage! Not a bit of it. That is the temp. She turns up when they have lil extra work. Now you see her now you don’t.

Now look carefully, there's a Chameleon looking like it's just waiting not interfering with anyone, just looking out at the world. But wait, it’s the girl that works in information. When you go to her and complain about your colleague, she tells you that you are right and your colleague is wrong and she tells your colleague the same thing when he turns up to complain about you.

I hear a loud growl. Is it the Lion with all the power and glory, ready to charge and destroy? Just ignore it. Every body does. It is the rules and regulations that we all are supposed to follow. Never mind them, just continue doing what you are doing.

Well that's my office for now. Me? What about me? Well I just cool I walk with two rear view mirrors on me shoulders and me shot gun loaded, remember is animals I dealing with.

________

Contributed by Peter Sam

Issue 3 of Town

...This issue of Town is also a sort of bridge, or the fragments of a possible bridge of imagination and understanding. It connects poems by a writer from Guyana [Mahadai Das], Suriname’s neighbour to the west; images by a Dutch artist of Surinamese ancestry, which reflect on the ironies of colonial history; a self-portrait by a young Surinamese artist, a work of both self-representation and self-assertion; and a deliberately mysterious photograph of the monument memorialising one of the most tragic events in Suriname’s recent history.

Sober up

The most appropriate sound bite from last night's No Behaviour Show was the word "sobering" -- sobering stats (an estimated 240,000 currently living with HIV in the Caribbean, according to the most recent AMFAR figures), sobering correlations between parental / societal reluctance to talk about sex, and sexual promiscuity among the young, and sobering conclusions that enough isn't being done to educate and prevent the spread of the disease in the region.

You can listen to the entire podcast here.

A code of ethics for bloggers?

Last night I tuned in to an interactive podcast / discussion (The No Behaviour Show) centered around online activity in the Trinidad Guardian, and there was a riveting session on whether or not one of the key things (possibly) undermining the credibility of journalist-bloggers is an absence of a specific code of ethics governing their writing / reporting.

One person opined that there is really no specific code of ethics that can govern any type of reporting, basically, "you should know when you doing nonsense" and that should be your guide.

Now this is not a new topic; the question about a code of ethics for bloggers has been debated in many circles. And I was originally one of those incensed at the thought of monitoring or censoring the ability of bloggers to go outside of traditional media and freely speak about topics which were (are) untouched by traditional media. And I was of the belief that most of us are ruled by an unspoken set of principles when it comes to what we write on our blogs--even without the presence of an editor, as a newspaper journalist would have. But I'm now sadly aware that that's not the case.

So I'm thinking maybe a specific set of ethical guidelines and surveillance--where blog content is monitored, and bloggers are penalized for infractions--can't hurt. And I don't necessarily like Google's largely secretive, overseer approach, but for now it works as a deterrent for flagrant offenders.

What you think?