The Signifyin' Woman (Charmaine Valere)

R.I.P. Gregory "Cool Ruler" Isaacs

One of my first major teenage crushes was Jamaican reggae singer Gregory Isaacs. Someone had given me his Night Nurse album as a birthday gift, and I recall spending countless hours listening to his smooth-rocking "dub" rhythms and his seductive love lyrics while staring longingly at his face on the cover of the album.

 

In addition to "Night Nurse," two other of my Gregory Isaacs favourites are "Rumours," and "Hush Darling."

Rest in Peace Mr. Sexycool Ruler.

[Gregory Isaacs, Jamaican reggae artist, dead at 59]

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Edwidge Danticat's Create Dangerously: The immigrant artist at work

 I'm currently reading Edwidge Danticat's latest book--Create Dangerously--which (broadly speaking) is a collection of essays  on writing (mostly) from the stance of exile, or immigrant. And, I am intrigued so far with what she says about writing as an immigrant, and with the questions she raises about a reader's experiences with any given text.

In one instance, she questions, as does her fellow Haitian writer Dany Laferrière, the existence of an "immigrant"  reader. She writes, "I too sometimes wonder if in the intimate, both solitary and solidarity, union between writers and readers a border can really exist. Is there a border between Antigone's desire to bury her brother and the Haitian mother of 1964 who desperately wants to take her dead son's body out of the street to give him a proper burial, knowing that if she does this she too may die?"

In another instance she describes the challenges which the immigrant writer / artist (in America) faces as follows: "...the immigrant artist must quantify the price of the American dream in flesh and bone. All this while living with the more 'regular' fears of any other artist. Do I know enough about where I've come from? Will I ever know enough about where I am? Even if somebody has died for me to stay here, will I ever truly belong?"

And, of course, since the condition of Haiti is germane to her text, Danticat writes about her experiences with Haiti's latest natural disaster: "While I was 'at work' at 4:53 p.m., on January 12, 2010, the ground was shaking and killing more than two hundred thousand people in a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti. And even before the first aftershock, people were calling me asking, 'Edwidge, what are you going to do? When are you going back? Could you come on television or on the radio and tell us how you feel? Could you write us fifteen hundred words or less?' "

Maybe it is with the acknowledgement of this enormous duty she has as Haiti's "representative" (of sorts) that she puts immigrant writing (in general) in the following perspective: "Perhaps this is why the immigrant artist needs to feel that he or she is creating dangerously even though she is not scribbling on prison walls or counting the days until a fateful date with an executioner. Or a hurricane. Or an earthquake." 

The immigrant writer (she reminds us) can be and can create--by choice or by others' choosing--a credible connection to his or her homeland for readers of all types and purposes.

_________

Note: I am also reading Myriam J. A. Chancy's Spirit of Haiti for the series. More on Danticat and Chancy later.

On a sister's passing

Among the dark verses of Martin Carter's "The Discovery of Companion" is the following one, which presents a startling look at how time can be measured--in the finite "stretch of years," or in an ominous-sounding infinite night.

 

While time is measured in the stretch of years
night can be measureless.
The veinless womb of darkness breeds a bird,
the flying child of fear or curse or blessing
to soar in the blue gables of the world’s imprisonment.
And this too is companion
mother of life and motion.

 

Strangely enough, I found comfort in it as I sat down to reflect on the recent sudden passing of my sister.  The lines reminded me that though she left us so abruptly and too soon, we have rich stretches of years from which we can choose how we measure our time spent with her.

Some of us have the stretch of college years--of lectures, assignments, parties, and arguments. Some of us have the stretch of years playing like tennis pros--of jubilation, of defeat, of feeling fit and looking good in tiny tennis skirts. Some of us have the stretch of office life--of hard work and accomplishments, of feeling close enough to confide deep secrets. Some of us have the stretch of life-long friendship--of laughter, of tears, of trusted companionship. Some of us have the stretch of family bond--of loving, growing, and changing together, and of being there through it all.

But now we must end our measuring
of time spent with her in the here and now
and move to another reality--
one where time is measured in clips of memory

and there is pain in the transition...

But we know
we have been truly blessed to have shared our lives with her
and we rejoice!

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Opal Palmer Adisa's I Name Me Name

I recently reviewed Opal Palmer Adisa's I Name Me Name for the Caribbean Review of Books, and I'm including that review in my Caribbean Women Writers series here. The following is an excerpt:

A well-supported theory about contemporary writing on ethnic identity — the kind written by immigrants based in the United States — is that it tends to follow the lines of a familiar autobiographical plot: the story of becoming American. Such writing often contends with problems of assimilation, self-reinvention, and cultural translation, and questions of language, memory, gender, and place. And, like most autobiographical writing, ethnic-identity writing in America tends to follow a trajectory which moves from deeply personal, solitary introspection, to the familial, the communal, and to some form of political activism — from an “I” to a “we” — that is full of longing, full of definitions of belonging, and insistent on recognition.

Jamaica-born writer and professor Opal Palmer Adisa’s I Name Me Name (her eleventh book) is a collection of carefully constructed “I” narratives-- [prose] and verses--and one photograph, which fit the above description of contemporary ethnic-identity writing. [http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/23-september-2010/the-shape-of-i/].

_________

I Name Me Name, by Opal Palmer Adisa (Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2008, 220 pp).

Caribbean Women Writers (series): Maryse Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem

 In the afterword to the scholarly edition (and a translation into English) of Maryse Condé's Moi, Tituba, Sorcière . . . Noire de Salem, Ann Armstrong Scarboro writes, "I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem was, in 1986, the first francophone Caribbean novel to connect the English Caribbean with the colonial United States, and the first of Condé's already numerous works to successfully combine an introspective journey with an examination of what it means to be Caribbean." Among other things, this scholarly treatment of Condé's novel, may well guarantee its continued "in print" status--a condition it deserves, and one I would like to see shared by many more works by Caribbean writers...

It begins with the desire to redeem...

As I stumbled forward, I was racked by a violent feeling of pain and terror. It seemed that I was gradually being forgotten. I felt that I would only be mentioned in passing in these Salem witchcraft trials about which so much would be written later, trials that would arouse the curiosity and pity of generations to come as the greatest testimony of a superstitious and barbaric age. There would be mention here and there of "a slave originating from the West Indies and probably practicing 'hoodoo.' " There would be no mention of my age or personality. I would be ignored. As early as the end of the seventeenth century, petitions would be circulated, judgments made, rehabilitating the victims, restoring their honor, and returning their property to their descendants. I would never be included! Tituba would be condemned forever! There would never, ever, be a careful, sensitive biography recreating my life and its suffering (I, Tituba... p 110).

If one were to try to pinpoint a moment in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem where the reason for writing the novel is made clear, the above excerpt is that moment. It comes at (arguably) the height of the narrator's plight as she suffers the punishment of being found guilty of practicing witchcraft during the infamous Salem witch trials, which began in 1692. In addition to its expressed act of redemption of the briefly mentioned woman who was from the West Indies in the real life trials, the novel can also be read as a slave narrative told in first person. 

Tituba is given voice to tell her own story of slavery, which begins with her birth in Barbados to a young slave woman deemed worthless because of her pregnancy (she was raped on the journey from Africa to Barbados), and who is sent to be the wife of a slave also considered worthless because of his suicidal tendencies. He turns out to be a gentle, caring husband to the pregnant young girl he is given as mate, and a loving father to the child (Tituba) to whom she gives birth. Tituba's early relatively idyllic days spent with her mother and "adopted" father would be rather short-lived, but they become a framing memory, an important recollection of ties to place that sustains her as she journeys from Barbados to North America, from one condition of servitude to another.

In Massachusetts, for instance, she pities the life of the children of her masters, and compares theirs with her childhood: "...Their waxen skin and their bodies so full of promise yet mutilated like those trees that gardeners try to dwarf. In contrast our childhood as little slaves, bitter though it was, seemed glowing, lit up by the joy of our games, our rambles, and our rovings together. We floated rafts made of sugarcane on the rushing streams. We grilled pink and yellow fish on little crisscrosses of green wood. We danced..." And though some may scoff at what they may see as an attempt to romanticize something horrendous--children born into slavery--it's possible also to appreciate (and identify with) the universal longing for home which underlies the narrator's words. 

The tradition of the slave narrative, after all, is one in which the narrator seeks to make his/her appeal as universal as possible. Condé's Tituba (her appeal) is universal in that sense. But she is also given unique, specific characteristics. In writing her story (albeit fiction), Condé gives her a history, a people, a country, and she redefines her "witch" image by demonstrating, "the witch, if we must use the word, rights wrongs, helps, consoles, heals..." She gives her a life that is complete with love, a sex life of her own choosing, failures, and triumphs. 

In giving her voice, she shows Tituba's ability to learn and use languages and to use religious rhetoric and nuance. Along her journey, Tituba communicates in English, Hebrew, and chants and prays in the language(s) of her ancestors. She also (in the tradition of slave narratives) assumes a specific reader who she addresses from time to time as she relates her story. In one such moment of address, she talks of being devoid of hatred: "Those of you who have read my tale up till now must be wondering who is this witch devoid of hatred . . . For the nth time I made up my mind to be different and fight it out tooth and nail . . . I could only feel tenderness and compassion for the disinherited and a sense of revolt against injustice." And in a final address to the reader, she asks, "Do I have to go on to the end? Hasn't the reader already guessed what is going to happen? So predictable, so easily predictable! And then by telling it, I shall be reliving my suffering over and over again. And must I suffer twice?" Notably, Tituba maintains her own voice throughout the novel, and though her story is a tragic one, the fact that we never lose her (so to speak) gives the story a kind of happy ending. Now whether or not that works, depends on the reader. Tituba, like other slave narrators / writers, appears to address those would-be abolitionists who professed to be Christians and to whom (supposedly) piety, selflessness and undue suffering would be appealing. 

(It's possible, considering her novel--in 1986--was the first attempt to remove Tituba from the margins of the witch trial records and give her dignity, that Condé may be appealing to an American audience similar to whom many slave narrators / writers appealed.) Tituba's story is therefore both an important American story, and an equally important Caribbean story. It is also a very captivating read.

The Marlon James connection...

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is a clear predecessor of works like Marlon James's Book of Night Women, which I am happy to tell (those of you who don't yet know) recently won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction. Finalist judge Katherine Vaz described it as possessing fiction's power " to conjure, through character and story, not just the details of human horrors but also how their truth plays out upon the skin, against the backdrop of the world, and upon the hidden emotions of us all. There's no hiding in any era, even one removed from the time being scrutinized." Wonderful words indeed! Sounds like the makings of a scholarly edition, doesn't it?

In this interview with Evan Kerr of Minnesota Public Radio, James talks about the necessity of telling these stories about slavery even though some may not want to hear / read them. I agree with him. And it's good to know the Caribbean has a growing number of such narratives.

_____________

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, by Maryse Condé (Republished: University of Virginia Press, 2009, 256 pp).

Caribbean women writers (series): Maryse Condé on writing about slavery and much more...

Guadeloupe-born writer and scholar Maryse Condé has been described as one of the grand dames of Caribbean writing. In this 2000 interview with fellow Caribbean writer, Trinidad-born Elizabeth Nunez, Condé and Nunez share their thoughts on writing about slavery, about Africa, colonialism, about defining Caribbean literature, and about their overall writing goals.

Condé: I believed that all black people were united by a common origin, a common history. We were basically one people divided by the evils of slavery . . . I made an important discovery in Africa. I did not share the same language as the people in Guinea. We did not eat the same food--This may seem trivial to you, but it is important. We did not dress the same way, we did not enjoy the same type of music, we did not share the same religion. In a few months I found myself terribly isolated . . . So I made a second discovery: race, in fact, is not the essential factor. What is important is culture.

Nunez: ...you write a lot about slavery, which I find unusual for a Caribbean writer. Caribbean people seem to sweep such stories under the rug. We seem to want to think well of the "mother country," of the Europeans. Recently, a British expatriate reviewer in Trinidad, bristling under the criticism of colonialism in my latest novel--Bruised Hibiscus--implied that I had bitten the hand that had fed me. I was shocked by the silence that followed her review, even from my family. No one stood up to say the obvious--that it was I who had fed the British through slavery and colonialism. What do you hope to achieve with the stories you tell about slavery?

Condé: People often ask me for whom am I writing. The answer is I am writing for myself. I write about slavery, Africa, the condition of black people throughout the world because I want to order my thoughts, to understand the world, and to be at peace with myself. I write to try to find answers to the questions I ask myself. Writing for me is a type of therapy, a way to be safe and sound. 

Nunez: ...do you think there is a distinctive Caribbean literature?

Condé: Yes, but it is difficult to define...

[More here]

Note: Coming Sunday: My review of Maryse Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.

And in another conversation with Geoffrey Philp...

 ...I said (when asked to name three of my favorite writers), "James Baldwin, for his fire and bravery." Now of course James Baldwin isn't my only favorite writer. I have several of those. But it's been kind of wonderful to learn that there's new writing of his to be read. A new set of his "uncollected" essays--The Cross of Redemption--was published in August of this year, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. describes the book as [another] of Baldwin's gifts to our literary tradition. I guess my excitement at the news made him roll off my typing fingers faster than other favorites.  

But not to be left out is another of my favorites, V.S. Naipaul, who also has a new book out, and according to this Telegraph review by Sameer Rahim, it promises to be another of Naipaul's entertaining and unchecked expressions of his journey in this life so far. Rahim writes of Naipaul's Masque of Africa:

 Naipaul has always been able to spot a fraud, and the best writing in this book deals with native healers and fortune-tellers. In Uganda he enters a small office and spots a framed certificate on the wall: the witch doctor has an official license so that “no believer need feel ashamed”. In Nigeria he teases a fortune-teller by asking whether or not his daughter will get married (Naipaul has no children). The man replies that she is cursed and that only a fee will release her. “But what he’s told me is good,” says a straight-faced Naipaul. “I don’t want the girl to get married.”

If you'd like, read more of my brief Q & A here at Geoffrey Philp's blogspot.