The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

"Calculating a Crisis"

[Last year, I wrote this piece in a talk-back with a now MIA blogger. And today, bitten by a creative bug (or some sorta biting insect), I once again experiment with the short short.]

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It’s nothing new. She said he had to pay it alone. "Final!"

 

So he gets up, hot-wires his body with coffee so no matter how much his mouth wants to complain, his body says go. 

 

Rush the kid through his meal, get him out the door, on the bus, wave goodbye. Get yourself dressed. Organize. Lists. Notes. Phone numbers.  Bite down hard on your bottom lip. Pick up the phone. Cold call prospects. Send emails when your guts are too tight to talk and your Guyanese accent is creeping in. Make more notes. Wait for reasonable space between dreadful follow-up calls. More lists, more notes, more cheerful, eager calls. Repeat repeat repeat until you can’t take it anymore and you get on your knees before her.

 

Honey, please forgive me. I’m working hard at this. I don’t want this or us to fall apart. I talked to the doctor and he thinks it's the stress and poor eating habits that caused it. I’m fixing it. Please. Please help me pay the bill. I swear we’ll get out of this. Things are happening right now. Please honey.

 

In a memory somewhere in a Bookers-owned, four generation house in Guyana, a man is on his knees before his mother. He's the man who cheated on her over and over again, and he’d hit her when she confronted him. But now he’s sorry.

 

Please baby. Ah sorry. I’m weak...weak man weak. It won’t happen again.  She’s nothing and the thing she say is mine is a bleddy lie. I won’t go there just so without no protection. Don’t go nowhere baby. I ain’t married to you? This ain’t more important than any other stupidness?

 

His mother says yes and forgives the man.

 

Which is why he knows his Audrey—part-Bajan, part-Guyanese, part-Americanized, part-devoted, part-fedup--will forgive him too. She'll help him pay half the bill.   

 

$2500 a month is the joint price they’ll pay to keep their home.

Preserving the (not-so) swift

Caught a story on TV recently about how a town saved a species of bird--swifts.  It appears the chimney smoke they liked to hover around on rooftops of factories in the town was killing them in large groups, but every day they hovered anyway. After watching them kill themselves for several agonizing months, the townsfolk finally resolved to switch off factory machines at the time of day when the birds hovered most. That’s all they needed to stay alive, somebody to turn off the machines. The birds are doing just fine now. Think they did it on purpose?

Do you know the woman in this poem?

Coolie Mother

Jasmattie live in bruk-
Down hut big like Bata shoe-box,
Beat clothes, weed yard, chop wood, feed fowl
For this body and that body and every blasted body
Fetch water, all day water like if the
Whole slow-flowing Canje river God create
Just for she one bucket. [more]

The above is the first stanza of David Dabydeen's poem, "Coolie Mother," which is in his second collection of poems titled Coolie Odyssey (1988). The entire poem can be found online on several sites. I linked to two of those sites which provide discussion questions and some analysis of the poem for a general audience and for students who are and will be studying the poem. And I'd also like to add two questions to think about:

--What (if anything) makes the poem significant enough to be included in a syllabus for classroom study?

--Does Jasmattie and her story belong in a canon of classic Caribbean literature? Why or why not?

More than an act of bravado

Since I've been paying attention, President Jagdeo has demonstrated at least two huge acts of bravado (my opinion, needful to say): his decision to host Carifesta after The Bahamas conked out in 2008 was one, and his government's generous offer to help Haiti rebuild was the other. Yes, bravado...blustery, pretensive bravery, foolhardy, mostly self-serving behaviour some may say (have said). But, while that may be so, I have found much to be considered endearing in Jagdeo's actions.

Yesterday (Earth Day), he and five other persons received United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Champion of the Earth awards for their fight in preserving the forest and combatting climate change. And while it's possible to see Jagdeo's continued presence at the forefront of the fight for forest preservation as a case of him seizing the opportunity once again to demonstrate an act of bravado, I see much to be considered endearing and I hope it turns out to be a lasting positive part of his legacy as President of Guyana.

unep.org: The message is clear: incorporating environmental, social and governance issues into business strategies and operations leads to long-range value creation for companies and societies. It is a winning formula for the global economy, and our planet.

A scientific study on the usefulness of the eggplant

I was about eleven at the time and I was spending my August holidays with my dad in Kwakwani.  I had a group of friends made up of most of the races who make up Guyana: My Amerindian friend David, two Dougla ( mixture of Indian and African ) brothers Egbert aka EG (e gee) and Roger aka Lilly Bunch, Owen Chung aka Meaters, a mixture of everything, Edmond aka Eddie Banks and myself both Africans.

It was in the afternoon hours about five, we had just finished hunting and playing, we had sling shots and we would shoot Pigeons, we called them bush Pigeons, Toucans, Doves and the occasional Kiskadee careless enough to sit still. We did a lot of fishing too, caught mostly small fish like Patwa which is a Cichlid in parts of the USA they are known as Blue Gill. Kwakwani had lots of creeks and swamps, lots of white water creeks and rain forest, it was paradise. Life was good for me; it was all a boy could ask for. My dad was the church organist and he had a good job with the Bauxite Company; he was a Surveyor. The gang would get together after the hunt and talk about the birds we missed and where we knew had Iguanas; we ate those too. We would discuss all sorts of things.

Mmm, now EG who was one of the older boys, he was about thirteen, said he heard that if you wanted your penis to grow bigger than it is all you had to do was hit it with a roasted Eggplant, we were in awe. I mean here I was eleven with my little family jewel which I thought at the time was only good for urinating, thinking about what he was saying. Anyway EG said he heard your “thing” will get bigger if you hit it with a roasted Eggplant, we decided we would see if it worked.

Two days may have passed and one afternoon about six I saw David, he said EG had the Egg plant and he wanted to go try the thing. We both left and gathered the rest, and we proceeded to the Primary school which was located at the foot of a hill and had a bushy area. A fire was lit and the Eggplant was roasted, roasted a little too much. EG took out his penis and like in slow motion set the Egg plant down on it. The problem was, the Egg plant was over cooked so it burst opened on his penis; it stayed there like glue, hot glue.

To this day I have never heard anyone holler like that, for a small mouth to belch out, OOOOHHH GAAAAADDD! Is still a source of wonder to me. His penis was burnt, plus the Egg Plant splattered all over his pubic area and scald there too.

When you are boys you can be cruel, the situation soaked in for about five seconds, then there was an eruption of laughter, I was in stitches. EG headed for home, with all off us in tow, I was way behind because the laughter was too much for me. EG had to explain to his mom. He could not tell a straight story and when I reached where he lived they had him in the bathroom. His mom asked and we talked, with the guffaws and all. He was taken to the Kwakwani hospital where he spent about two days, without any underwear. I still laugh when I remember that day and it is a memory I hold dear. I hold most of my memories dear.

Well, we are all grown and life took its toll. David is still in Kwakwani, used to be an Obeah man till his wife left him for another man. Owen is dead. EG lives in New Amsterdam, a town one hundred and thirty six miles down the Berbice river from Kwakwani, he is a security guard and a grandfather. Edmond lives in the USA and last time I heard he was a barber. Roger became a bandit, Ganja farmer and pusher man. Last time I saw him he was in the papers, he was caught by the police with guns and ammunition, he is currently in jail. Me? Well I can be found in Georgetown where I live, still dreaming of writing that book, can’t blame me, books are hard to write. My dad died and I inherited his house and the piano and the memories that are there. If November comes and I do not go to Kwakwani it would have been four years since I visited. As for our penises, well they grew with time and without any help from the Egg plant.

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Contributed by Peter Sam

What is "good" writing?

I joked about the topic of good writing in the piece below (my po-ahemic intrusion on the well-intentioned event sponsored by the Caribbean Cultural Theatre) but when the host/moderator of Tuesday evening's Poets and Passion session, E Wayne McDonald, posed the question to me and Geoffrey Philp, I was forced to think about it seriously. 

My response at the time was that "good" writing is a subjective thing. Whether or not we like it, good writing is majorly dependent on the reader's judgment, and his or her judgment is always full of biases. Not that that's a crime or anything...

Geoffrey Philp ('twas a huge pleasure to meet him, I might add) maintained that good writing (presumably regardless of one's biases and such) should fit the basic standards of symmetry and form. I don't disagree with that; I've taught that for long enough, and I've witnessed its benefits for those who write for certain audiences to know that makes good sense.

But, I'm also aware of the history of the English language and of how standard expectations of symmetry and form for all genres of writing have over time been influenced by innovations. Some of the well-known examples extend from Chaucer's innovative "borrowings" (repetitions with some difference), to similar types of innovations on the syntax of the language we use and study in America (and elsewhere) today--innovations from canonized writers like Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and others.

My own understanding of "good" writing encompasses form as well as content, and is FULL of biases: my Brit-American teacherly, academic bias, which gives me certain expectations for the genre or form of literature I'm reading (be it a play, a poem, or a short story); my feminist bias, which makes me partial to writing that is sympathetic to women and their struggles; my ethnic, geographic biases, and so forth.

I suspect (hope) my biases are clear in my reviews.

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Other Caribbean Cultural Theatre events to note: A tribute to the late Rex Nettleford, April 18; Poets & Passion: Elizabeth Nunez (T&T) Ana In Between, and Tipahnie Yanique (USVI) How to Escape from a Leper Colony, May 13; Poets & Passion: Thomas Glave (Jamaica) The Torturer's Wife, June 8.

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The Critic / Book Reviewer

No I'm not the creative type
But I'll read you and get excited
And get on blog, FB, or Twitter and hype.

And sometimes full of spite
I'll proceed to tell the world or a few
why you should take up farming or aquaculture
and leave the writing for the talented true.

No I'm not the creative type.
But from time to time I'll devour your play
and bounce up and down in my seat and say:
Oh marvelous! Stupendous! A new classic in sight!
Who knew such a playwright existed
to tell of the world's wrongs and rights and twisted!

No, I've never written a line of a novel or short story,
or battled with publishers
to see it pass the push and shove on its way to hopeful glory,
only to end up somewhere between casual flicking fingers
and a bag of potato chips
or, with some luck delicately held with one hand
while the other cerebrally strokes the temples
and underlines the masterful bits.

But I have swallowed novels whole
in a matter of hours
and thought it was my role
to say how quickly the art sours
after the first line or two,
and that a woman would never ever do that in bed,
so do your homework and get it right next time will you?

And no I've never suffered to create a poem's message and meter,
or tested it live before an audience.
But when I'm near-drunk and comfy on my two-seater
I'm often hasty to declare some efforts too full of pretense
to take the place of a TV suspense
or from the meaningful hours spent watching Derek Jeter.

Yes, I'm the self-appointed critic.
I dwell in the language of trite,
like poignant, gripping, haunting, poetic
or puzzling, strange, forgettable, and too white.
And if you're the writer and you ever find my site,
don't gasp and spit back at the foolishness I have said.
Just delight in the fact that you've been read
And count one more dollar to the cost of your bread.

Geoffrey Philp's Who's Your Daddy? And Other Stories

Everybody's changed since they've come to America, and some of them think, 'Bwai, Geoffrey mus have money. Look how much book him publish.' 

The above excerpt is from "My Jamaican Touch," the last story in Geoffrey Philp's latest collection of short stories titled Who's Your Daddy? And Other Stories. Two things in those lines made me pause and also dictated how I'd begin talking/writing about the collection.

The first is the statement about what happens when we (West Indians/Caribbean people) come to America. The inference is that we become changed regarding how we view money and the people we think have "made it" here in the United States. Some of the conflicts in the stories that are based in the United States concern the immigrant characters' experiences with the American dream (i.e., the belief that one can come to America with little or nothing and via the opportunities offered, become financially successful).

The second thing about the excerpt that drew my attention is the perception that being published (in some cases many times) somehow makes a person wealthy. In actuality of course, the number of writers who can live comfortably off their royalties is quite small compared to the number of writers in existence and the number of books published every year. It is the savvy writer then, who constantly does what it takes to attract, promote, and keep his or her audience interested and willing to buy and share the news about his or her work.

Today Geoffrey Philp will be reading from the collection and will be interacting with a mostly Caribbean/West Indian audience in New York, many of whom will surely become new fans of his. That's the kind of networking the savvy writer does; he doesn't sit back and publish and wait for the wealth to come on in. And even so (as many new and not so new writers have attested), the wealth isn't a guarantee. Many say they write for the love of it, not for the hope of riches.

But maybe a book's / a writer's riches can be quantified in other ways than money. Nevertheless, here are 10 reasons why Geoffrey Philp's Who's Your Daddy? And Other Stories is worth a read (and your money, of course):

1. It's funny. Sometimes the humor will cause you to shake your head and smile, and other times you'll laugh til you cry. No lie.

2. You'll read about folks in thought-provoking, discussion-provoking moral conflicts.

3. You'll appreciate the well-crafted narratives that grab you in from the first line, shake you, amuse you, disturb you, arouse you, and make you think, long after you've read the last line.

4. You'll appreciate the sometimes fluid crossings back and forth between Florida and the Caribbean (Jamaica mostly). A character or two will pack up traps and go back (so to speak) and do so (seemingly) with few adjustment problems. (A little too hard for me to believe, but some of you may find it optimistic or hopeful). 

5. The stories about kinship ranging from good to severely problematic will be identifiable to many.

6. The characters' up and down experiences with the American dream will either be familiar to many or will be good learning experiences for others.

7. You'll be entertained, moved by (embarrassed to identify with) stories about forbidden love, clandestine love, jump-out-the-window-the-husband-coming love, and other stories of the heart (or of other organs).

8. You'll appreciate the occasional extra-literary devices (rolling calf, vampire, e.t.c.) that are used to explain the world in which we live, rather than give in to its mysteries.

9. You'll be engaged by many of the stories' characters who speak in a language--part patois, part Brito-American, part sheer wutlissness--we Caribbean people in the diaspora are forever changing and adapting to suit our environments.

10. The author, Geoffrey Philp, makes an entertaining appearance.

One of the most important lessons to be learned about the American dream is that you have to try and find a version of it that works for you if the original script doesn't fit. And part of my particular version of it is realizing and celebrating the riches I have gotten from the things I like doing...things that don't necessarily give me (haven't brought me) financial success. One of those riches is being part of the growing Caribbean book network (to give it a name) where I met Geoffrey Philp. But that's not the reason why I am recommending his book. I'm doing so because it's good solid creative work.

And if you'd like to read it for yourself, I'm offering a copy to the first commenter on this post.

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Who's Your Daddy? And Other Stories, by Geoffrey Philp (Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2009, 160 pp).

Gender equality in the Caribbean

And while I'm on the subject of gender equality (or inequality), guess which two Caribbean countries rank higher than the United States in terms of how their resources and opportunities get divided up?

Well, I don't know what you think about the condition of women's lives in the Caribbean, but according to this most recent Global Gender Gap report, which assessed countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities, Trinidad and Tobago (ranked 19th of 115 countries assessed), and Barbados (ranked 21st) are doing better than the United States at sharing the goods among men and women.

The United States ranked a lowly 31, and Guyana wasn't too far behind with a ranking of 35.

What does this tell us?

On Sunday a panel of four American journalists (two white females and two white males) were discussing the report and one of the men joked that he would bet no American woman would willingly leave America to live in some of the countries ranked higher than America. After all, he said, America offers more freedom and opportunities for its male and female citizens than any of the countries ranked higher in the report. And one of the female panelists commended the program they were on for demonstrating gender equality by having an equal number of women and men on the panel.

Of course the fact that they were all white and that the person most vocal about America's freedom and opportunities was a white male may only have registered in my black female consciousness. And I'm sure if they had heard me complain, they would have quickly reminded me that the president of America is a black man.

Who gets the last word

...may depend on whether or not the conversation / argument / discussion is taking place in public or in the privacy of their home.

Went to a beautiful wedding this weekend--lots to eat and drink, familiar faces all around, danced til my feet hurt, and of course, lots of great speeches and tributes (was a West Indian wedding). After paying touching tributes to her mother and other family members and friends, the bride gave her new husband the mike declaring--much to our amusement--he is the one who will have the final word.

I can't speak for the other married folk who were amused, but I know what is said in public is not always the case in private when it comes to the business of marriage. I've seen cases where the meekest of wives who shyly and respectfully (some may say) defer to their husbands in public actually rule with iron thumbs at home.

I don't know what kind of wife she'll be, but I'd bet he won't be getting the last word too many more times. Equality in marriage may manifest itself in several ways--she has her chores, he has his, they both work outside the home, e.t.c.--but one spouse is usually the decision-maker, and more often than not, it's the wife.

Now don't go getting all anti-marriage and nuts you single men. Take a good look at the men whose wives make most of the decisions in their relationships. Don't those men look happy, well taken care of, fat, and content? Now come on, you know that's how you'd like to look when you get married. Don't you?