The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

Ethan Zuckerman: Listening to global voices

Cala a boca Galvão (hahaha...ooh those Brazilians...)

Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide world. He talks about clever strategies to open up your Twitter world and read the news in languages you don't even know

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The burden of the seer in Tanya Shirley's She Who Sleeps With Bones

I dreamt my dead grandmother a few nights ago. She looked great--young, hair well done, perfect make-up, smooth skin--much the way she liked to look from time to time when she wasn’t in her house dress cooking and cleaning, or gardening. In the dream she and I were in a room together, but despite our close proximity to each other, she was avoiding my eyes. And before I remembered that she was dead (dreams have a way of making you avoid harsh realities sometimes), I was very hurt that she wouldn’t look at me. At some point in the dream I finally remembered she was dead, and that led to some understanding of her pointed refusal to look me in the eye. Now the way I began to process the dream may not make sense to some...

I figured she was probably avoiding my eyes because she wanted me to feel her presence, but she also wanted me to understand that she wasn’t there to take me with her. I am not satisfied with just that though; I know there’s more to the dream. I’ll ask my mother to help me figure it out.

If that makes sense to you, you’re probably one of those people who knows (who has concretely experienced) the truths that our dreams foretell or help us uncover about our past. And you’re most likely also a person who knows when a dead relative shows up in a dream, you have to pay attention!

It’s with that burden of knowledge that I’m reading and appreciating these lines from Tanya Shirley’s collection of poems, She Who Sleeps With Bones, today.

I’ve become an unwilling seer
who will grow old and appear
to be a shaman to the unbelievers;
a tattered woman who smells
of feculent potions.

My mother could see from the back
of her head, the enemy approaching.
. . .

water means longing;
the long buried relative visiting the living
is old dead come for new dead;
. . .

Already I know too much.
It will kill me to give this up.

_______________

Coming next Tuesday: My review of Tanya Shirley's She Who Sleeps With Bones.

Tiphanie Yanique responds

Greetings Charmaine

 

I received the review you did on my How to Escape from a Leper Colony on your blog Signifyin Guyana.  I’m not a big internet person and so received it via post from my publisher. Thank you for writing a review that highlighted quite of few of my stories in detail. Young Caribbean writers, most especially us women, sometimes have a hard time getting positive attention, even amongst our sisters, so I do thank you for the review. Given this, however, I was deeply hurt to visit your blog and see that in addition to your review you also wrote an essay suggesting that one of my stories was plagiarized. 

Firstly, thank you for introducing me to Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw—a writer I had never heard of before reading your blog. While I did do a Fulbright at UWI Walott-Hackshaw was not a writer I was introduced to, nor was her work found on any syallabi or lists given to me my by UWI professors. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t know her or her work, as I do think it’s important for Caribbean writers to do our best to know each other. However, such lapses are impossible to avoid, given that Caribbean writers, albeit marginalized in American and European cultures, are incredible productive. It’s hard to keep up.  Rather than accusing me and connecting me to a tradition of plagiarizing authors, I wish you had instead introduced two clearly kindred writers to each other. I would like to know her. 

[Click on the above link to see Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw's ties to UWI].

An accusation of plagiarism is often career ending for young writers, as you note was nearly the case with Nella Larsen. Perhaps you did not consider that you were accusing me of something that may well end my career. As a young writer (this is my first book) my writing career is especially in jeopardy. Knowing this I have actually gone to incredible lengths to thank and acknowledge each person who contributed to my writing. At the opening of many of my stories there is a dedication to a person who had an overarching influence on the story’s characters and content.  In addition, I have a very long thank you list of names at the back of the book.  Indeed, a close look will find that listing influences is more important to me than it is to many other writers. I go as far as to acknowledge even my middle school English teacher. I thank the boss who let me use his copier machine to send out my earliest poems when I was in high school.  Most of the names are of writers who directly or indirectly influenced the stories in my book. If Walcott-Hackshaw had been a writer who influenced any of my stories, her name would have been among the very many I listed.

Actually, the one book that may have most influenced "The Bridge Stories" (which is the story you are concerned with) is a book whose name and author I have forgotten for the past 15 years—someone who’s work I read in high school. That story has haunted me since I was fourteen and stayed with me, though I had never remembered the name of the book or author. In particular, the sticking element wasn’t even the story but the questions my high school English teacher asked us about the book: Why does this bridge have to fall at this time?  Why is it these people’s time to go? I have never forgotten the questions or the teacher.  

I do thank the teacher at the back of my book.  In many interviews I have mentioned this high school story and no one has ever been able to recall the title or author. Finally, I was able to recall the name during a recent interview with Kim Foote for Mosaic Magazine. Ms. Foote had, coincidently, also read the novel in high school. The book is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thorton Wilder. We chatted about it at length though it only makes up one line in her interview.  In truth my stories, as is the case with all stories, have many godparents—some remembered and some forgotten. Walcott-Hackshaw, alas, is not one of them.  I did not know she existed.

In your blog essay you also suggest that I would never allow my students to do what I did. Your statement not only jeopardizes my writing career, but in the wrong hands may risk my career as a professor as well.  Such accusations are taken very seriously in academia and are often looked into deeply.  As I am yet untenured, even a supposition like yours may hurt my tenure prospects.  Thus, as a professor, I must I must also defend what is allowed in the classroom and in writing in general.

Note that in just my response here there are already two stories that use bridges to connect peoples of desperate backgrounds. In the Wilder there are also the same religious and ethnic issues that both Walcott-Hackshaw and I explore.  Did Walcott-Hackshaw plagiarize off of Wilder then?  Is everyone doing it?  No.  A bridge connecting diversity is a trope in literature. This is why Junot Diaz might say in an interview that he was influenced by Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texacos tructure when writing The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but he need not cite this in his book. This is why a poet who writes a poem about visiting the Vietnam memorial need not cite Yusef Komunyakaa. Chamoiseau was not even the first to use the voice within a voice structure, Komunyakaa is not the first person to write a poem about Vietnam war vets, and Walcott-Hackshaw is not the first to use a bridge to connect otherwise disconnected people. A writer cannot be expected to cite influences that she or he does not know exist; but moreover, a writer need not and likely would not, cite influences that are part of the common literary culture. To clarify with a very obvious example; there are many stories that end with star-crossed lovers taking their own life—most of them do not thank Shakespeare for writing Romeo and Juliet. Nor should they. In Shakespeare’s time the story was already old.  Even he got it from somebody else.

I hope I am clarifying that your suggestion of plagiarism was not only unfounded in my case, but unfair in general. Many stellar students discover similarities between two texts and flesh them out in their essays. Many excellent PhD dissertations address just this reality.  Stories that have much in common often have different sources. It is understood as one of the pleasures to explore about our literary and cultural reality—not plagiarism.  

If you were curious about the connections you could have contacted me very easily. We live in the same city. We attend the same events. We have even met in person. Now your readers, many of whom have not yet read my book, have already formed their ill-informed thoughts about my stories and have influenced their reader friends. The damage you may have caused will be difficult to rectify. It is especially painful coming from a Caribbean woman who I would like to call my sister. 

I would love your faithful readers to try my book with an open mind. I hope you will be willing to post this email communication in its entirety on your blog so that your readers may have a broader picture of me and my writing. If you are willing, I would most like if you not simply post this as a response to your initial blog. Most readers don’t read all the responses. Instead, I hope you will give my response the same attention given your initial essay so that readers of your blog will have the opportunity to hear me out.

Sincerely,

Tiphanie Yanique 

www.tiphanieyanique.com
http://www.booktour.com/author/tiphanie_yanique
How to Escape from a Leper Colony

Poetry and morality

...morality in the traditional sense, before the advocates of duty and obligation got their hands on it, is the study of how to live most fully and enjoyably; and the word ‘moral’ in the present context refers to a qualitative or evaluative view of human conduct and experience. Moral language does not only include terms like good and bad, or right and wrong: its lexicon extends to such epithets as ‘rash’, ‘exquisite’, ‘placid’, ‘sardonic’, ‘vivacious’, 'resilient’, ‘tender’, ‘blasé’ and ‘curmudgeonly’. All these are as much moral terms as ‘saintly’ or ‘genocidal’. Morality has to do with behaviour, not just with good behaviour. Moral judgements include such statements as ‘Her protestations were more disquieting than reassuring’, as well as statements like ‘this evildoer ought to have his eyes gouged out’. . . Poems are moral statements, then, not because they launch stringent judgements according to some code, but because they deal in human values, meanings and purposes.

--Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (2007).

 Bahamian poet, Christian Campbell, was recently nominated for a 2010 Forward Prize in Poetry, and in honour of his nomination, the CRB reminded us of this poem of his, “Goodman’s Bay,” which was published in its February 2005 issue. 

What would you say is the poem’s moral statement(s)?

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

Elif Shafak is the most-read female author in Turkey, where she is as well known for her descriptions of backstreets Istanbul as she is for her global and multicultural perspective. Her writing is at once rooted in her politically feminist education and her deep respect for and knowledge of Sufism and Ottoman culture. More on her bio here.

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Peggy Carr's Honey and Lime

One of the reasons why I tend to shy away from talking about or assessing a collection of poems is because I believe a collection of poems--more than a collection of short stories (for want of a comparison)--often contains works that are very distinctly different from each other, and pulling them together in any arbitrary attempt at critical analysis cheapens the world of each poem.

A poem is its own unique world.

True, it’s possible to talk about shared ideas, about speakers who sound alike, about similar moods and sentiments, and about other elements of poems that can be used to tie them together, especially if they are written by one person. But to look for commonalities (I find) is to make a conscious decision to ignore the art in a line or less that makes a world of difference from one poem to another.

A poem is its own unique, economical world.

One can certainly choose though, as I did in this first post on Peggy Carr’s Honey and Lime, to pull out the familiar in a poem or poems, and just focus on that. It’s one level of entry into a collection of poems that makes them seem approachable even when they are not. Another way is to bundle them by theme or subject matter, or by the categories or types of poems one can distinguish in the collection.

To that end--the end of bundling by subject, theme, or category--some of the poems in Honey and lime present stages of a woman’s life, particularly her experiences with love. From the vulnerable and naive--

Her young face
knelt
her eyes unfurled and
waiting
like new lilies
on a rain-promised morning
to cup the first warm
sprinkle
of his desire

to the older and surer--

she is
free of men’s passions
and strong
more than most women
she is
generous and warm
and laughs
. . .
she is gentle and profound
and forgives

The women in Honey and Lime may be wistful, abused, uncertain, but they are always resilient.

Other poems in the collection are dedication poems: one to the memory of Ellsworth Shake Keane -- Roots man from the start / he wrapped his country in / his head / tied his culture / in his blood / and roamed the mountains of / his music; another to the memory of the thirteen people, including eight Vincentians, who were aboard LIAT 319 when it disappeared on August 4, 1986 -- Our sorrow stood / on tiptoe / to touch even those / we never knew...

And yet another set of poems is dedicated to the youth of St. Vincent, who are given advice about keeping family connections sacred, and about personal and national pride. The advice to them resonates in repeated refrains:

Tell them you not for sale
Drugsman ah not for sale
. . .
Tell them you not for sale
Homeboy ah not for sale
. . .
Tell then you not for sale
Brandsman ah not for sale

 

A closer look: "Note to the Unseen"

The above are all ways one can appreciate the collection of poems in Honey and lime, but a closer look at one of the poems would do the work more justice...

“Note to the Unseen” opens with a command or wish for a torn piece of morning. The word “tear” suggests something crude, a feeling that is encouraged by the bluntness of the line itself: Tear me a piece of morning. But “tear” might also suggest a sad sentiment or a joyful communal sharing, as in tearing or breaking bread. Whichever meaning one may choose to see, the line creates a whimsical mood for the start of the poem.

The next lines are single words--pristine / crisp--which presumably describe the morning to be torn. Both in meaning and appearance, they provide notable contrast to the image and appearance of crudeness in the first line. The line following--unwrapped from a silver sunrise--is a return to a longer line of imagery. The return presents a more delicate handling of the morning though no less whimsical in its idea. That line is followed by the uneven sounding mix me a few pastel notes of, which is a broken off thought that creates an air of expectation for the next line, a one-word line, birdsong--another whimsical moment in the poem. The line following that one is also a chopped off command or wish: toss me a fine brush of, which once again creates suspense and expectation for the next line, ocean spray.

The last four lines in the poem reveal the speaker’s intent to paint you a wet poem / and lean it against / a new Caribbean sky / to dry. These last lines round out the the poem’s whimsy, but they also introduce a kind of pragmatism, a logic one can follow. After all, the matter the speaker requests--piece of a morning, birdsong, ocean spray--would certainly make pragmatic sense as food for a poet’s craft. Also poetically pragmatic is the image of leaning a wet poem up against a new Caribbean sky.

It is possible to interpret the new Caribbean sky as a new set of paradigms for artistic creations, or even a new or additional meaning for “Caribbean” itself. In addition, a “leaning” poem suggests a form of dependency, or a shadowing or mirroring effect that could have positive or negative effects on the craft, depending on how one sees it. There is also some wry humour in the last line “to dry” (which rhymes with the “sky” at the end of the preceding line), if one considers the idea that all the speaker really needs this new Caribbean sky for is to lean a wet poem up against it to dry. It suggests an act of plundering, but makes some light fun of the would-be plunderer who in essence could only create an imprint (wet print) of the original.  

At the risk of bundling up the collection of poems in Honey and Lime (once again) in a rather tight, unseemly manner, I nevertheless conclude that the poem’s (“Note to the Unseen”) mix of whimsy, pragmatism, and humour is quite typical of the best you can expect from this third collection of poems by Peggy Carr. And although at times you get the distinct feeling she is solely addressing a Vincentian audience, the poems can appeal (even then) to anyone who can appreciate the broader human condition that the microcosm underscores.

I heartily recommend that you buy it.

Plus, be the first to comment, and I’ll send you a copy.

_______________

Honey and Lime, by Peggy Carr (Virtualbookworm.com Publishing, Inc., 2006, 84pp).

Montague Kobbe: Literary Caribbeanness: Fact or Fiction?

Recently, I was reading Jeremy Taylor’s review of Conversations with Caryl Phillips (ed. by Renée Shatteman), a compendium of nineteen interviews with the Kittitian-born, British writer, where, according to Taylor, we learn all kinds of details about the author. Among them, the revelation that Phillips “doesn’t see himself as part of a Caribbean literary tradition; in fact, he hardly thinks there is one.” Phillips is certainly not the first, nor the only writer with Caribbean roots to question the notion of a Caribbean literary tradition:

via signifyinguyana.typepad.com

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Reading "the familiar" in Peggy Carr's Honey and Lime

Other than “I really like them,” no truer, simpler words can be used to describe my reaction (so far) to Peggy Carr’s collection of poems in Honey and Lime. Her poems speak to me and my experiences. And, I’m sure they’ll speak to many of you too.

If you’ve ever undergone the trauma of moving from one residence, country, career--any major change from the familiar to the unfamiliar or strange--you’ll recognize the aching truth in lines like--

Once again I tear pieces
off my self
trying to unglue from
one more place...

Or maybe you’ve been daunted by the seeming insurmountable uncertainty of a journey, as the speaker of the following lines appears to be:

dust only
in the distance

no destination

yet
I must take me to
completion
to transition
whole
undefiled

If your children are at the stage where they’re moving on to college, or close to it, or far from it, but you have panicked (many times) at how quickly time flies, you’ll empathize with this speaker/parent:

college brochures
airline schedules
stream excitedly through his
newly competent hands

I’m left stranded
on a tiny patch of time
still reaching
to wipe the cereal from his smile

And maybe you’ve experienced (or soon will) this speaker’s generational / parental angst. The speaker addresses his or her mother--

Isn’t it strange how
I no longer fit
on your lap
. . .

and some days
I slide sickeningly
again and again
down your old
disappointments

It’s watching my daughter
grow up
that does it

One of my goals in this Caribbean Women Writers Series is to share the first works of the writers to be featured, but unfortunately I couldn’t find a copy of Peggy Carr’s first  
(Echoes from a Lonely Nightwatch, 1989), nor her second (Fresh Tracks in an Ancient Land, 1996). Honey and Lime (2006) is her third collection, and I’m happy to share it with you.

Read a review of Echoes from a Lonely Nightwatch here at Caribbean Writer.

___________

Coming Monday: My review of Peggy Carr's Honey and Lime.

To whom (if any) should folklore belong?

To whom should folklore belong? By “folklore” I’m referring loosely to some of the ways a community (Caribbean in this case) expresses its history, its cultural and social identity, and its values--expressions by way of its stories, handicrafts, songs, dances, paintings, and such like. I am mostly concerned with the stories, of course. So I wonder to whom, for instance, should tales of  ol’ higue, rolling calf, water mumma, bacoo, jumbie and company belong? Should they belong (solely) to the people who were born and live(d) in the communities from whence the tales originated? Can people who have been adopted by those communities by way of permanent residence or some other emigre status also claim ownership of those tales?

And broader still, is it possible to see folklore as “Caribbean,” belonging to an entire region, rather than to a specific country or town, ethnic group or small community? And what about travellers, researchers, anthropologists? Can they too claim and use those tales based on their interests or fascination with new or old territory?

In 1999, following years of efforts to create guidelines for laws to protect traditional cultural expressions worldwide, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) organized regional consultations on the protection of expressions of folklore for African countries, countries of Asia and the Pacific region, Arab countries, and for Latin America and the Caribbean. Model provisions for the language of protection had already been established by the WIPO and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1982, and all were encouraged to make use of two main categories of acts against which folklore could be protected: namely “illicit exploitation” and “other prejudicial actions.” (more here).

My guess is that the language of protection provided is too vague to properly protect against most types of exploitation of folklore. And that’s if Caribbean countries even want to be aggressive about protecting folklore.

How are Caribbean writers using folklore? Are their representations of folklore figures inventive and/or informative, or are they exploitative and/or prejudicial?

Remember David Dabydeen’s Amerindian man who withstood a long period of humiliation in England until he finally dreamed himself out of it? He dreamed himself back to the safety and familiarity of home in Guyana, but couldn’t quite dream away the white woman who followed him back to Guyana, and who may have been his biggest abuser. Should Dabydeen be found guilty of some abuse himself?

What about Mark McWatt’s lusty, violent bacoo who may have fulfilled a lonely woman’s wishes and his own desire to work out his anger at having been imprisoned and treated like a freak show, but are his anger and sexual violence really justifiable? Is McWatt’s portrayal of the bacoo harmful in any way?

And what’s your call on Geoffrey Philps’s rolling calf who makes a noisy appearance in a Miami neighborhood to alert a man that all isn't quite well in his home?

Is Jamaica Kincaid’s “reasonable” woman, who (only) drinks the blood of her secret enemies, a redeeming rewrite of Wordsworth McAndrew’s blood-sucking ol’ higue who preys on children, and gets a good beating for her actions? Does Kincaid point the way to new territory by giving the river mumma something to do besides sit on a rock and comb her hair? Does the shade in Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw’s title story (“Four Taxis Facing North”) who has the gift and curse of foresight about Trinidad give us reasons to consider the value of ghosts?

I’m sure writers who claim some belongingness to (or fascination with) the Caribbean will continue to create interpretations--however they may be judged--of folklore. And the realm of folklore should be open to them all--the native born, his progeny, the adopted resident, the researcher, the traveller. All of them can contribute to the preservation, the dissemination of knowledge about a culture, a people, a region. And yes, they should be made to follow rules of engagement that protect the material somehow. But don’t ask me what those rules should be.