The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

Where do heroes and villains come from?

 My "artist" son recently drew three pictures of larger-than-life characters. Two of them were of a baseball coach, and the third was of a person seated on what looked like an elevated chair of some sort. I easily recognized the coach in pictures 1 and 2, but not the person in picture 3.

So, I asked him who it was, and he didn't answer, just smiled wickedly. I kept asking and kept getting the same smile, until finally one of his brothers gave the picture a quick glance and said (with a distinct "duh uh" in his tone), "It's a person on a toilet seat." 

With my newly gained knowledge, I examined the picture, and noticed (gasp!) the person had an afro and an expression probably similar to the one he would see if he opened the bathroom door and found me on the said elevated seat....   

I can't find the appropriate words to finish this story, so I'm gonna switch kinda awkwardly to Naif Al-Mutawa's TED talk on superheroes inspired by Islam. (God forbid my little artist chooses "woman on elevated seat"--as I prefer to call it--as the inspiration for a comic strip!!)  

___________

In "THE 99," Naif Al-Mutawa's new generation of comic book heroes fight more than crime -- they smash stereotypes and battle extremism. Named after the 99 attributes of Allah, his characters reinforce positive messages of Islam and cross cultures to create a new moral framework for confronting evil, even teaming up with the Justice League of America.

Book news: Kei Miller (Jamaican writer): a new novel and a new collection of poems

 Pardon another worthy male interruption (my mention of Christian Campbell's nomination for a Forward Prize in Poetry was the first) of the women's literary fest here...wellll...fest-ish, but it would be wrong of me not to mention that Jamaican writer, Kei Miller, whose work I've featured here before, recently launched two works: a novel, The Last Warner Woman, and a collection of poems, A Light Song of Light. 

Read two of the poems from A Light Song of Light, which were published in a May 2010 issue of The Caribbean Review of Books. 

And, below are the opening lines of The Last Warner Woman:

Once upon a time there was a leper colony in Jamaica. If you wanted to get there today, you would have to find a man by the name of Ernie McIntyre but who you would simply call Mr. Mac, at his own insistence and also the insistence of others, including his own mother, who knew him by no other name. Mr. Mac was famous for his great big belly, so surprisingly big that the buttons on the one side of his shirt were permanently estranged from the holes they were supposed to be married to on the other; he also had a great big head, and a sprawling set of buttocks, all of which he could somehow manage to squeeze in to the front seat of his Lada taxi, you in the passenger seat, and then make the wild jerky ascent up the red dirt road lined on each side with the broad green leaves of banana trees.   

To read more of Miller's work, click on the links below for purchasing information.

__________

The Last Warner Woman, by Kei Miller (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2010, 256 pp).

A Light Song of Light, by Kei Miller (Carcanet Press, Ltd, 2010, 80 pp).

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo

There’s a sign on the wall
But she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have
Two meanings

From "Stairway to Heaven" -- Led Zeppelin

 What if Paradise Lost were recast in an African setting, its themes of rebellion, disobedience, greed, innocence lost, and redemption intact, its trickster characters both earthly and heavenly also intact, but its storyline adjusted to suit a more contemporary audience and adjusted to avoid having the young (or older) skeptic call it a fairy tale?

No? Not interested? Never read Paradise Lost? Read it sometime back and didn't care much for it then so couldn't care less now?

Okay. What if an errant male from the "spirit" world (a djombie) had his power to create and manage chaos stripped from him by a superior being, and given to an earthly African woman, and what if he then devises a scheme to go amongst humans (her kind) and take it back from her by any means necessary?

Interested? Who do you think will win? Handsome, disgraced, trickster djombie, or earthly, African woman, not much to look at, not remarkably intelligent, but a great cook? And how about if their encounter--African woman and djombie--is complicated by characters from both their worlds who seek to either help or hinder them? Intrigued yet?

What do you suppose would happen if the djombie and the woman wound up in each other's company (alone) for an extended journey, during which he tries to prove he deserves to have his power returned to him? (This after he realizes he can't take it by force). What would be the outcome of their encounter / journey?

Like other types of fiction, what if is a question speculative, fantasy fiction is mostly concerned with. The main difference may be that speculative fantasy fiction has more room in which to roam. Karen Lord's debut novel, Redemption in Indigo, poses several provocative what ifs about human behavior and about societies, and presents possible responses, which partake in the realm of the surreal, but always with the awareness of the eyes and ears of the skeptic.

When we first meet the novel's major female character, Paama (the modern-day recast of Milton's Eve in Paradise Lost, the subject of African lore who is given powers beyond human capacity, or whatever you make of her), she is concerned with a personal dilemma: she has left her husband and returned to her parents' home. Paama is not a broken woman though; she has managed to circumvent the shame and vicious gossip expected of her return because she is a good cook:

An inadequate statement. Anyone can cook, but the true talent belongs to those who are capable of gently ensnaring with their delicacies, winning compliance with the mere suggestion that there might not be any goodies for a caller who persisted in prying. Such was Paama.

Paama's husband, who is as extraordinary a glutton as she is a cook, comes in search of her and upon his arrival has several food-related mishaps, which make him look ridiculous and embarrass his wife and her family. That storyline alone--a man's self-centered greed, a woman burdened with such a man, a family's shame, a village's concern--could fulfill the proportions of a novel desirous of dealing with human beings, their relations with each other, and their societies, but the story is made even broader when other-worldly supreme beings step in and give Paama's fate new direction, and take her lifestory beyond the scope of the village.

Paama becomes an unwilling traveler on a journey with the male spirit--whose power over chaos she has been given--as companion. He seeks to convince her to return his power to him, and so attain redemption for the misdeeds that caused him to have his power taken away in the first place. Despite her reluctance, she gains knowledge. On a personal level, she realizes truths about her powers and limitations, and on a higher plane, she comes to understand the distinctions and connections between her village world and the world beyond. She returns home determined to face and contend with her own earthly fate--essentially, her life with and without her husband.

The story is told in an easy conversational manner by a narrator whose apparent anxieties about the skeptic looking over his/her shoulder, or about the listener with the puzzled frown on his face, are at times humorous, and at times tiring . . . too meticulously concerned with audience. Though, It is probably that meticulous concern that results in a story tempered with just the right amount of the earthly and the surreal to be engagingly wondrous and ordinary.

Perhaps, the best way to tell of its fine-tempered quality is to cite from two moments in the novel...

An old village storyteller explains his storytelling philosophy:

I travel to collect stories, and I return to tell the stories of one place to the people of another. That is the important part of the trade. You must never tell people their own stories. They have no interest in them, or they think they can tell them better themselves. Give them a stranger's life, and then they are content.

Yet, at another point in the novel, the narrator refuses to elaborate on a certain djombie character, and asks the reader, 

Why should I encourage you in this inappropriate interest in beings you cannot fully understand?

Somewhere between that old traveler / storyteller's expert knowledge of what a reader is more likely to be interested in, and the teller of this tale's equally expert decision when to cut off the story, is Redemption in Indigo's successful maneuvering between the surreal and the earthly. My guess is that the skeptic (I am one) will be delighted.

But maybe the skeptic isn't the only one to be concerned about...

West who?!!

A day or two ago, Karen Lord tweeted in response to this review: People, the author is West Indian, not the character. The source is West African, not the character. It's FANTASY! Made up world, yes?

According to her the mixup has been happening too often to ignore it. 

Should she or shouldn't she ignore it? What do you think?

Meanwhile, let me know if you'd like to have a copy of Redemption in Indigo when you comment, or tell me by email: signifyinguyana[at]gmail.com

____________

Redemption in Indigo, by Karen Lord (Small Beer Press, 2010, 224 pp).

The Caribbean Cultural Theatre of New York in action

Caribbean Culture Theatre, E. Wayne McDonald from Brooklyn Arts Council on Vimeo.

Helen Fisher: On romantic love

On August 4, 2010, the Supreme Court of California made the following declaration, which overturned Proposition 8--an amendment to affirm marriage as a union between one man and one woman--and rightfully, triumphantly returned the decision to marry where it belongs: to consenting adults who want to do so for whatever freaking reason they choose. Period!

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

In honour of the above return to reason, I bring you anthropologist Helen Fisher's TED talk about romantic love, which presumably is the unreasonable condition that leads to many decisions by couples to get married...

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Tanya Shirley's She Who Sleeps With Bones

 The poems in this first collection, by Tanya Shirley, are divided into three compartments or themes: “Restoration,” “Waiting for Rain,” and “The Shifting Ground.” And included in each compartment of poems is a title poem. I’m still adhering to my basic philosophy that poems are cheapened by collective assessments or analyses, but one sweeping remark is worth making about Shirley’s collection, which is that in almost every instance the speaker in the poem appears to address an audience / listener with whom she shares a culture, a belief system, and /or a certain type of “outsider” experience. The speaker can be seen as a modern-day griot of sorts / entertainer / storyteller / keeper-of-culture, but that  doesn’t mean the poems can’t be appreciated by those who don’t share or understand the speaker’s culture, belief system or experiences; there are, as can be found in any thoughtful, evocative writing, lots of open moments for a wider audience to come in and enjoy the poems.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the speaker assumes an audience who understands that dreams have meanings, that mothers “know” things, that children who may at first laugh at their mother’s “far-fetched visions” may one day inherit the burden of the ability to have those same types of visions. And I’m not talking here about the neoscience definition of visions that we get (more often than not) from the visitor couches of prominent talk-shows. I’m talking about something perhaps with less potential to be widely commercial... One speaker accepts this vision inheritance with bloody rue-- 

...I have come to know
that the people I love will always be slaughtered in my dreams. 

(Can that kind of vision be packaged and sold successfully?) 

Another speaker entertains with the description of a woman who may appear to be a cultural stereotype, but whose life is actually filled with complex layers of knowledge and experiences. In the poem she is a “Melba.” 

...a tie-head, Clarendon woman
too busy rearing wayward goats and fowl,
cultivating stubborn crops: yam, callaloo, pumpkin;
always cooking for no less than ten children,
and her man is a rum back
. . .
The last time she saw a penis...
. . .
the thing was big like the cucumber she had sliced
that morning to use as garnish in Home Economics class
. . .
And she didn’t really want to look
but Pastor spent so long looking at it
and grinning and rubbing and panting,
she had to see the thing for herself.
. . .
She finds God’s face in the holes of the zink roof,
petitions his mercy with heaving and writhing,
. . .
Melba is only interested in the size of miracles

Filled with longing for home from afar, another speaker talks to those of us who would understand-- 

Here, my mouth is full but my tongue is numb.
Just for remembrance, I talk patwa to the furniture. 

And, in a poem about death and dying, the speaker pulls a wider audience in with these short, blunt lines of pain which end with a twist--a pairing of opposites that may seem cruel to the speaker, but that is certainly a common fact of our existence: 

It is hard to stomach
the body’s emptying--
the constant flow of faeces
the colour of tar--
when you know cancer
does not belong
in the cavern of a woman
who reared roses 

A closer look...

From “Restoration” (the first stanza):

between concrete and forest
where damp rises
from a collage of leaves
black people gather
the scattered seeds
spread
from unfurled hems
sweat-soaked pockets
purple tongues
flaying in the wind
beneath the tight hold
of rope 

The poem is dedicated to Cave Canem (an organization dedicated to cultivating the growth of African-American poets), and it begins by placing us somewhere between man-made constructs (concrete) and the uncultivated (forest). Among the range of possible interpretations are those of either vastness--the ideological distance--between the two, or a condition of conflict, depending on how you see it. The description continues, in the second and third lines, of a place (this vast area of conflict, perhaps) where damp (in noun form) rises from a collage of leaves. The image of damp rising, could run the gamut of unpleasant--from mildly so (a slight humidity) to something akin to a moldy, disease-spreading condition. But conversely, if it (the damp) comes from the energy created in the processing from tree, to paper, to writing, to leaves of a book, or something the eye imagines in a natural setting (a certain reflective view of the leaves of a tree, perhaps)--it could be the by product of something pleasant. 

Somewhere in or between this almost perfect condition of ambivalence, according to the verse, black people gather “the scattered seeds / spread / from unfurled hems.” The alliterative scattered seeds spread is a visual sprawl from one line to another and conveys an image of abundance of both the black people gathered and of what they may be gathering from “unfurled hems.” The alliteration, the word “unfurled,” the use of “damp” as a noun, the description of a “collage of leaves,” evoke many levels of meaning and give the verse the feel of a poet at work. “Unfurled hem” also connotes an image of freedom, and this freedom may be in defiance of the “sweat-soaked pockets” (hard-earned, limited funds?) and may also be in defiance of being “beneath the tight hold / of rope.” And, the alliterative in “sweat-soaked pockets” has a stylized, romantic air to it, which might suggest a certain genre in which the poem can be placed.

“Tight hold” and “of rope,” which are separated into two lines, once again present a stretched out image in the verse. And notably, the former stretched out image of abundance contrasts with this second stretched out image of restriction. 

“Purple tongues” may suggest engorgement, which is another image of fullness, abundance or plenty in the verse. Here it’s of blood; in the former, it’s of seed or people. But the line that follows, “flaying in the wind,” may suggest a kind of futility, or a directionless "wagging" tongue--an image of impotence even. And that image of impotence may be further strengthened by the tight rope image in the last two lines of the verse... 

Very broadly concluding... 

The idea presented of restoration in the opening verse of the poem is that it is a humongous task, but that there is abundance in number and presumably in possibilities for the act of restoration to be eventually successful, but it has to be properly harnessed in a common direction maybe. The craft in the poem itself bears testimony to the possibilities of restoring, harnessing the potency of the art of cultural poetry. 

The poem is representative of one of the many styles of verse Shirley gives us in the collection. She gives us several versions of the urbane, the informal, and the downright bawdy with an adroitness that is pure pleasure to read.

Encore...

When I mentioned on Twitter that I was reading Shirley, the following line of comments ensued:

Hope to some day RT @anniepaul U shld hear her read! RT @signifyinwoman: @marciaforbes Yep. Liking her style a lot (Tanya Shirley)

I do hope to hear her read some day, but I feel I've already been granted a special listening treat via her book.

Now hear this (from "Negotiation"):

Yes, I know,
I am beautiful.
My mother tells me so frequently.

. . .

Yes, I know,
the way I move my waist is magic.
I am from the Caribbean.

Yes, it does excite me,
that you promise to perform cunnilingus.
I hear I am sweet like mango.

But what else will you bring to the table?

. . .
Do you have a baby
you are yet to claim
because you are waiting
to see if he looks like you?

. . .

If I start crying at the sight of a full moon,
a starving child, a dead rose, a lizard
over my front door, will you appease  me
without condescension?

And don’t think I forget,
do you have a big dick? 

If you'd like to receive a free copy of She Who Sleeps With Bones, please indicate when you comment, or send me a request by email: signifyinguyana[at]gmail.com

(Note: I only have one copy to give away).

_____________

She Who Sleeps With Bones, by Tanya Shirley (Peepal Tree Press, 2009, 80 pp).