March 2010 Group read - The Caribbean

I'm just getting the March group read thread up and running so people have time to suggest and acquire a few books. For March we are visiting the Caribbean. It is a large area with a rich literary history, so we have a wonderful opportunity to unearth some really good literature. As usual, the theme is kind of lax, so anything you can shoehorn in, be it through the author, setting or whatever else, is welcome. I will, as usual, put up a couple of posts to introduce the topic, before opening the floor to suggestions.

As usual, a little (very basic) background...

The Caribbean usually refers to the area between Cuba to the north, Central America to the east, South America to the south and the 'Windward' Islands (Martinique, Barbados, St. Lucia, Barbados, etc.) to the east.

Prior to 'discovery' by Europeans islands had an indigenous Amerindian population consisting of the Taino, Caribs and Ciboney. The first Europeans to reach the Caribbean were lead by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Once discovered, they were the subject of a colonial land grab, as Spain, then Britain and France, then later the Netherlands and the US, all looked to expand their empires and profit from the natural resources found on the islands. The European powers established plantations, cultivating sugar, tobacco, chocolate, among other commodities. The plantations, and most caribbean islands, were populated by slaves brought in from West Africa. Meanwhile, the seas became a battleground as the colonial nations, and private individuals, fought over trade routes. The aboriginal population of the area quickly became extinct, succumbing to brutality, disease, or becoming assimilated into the immigrant populations.

Caribbean independence movements sprang up on various islands in the 19th Century. Haiti was the first to declare independence (from France) following the world's only successful slave rebellion. Cuba was also one of the first to become independent from Spain. Following the abolition of slavery, movements for black emancipation began to appear, and the 'negritude' movement of the 1930s started to redefine the identity of former slave colonies by switching the focus away from the history and culture of the former slave owners (and their European origins) towards an awareness of the history and culture of the former slaves (and their African origins). By the mid- to late-20th century, many Caribbean nations achieved full independence, though there are still many islands that are still politically integrated into other nations, including France, Britain, Spain and the US.

We had a group read for Haiti way back in March 2008 (our first one). There were many issues raised, such as race, negritude, Creole culture, identity, that could feature in literature from all over the region. It was an interesting discussion anyway, so I suggest you have a look to get some ides for things to look out for in your Caribbean read.

Here is the link.

I have had a lot of luck with Caribbean literature in the past. There is a lot of easily available literature and well-known authors, and some of my favourite books from my reading globally challenge have come form there. There are a few too many to list all of my reads, but I am happy to recommend a few:
God's Angry Babies by Ian Strachan (Bahamas)
In the Castle of my Skin by George Lamming (Barbados)
The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)
Infante's Inferno by G. Cabrera Infante (Cuba)
The Orchid House by Phyllis Shand Allfrey (Dominica)
Omeros by Derek Walcott (St. Lucia)
Spirits in the Dark by H. Nigel Thomas (St. Vincent)
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S.Naipaul (Trinidad & Tobago)

Naipaul and Walcott are both Nobel laureates. All of the above were very, very good. It is probably the area I have enjoyed visiting most on my Reading Globally Challenge, which, I think, is a testament to the amount of available literature, if nothing else.

I have 8 books that 'qualify' currently sitting on my shelves. I am also pushing myself this year to read more female authors, which is reflected in my list:
At the Bottom of the River and Anni John by Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua)
Angel and Rain Darling by Merle Collins (Grenada)
Solibo Magnificent by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique
Crossing the Mangrove and A Season in Rihata by Marys Conde (Guadeloupe)
The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Dominica)

A lot of Conde's stuff is written and set in Africa, but I'll post on it if I get to it anyway. They are mostly short, so I hope to get to them all in March.

So, over to you. Feel free to list some recommends or reading intentions. I like to keep everything on a single thread, so please post everything here. I am not going to post questions before we start, but that doesn't mean you can't if there is anything you want others to look out for on their literary journeys. Finally, it is only a personal thing, but I always enjoy reading a short biography of the author (by short, it could be 2 or 3 sentences) in discussions so, if you have the time and inclination, I would enjoy knowing who your authors are.

Some others -
many books by Edwidge Danticat (Haiti)
and Julia Alvarez (Dominican Republic)
and Madison Smartt Bell All Soul's Rising (Haiti)
and I just picked up a autobiography Take Me With You - Carlos Frias, about his return to Cuba, the home of his parents

The Danticat and Bell were discussed in the Haiti group read. People were very enthusiastic, especially about Danticat, so that could be a good choice for March.

I haven't read any of these, but this list was from a Jamaican colleague when I asked her for Caribbean recommendations a while ago.

Trinidad: Samuel Selvon (The Lonely Londoners)
Guyana: Wilson Harris (Palace of the Peacock)
Martinique: Aimé Cesaire (Cahier d'un retour au pays natale), Edouard Glissant
French Guyana: Léon Damas (poetry)
Jamaica: Olive Senior (short stories), Erna Brodber (Jane and Louisa will soon come home), Lorna Goodison (short stories, Tamarind Season, I am Becoming my Mother), Colin Channer

I would like to recommend my three top favorite books from the Caribbean:
Blessed is the Fruit by Robert Antoni
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
and
The Timeless Place, The Chosen People by Paule Marshall

Beyond that, I would like to recommend four others:
Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
Buxton Spice by Oonya Kempadoo
Secrets by Kelvin Christopher James
and
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shanti Mootoo
The Kelvin Christopher James book Secrets is, I believe, out of print, but the others should be easy to find.

I can recommend Danticant. Very good. I also recommend Andrea Levy's Small Island (Jamaica) and I also have her Fruit of the Lemon (Jamaica) on TBR. Also on TBR are Waiting for Snow in Havana, Dreaming in Cuban, and Monkey Hunting (Cuba). Oooh, I hate making decisions like this!

Andrea Levy's latest The Long Song is also set in Jamaica.

I will be looking to read more Walcott. Omeros (aka, the best thing written in English in the last 25 years) is a favorite. I have a set of his plays, Dream on Monkey Mountain, on my shelves.

After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel by Edwidge Danticat is a good, and very short non-fiction text, which not only details the Carnival but also some of the history and mythology of the city. (Haiti)
The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace (Trinidad) I remember very fondly from university.

I have Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua) sitting waiting for me at the library, and I'm reading Ruins by Achy Obejas (Cuba) at the moment. I'll be searching out some more authors during the month.

The Caribbean Review of Books' best books of 2008 are listed here, and best books of 2007 here. No best of 2009 list, unfortunately, as the blog hasn't been updated since October 2009.

I LOVE El siglo de las luces (The century of Lights), by Alejo Carpentier. I think it is a great novel for this theme, considering how it encompasses so much of the Caribbean and its history within its pages: Guadalupe, Cuba, Haiti, and French Guyana are the places that come to mind. It is a fictional account of the life of three siblings and their lifelong relationship with Victor Hugues, who governed Guadalupe and later had a role in the governance of French Guyana. The story reflects the initial excitement and later disillusionment with the French revolution throughout the Caribbean region. It is one of my personal favorite books written in Spanish. I'm not sure how widely translated it is, but it's worth the search.

Los pasos perdidos (The Lost Steps) and El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World) are excellent as well. I might try and find something that fits with this theme next month and join in...this group seems interesting, and I'm enjoying reading your discussions!

#1 - I loved At the bottom of the river. It was the first book I read by Jamaica Kincaid. I'll have to check out Autobiography of my mother since I haven't read anything by her for awhile.

I read Lime tree can't bear orange by Amanda Smyth. The book is a coming-of-age story about a young woman named Celia, an adolescent living with her Aunt Tassi & Tassi's family in Tobago.

When I began the book, I was concerned the phrase "lime tree can't bear orange," would be used by her uncle against her, since he constantly belittles her. (As in you think you so smart, but you're not ever going to leave here.) However, the phrase doesn't appear until near the end of the book, when Tassi uses it as a confirmation that Celia is her mother's daughter.

I brought a book a while back my Michelle Paver (she of the JF Wolf Brother series my son loves).. The Shadow Catcher set in Jamaica. I have not read any of her adult books so I might give it a try. Its the first in a trilogy.

I think I will read a book I have wanted to read for a long time, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos.

I finished Annie John in a few hours and it was a great read and I would definately recommend it to anyone looking for a Caribbean read.
I have A House for Mr Biswas, a couple of collections of short stories and a collection of Derek Walcott's poems to dip into this month

As you can see from the posts above, I am planning to have a busy group read in March (and I have added another book to my list for the month). I gave myself a head start. Hope nobody minds.
My first couple of books were by Jamaica Kincaid. I read Mr. Potter a couple of years ago, and really struggled to like it. When I saw that Annie John and At the Bottom of the River were both short, I decided to give Ms Kincaid another go.
Annie John is frequently cited as being Kincaid’s classic. It is a semi-autobiographical book about growing up in Antigua, and specifically charts her declining relationship with her mother. When ‘Annie’ is a young child she and her mother share everything, but when she starts to turn into a ‘young woman’, her mother becomes strict and distant. Eventually, the pair fall into mutual loathing, and every day becomes a battle between them.
The problem I remember having with Mr. Potter was that I didn’t like the narrator, and lost the ability to empathise or wish to understand because of it. That criticism applies equally, and perhaps more, to Annie John. I couldn’t empathise with Annie’s increasingly spoilt behaviour. That’s fair enough, given that she is a stroppy teenage girl, but her character isn’t offset by a likeable, or even accessible, narrator. It just felt like Kincaid was venting spleen without providing any real insight, and I started to feel that when I felt that I didn’t like Annie or the narrator, that it was actually Jamaica Kincaid I didn’t like, and I couldn’t get past that.
All of which means that At the Bottom of the River was pretty much the last chance for Jamaica Kincaid and me. It is a short story collection. In my experience short stories can showcase very different talents to a full novel, so I was hoping it would show me a different Jamaica Kincaid. It did. Unfortunately, it was still one that I didn’t enjoy very much. At the Bottom of the River has a wispy, ethereal, almost poetic style. The stories are impressionistic prose poems about youth and growing up, often told in staccato bursts of words. Much of it is a sort of stream of consciousness, single-ended conversation with herself. This is not a style I generally mind, but, for me, there has to be some concrete foothold for the reader, and Kincaid just didn’t give me any. There were too many meaningless words, too much self-indulgence, and not enough attempt made to communicate with her readers. The language itself was rarely beautiful enough in itself to justify these excesses, and I quickly became bored with the book. Fortunately it is very short, but it may well be my last Jamaica Kincaid.
So, not a great start to my Caribbean pile. I’m glad I gave her another go after Mr. Potter, but it turns out that she isn’t really for me. I know others on LT have enjoyed her stuff (e.g. posts 8, 15 and 18 above), so I would be interested in hearing some dissenting opinions.

I've started reading The Long Song, the new novel by Andrea Levy, which is set in Jamaica during the last years of slavery and the first years of freedom.

I have just started Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo which I found in a charity shop a few weeks ago and thought would be good for this month's read. I'm about 70 pages in and am loving it so far, so will report back once I'm finished.

I also plan to read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys later in the month.

Not sure if Guyana in South America is considered Caribbean, but in case it is, here's a book I just finished.

Hendree's Cure by Moses Nagamootoo

Hendree's Cure has more in common with West African novels than with South American novels--in part because, as the book mentions and focuses on, the culture and peoples are a mix of South American Indians with just as many Africans and some Europeans sprinkled in. Guyanese colonists imported Africans in bulk to work the plantations, giving rise to a unique mix of people.

The book is fiction but based on experiences of the author, and includes vivid detail on a wide cast of characters, a few of whom share the spotlight. Written in the third person, while the title mentions the character Hendree--who starts likable and gradually becomes more and more corrupted--it really focuses on Hendree's wife, his mentor and sponsor Naga, with vignettes, for example of a less than savory Guyanese expat named Tilokie who ultimately returns to Guyana.

At times cute, never funny, and at times sad, this book constitutes in part a cultural study of a displaced African community witness to but not affected by anti-colonial strife as it struggles with alcoholism and poverty, in part through a mix of perseverance and animism.

When I finish the massive Shadow Country, which is edging me close to the Caribbean since it takes place in southwest Florida, I hope to read Krik? Krak by Edwidge Danticat and The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, both of which have been on the TBR for way too long.

>19 GlebtheDancer: Andy, I think we've talked about this before, but that was my reaction to Annie John too; I felt alienated by a narrator about whom I cared less and less as the book went on. I didn't need to like her behaviour, but I did need to be drawn in by her voice, and I wasn't. I think you've saved me the trouble of reading At the Bottom of the River - thanks!

-->24 rachbxl:
I had a niggling feeling I'd had a discussion about Kincaid before, but couldn't quite remember when or with who. At the Bottom of the River is very different from Annie John and Mr. Potter, both stylistically and structurally, so it means that it may be to the taste of someone who didn't like the other books, but she is definitely not for me and, from what i know of your tastes, probably not for you either. I think me and Ms Kincaid are done for the foreseeable future.

-->22 shawnd:
Most of the Caribbean literature I have read (though not Jamaica Kincaid) has contained some element of 'negritude' , i.e. the search for identity in the Caribbean's African history. Its something I think people should look out for in their reading, especially when, like you, they have read some West African writers. There is a surprising overlap in language, religious practices, etc. The Haiti group read was full of references to it, and it made me understand Caribbean history in a different way.

How timely! I just finished The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao which takes place in both the US (New Jersey, mainly) and the Dominican Republic. The book has a very interesting structure of multiple narration and movement back and forth in time, so that the story of each of the characters unfolds in unexpected sequences. There are lots of references to fantasy culture - comics, online games, classic fantasy and scifi books - and a good bit of Spanish street slang which I found generally intuitively intelligible.

The story that unfolds is tightly intertwined with the abuses of the dictatorship of Trujillo, seen from the point of view of those who lived through it. Footnotes in a strong character voice provide lots of history as it pertains to the main story line - I found them very useful, so if you're going to read this on Kindle, you might experience some frustration. But the footnotes are definitely worth the trouble.

My second pair of Caribbean reads bears a similarity to my first couple, in the sense that they are by an author I have read before, in this case the Grenadine writer Merle Collins, and an author I didn't take to first time round. Also, like my Jamaica Kincaid reads, I had one novel and one short story collection. Fortunately for me, that's where the similarity ends.

My previous Merle Collins was Rotten Pomerack, a poetry collection that I found a little dour and uninspiring. However, I really enjoyed the two books I have just finished. The first was Angel. It is a novel covering the lives of a family, most notably Doodsie and her daughter Angel, over about 40 years of Grenada's history. The book begins during violent protests against rich white landowners, protests which would eventually lead to the island's independence from Britain. Angel is just a baby as the landowner's houses are burnt to the ground. She grows up against a backdrop of independence, social unrest,and growing pan-Caribbean awareness, all of which culminates in the overthrow of the corrupt government by Marxists and invasion by the USA.

The book is about the lives of Doodsie and Angel, well as being about Twentieth Century Grenadine history. However, there is no Midnight's Children-esque blurring of cause and effects. Angel is not metaphorical or allegorical, but rather a very good example of simple storytelling. Collins' characters are warm and real, characters who it is possible to believe in and care about. Although they have their political opinions, they are not too informed to be unrealistic or didactic. Even without the political backdrop, they would have maintained my interest as people first and foremost. The growth of Angel's political awareness was done with a deft touch, so that the book's two central themes merged without being shoe-horned together. In short 'Angel' was a very good book about people, coming-of-age and growing in awareness set in a turbulent period in its author's nation's history.

The second Merle Collins I read was Rain Darling. It is really a novella and short stories. In some ways it covers similar territory to Angel. The outstanding contribution was, in my opinion, 'Rain', in which a group of elderly women (including the eponymous Rain Darling) looked back on their lives in Grenada. Although many themes are touched on, such as the dangers of growing up too fast and neglect, it is the interpersonal relationships that are really the focus, and it is both touching and bittersweet. The other stories are, without exception, well written, and most found their target. In one, 'Gemini', the pains of growing up are beautiful told as a young girl wrestles with her imaginary naughty twin, and finds herself torn between doing the right thing and wanting to be older. Perhaps none of the stories in Rain Darling are startling in their themes or style, but they are all nicely done, and it was a pleasure to read.

I would love to read more Merle Collins, but it appears that she has published very little, with 'Angel' being the only novel. Her publications are also sandwiched into a brief period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so I suspect that there may be no more to come. Its a shame, because she is worth a longer look in my opinion. All I can say for now is that those of you joining in this group read, and those of you who have yet to add Grenada to you Reading Globally Challenges, could do a lot worse than one of these two books.

Good grief. You readers have padded my wishlist. I'm going to try and join in and get to a few of the mentioned books here before the end of the month.

#28 Welcome to our little group. My TBR and wish list have grown exponentially since joining.

I am currently reading Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Trilogy (Haiti) by Marie Vieux-Chauvet. I have finished Love, the first novel in the collection. It was excellent. I have just started Anger.

Here's a brief blurb from Wikipedia on Vieux-Chauvet

Marie Vieux Chauvet (1916 - 1973) was a Haitian novelist. Born and educated in Port-au-Prince, her most famous works were the novels Fille d'Haïti (1954), La Danse sur le Volcan (1957), Fonds des Nègres (1961), and Amour, Colère, Folie (1969). The trilogy Amour, Colère, Folie was published by Gallimard press in Paris with the support of Simone de Beauvoir. The trilogy was perceived as an attack on the Haitian despot François Duvalier. Fearing the dictator's legions of Tonton Macoutes, her husband bought all the copies of the book he could find in Haiti, and Chauvet's daughters bought the remaining copies from Gallimard in Paris a few years later. She died in the United States of America.

For those of you interested in learning more about Haitian literature by women, I recommend with some reservation Myrian Chancy's Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women. Herewith follows a list of some of the Haitian writers she cites:

Ghislaine Charlier
Marie Chauvet
Anne Christine d'Adesky
Edwidge Danticat (of course)
Annie Desroy
Jan Dominique
Nadine Magloire
Virgile Valcin

>26 ffortsa:: The footnotes in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao...

Here is a question a reading circle I frequent sent to Junot Díaz some time ago: Did you first think of writing a book “DR history for dummies”? (the footnotes being quite extensive)

And this is what he answered: "I’d be very careful about using this book as a Dominican history lesson. The narrator Yunior makes constant mistakes and isn’t above distortion and exaggeration to prove a point.

What I was thinking about the history in the footnotes was how wedded readers are to narratives that are authorative (history is an example of such a narrative) and yet these same readers who will swallow a lie couched in history will reject a truth couched in science fiction or fantasy terminology."

How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique

In this collection of short stories and a "novella" (or a long short story) and in deceptively simple language, Yanique, who is from the Virgin Islands, tells stories of people on various Caribbean islands who are in some way isolated, grieving, confused, uprooted, not (as one of her characters put it) at home-home, as opposed to the more simple home. Her characters and their situations stayed with me as I read through the stories, some of which, such as the title story, have elements of the fantastical. But . . . I have a quibble, and that is that after reading the whole collection I see Yanique using some of the same elements in story after story: coincidence, something from the beginning of a story "explained" at the end, exact repetitions of text to show how different people perceived the same event. It all works, in the context of individual stories, but I was disappointed to see it over and over again; as a reader, I then noticed what the writer was doing instead of being completely absorbed in the story. That said, I did enjoy and was moved by the stories and the characters, and I think Yanique is excellent at portraying the lives, concerns, and souls of people in a postcolonial, migratory world.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

The latest novel by Andrea Levy is narrated by an older Jamaican woman in the late 19th or early 20th century, and is the story of July, a headstrong mulatto girl born in slavery to Kitty, a homely and dark but strong woman on a struggling sugar cane plantation on the island. Her English master, John Howarth, allows his sister, Caroline Mortimer, to live on the plantation after the premature death of her husband. Caroline takes a liking to the beautiful July, and she is taken from Kitty and allowed to live in the plantation house as Caroline's personal servant. She does not approve of her birth name, and renames her Marguerite instead.

After the death of Howarth's wife, Caroline assumes a greater role in the day to day operations of the plantation. The field slaves are treated brutally and inhumanely, and small acts of rebellion begin to become organized movements, as the slaves become aware of the abolitionist movement in England yet are not granted emancipation. A large insurrection occurs, and Howarth dies, leaving Caroline to run the plantation. The overseer is also killed in the insurrection, and Caroline hires and fires several men, none of whom can do the job to her satisfaction.

A new man, Robert Goodwin, the son of an English clergyman, is hired. Unlike the other overseers, he is handsome, refined and gentle natured, and Caroline soon falls for him. However, Goodwin is entranced by the beautiful July/Marguerite, and he falls in love with her.

The Long Song is a captivating story of love, the brutality of slavery and its devastating effects on both slaves and colonists. Levy also discusses the role that race and color played in post-emancipation Jamaica, as mulattos, quadroons and octoroons were able to rise above their darker brothers and sisters, to their social and financial benefit. July was richly portrayed by the author; however, the other main characters, especially Howarth and Mortimer, and Goodwin to a lesser extent, were not. I still found this to be a worthwhile and enjoyable read, and would recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about Jamaica.

-->30 urania1:
Thanks for that Mary. I have an idea to have a Haitian reading jag at some point in the (distant?) future, so there is lots of stuff to go on there. I'll look forward to your views on Vieux-Chauvet when you are done.

-->31 eairo:
We had some discussion a while back about the relative merits of fiction as a source of factual information. I am a big fan of seeing the world through fiction, as you may have guessed, though, as with any type of evidence, it all has to be judged objectively. I prefer to think of it as fiction containing a different type of truth, and a different type of mistruth about the world.

==>31 eairo: Glad for your opinion. I was amazed that my book club partners were so sure that Yunior was a reliable narrator. Even if he is written to be as objective as possible, his point of view and his own attitudes have to be taken into account.

>34 GlebtheDancer:: Me too. Your last line about different type of truth/mistruth is well said. Fiction creates truth and reality of its own, something that often has a lot to do with the everyday reality.

>35 ffortsa:: Wasn't me, and my opinion. It was Junot Díaz saying what I quoted above.

In a way I was a little bit disappointed when I saw his answer before I have read the book. I'd like to have seen if I would have been fooled or not.

#33 Thanks for the review of The Long Song. I like Andrea Levy's writing and have two of her books on Mt. TBR, but not that one. I'll add it to the list of "I want."

-->33 kidzdoc:
Excellent review! I have never had much interest in Andrea Levy. Not sure why really, just never appealed, but your review has definitely raised my interest in The Long Song.

One of the things that has interested me in a lot of Caribbean literature, particularly that relating to slavery and its after-effects, is the bewildering and bizarre racial classifications. There seems to be a word for almost every skin tone and lineage imaginable, and despite the arbitrariness (too my eyes) of the classifications they seemed to be massively important in determining someone's place in society. It seems like a desperate attempt to maintain racial boundaries even after 'interbreeding' between races had become rife.

Also, I love the word 'octaroon'.

Speaking of different classifications, one of the telling lines in Tiphanie Yanique's book was when a black character who was dating a white man mentioned that her family referred to him as "light-skinned" to avoid insulting her by calling him "white".

31 -
Interesting contribution. It was a nice little brain teezer for my lunch break.

I've read It Falls Into Place, which is an interesting slant on the point about much/most Caribbean literature being about identity.

The author, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, sounds like she led a fascinating life. From the introduction: Born in 1908 into a family of white colonial officials in the British colony of Dominica ... she built a political career through an alliance with the labour unions and peasantry. She was a friend of Jean Rhys, and as a young woman lived in the US and UK for a number of years, before returning to Dominica in the 1950s to co-found the Dominica Labour Party, and serving for four years as a government minister.

This collection contains 14 stories published together here for the first time. Most of them are short, vivid episodes, many of which appear to have autobiographical elements, including a couple of childhood episodes which hint at the admiration felt by a quiet girl for the confident, attractive women who break rules. There's also a running theme about exile - sometimes, that is missing the island from a cold, bombed-out Europe, but in other stories you realise the characters are remembering a world which doesn't really exist any more - or which they can't get to, such as one story in which a Dominican woman in New York, who is able to pass as white, makes a one-time-only journey to a West Indian nightclub in Harlem.

Also A State Of Independence by Caryl Phillips, which covers a few days in the life of Bertram Francis, who returns to St Kitts just before independence after twenty years in the UK. In a sort of reverse Small Island, he arrives with high expectations, but the people closest to him, far from welcoming him back, seem to want to teach him a lesson - his mother, his former girl, and an old schoolfriend who is now a government minister, and like all politicians, obsessed with the future but not above settling scores from the past.

As well as the personal story, the book wonders whether the Caribbean island was really gaining independence, or exchanging a formal relationship with the UK for cultural and economic dependence on the US.

I found this a fairly slight read, although in the final quarter of the book, Bertram started to take shape as a character, and began to find his direction.

-->41 wandering_star:
I really enjoyed Allfrey's The Orchid House. She seems to have been a forgotten writer a little bit, and doesn't receive nearly as much attention as Jean Rhys, but I think she is worth a second look. Unfortunately she was not prolific, and I think one novel and one short story collection is the sum of her published fiction.

btw I read that she corresponded with Rhys, but that they only actually met once, when they were both very old. There is a tendency to view them as a pair, as sort of matriarchs of Dominican literature, but I think their paths were fairly different.

My next Caribbean book was (for the third time this month) an attempt to engage with a writer who I had found a little disappointing before. I read Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique) late last year. I thought it was good, especially regarding use of language, but it niggled me a little bit in terms of the characters in the book. Anyway, I decided to read Solibo Magnificent, one of Chamoiseau's earlier books. Like my Merle Collins reads (post 27), I'm really glad I gave the author another chance, because Solibo Magnificent was wonderful.

The book's narrative concerns a storyteller, Solibo, who dies mid-story in a park in Fort-de-France, surrounded by listeners. The listeners, all poor and unemployed, become suspects in a fairly absurd and hapless police investigation.

As I was writing the above, I was thinking that there must be more to say about the narrative, but that is basically it. However, don't let the rather mundane description fool you. Solibo Magnificent is a beautifully written, hilariously told and thought-provoking investigation into creole identity and the creole languages of Martinique. Solibo's death becomes a metaphor for the death of oral creole tradition, and the brutality shown by the police is the brutalizing and oppression of a language. There is a wonderful cast of individuals. My problems with Texaco stemmed from the lack of believability in the characters over the course of their lives, but Solibo Magnificant takes place over a single day and the suspects and police are beautifully drawn, each serving to represent contemporary (late 1980s) Martinican life. Moments were laugh out loud, but Chamoiseau deftly injects tradegy where he needs to, and without breaking stride. Also, don't be put off by the metaphorical nature of the book, because Chamoiseau sacrifices nothing in the way of storytelling for his wider points.

Many books try to be like Solibo Magnificent, with its mix of political punch, humour, fun and wider implications, but few succeed in getting the balance right as well as Chamoiseau's book. His writing is wonderful to read, and the translation was excellent. A book that is about the use of languages was always going to be tricky to translate, but I understood the point effortlessly (I think). Texaco is often quoted as being Chaoiseau's best, but Solibo Magnificent is the place to start, in my opinion.

Earlier in the month, I read two books for this theme.

The first was Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo. The book is set in the fictional island Lantanacamara, but descriptions of the place and its people suggest that it is a Caribbean island. It tells the story of Mala Ramchandin, now an old woman living in a nursing home under the care of a male nurse called, Tyler. As a bond develops between them, Tyler recounts her story, piecing it together from rumours, her mutterings and stories others tell him, moving between the present and the past.

Mala's story is a pretty harrowing one involving abuse that leds to madness, but it is also a book about great loves and the vivid descriptions of the island, the plants and foods, mixed in with a bit of magical realism makes it a more uplifting read than its subject matter initially suggests.

As with other Caribbean books, identity is a key theme. Here race is certainly part of that identity but gender/sexuality is given more prominence. There is very much the sense of people striving to assert their own identity, for example there is a character in the book who was born female but is living as a man. The other thread that runs through the book is that of secrets, with pretty much every character having something they are trying to hide.

The second book I read was Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. I was interested in the concept of this book (the backstory of Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre's mad wife in the attic) but I didn't enjoy the book itself very much. I found the issue of race very interesting, but I just didn't like writing style - entirely a personal thing though so I won't say much more about it.

#43, thanks for the info re Shand and Rhys. I got it from either the intro or the book jacket, but the two slightly contradicted each other, so it may well just have been lazy editing.

#44, I've also found Patrick Chamoiseau a slightly disappointing read, but I will give him another go.

All of this talk about Jean Rhys dovetails quite nicely with my next read, which, like sanddancer (message 45) was The Wide Sargasso Sea.

I have read a little bit about Rhys, and it seems that she could be described as a fiery character. She wrote a few books in the 1930s, and was well received at the time, but quickly forgotten. It wasn't until the 1950s that she felt compelled to writer her best-known novel. The Wide Sargasso Sea seems to have been born out of anger at the treatment of both women and West Indian creoles (by which Rhys means white West Indians), exemplified by the first Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre.

WARNING - JANE EYRE SPOILERS?
I haven't read Jane Eyre, so I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is integral to the plot. If so, it may contain spoilers. Anyway, in Bronte's book Mr. Rochester's attempts to woo Jane are hampered by the ghostly figure of a mad woman who lives in the attic of Rochester's house. This is the first Mrs. Rochester, who was transplanted from the Caribbean by Mr. Rochester, and has subsequently suffered mental illness. She is, I think, presented as a malign influence in the book, and her eventual death is greeted as a happy ending.

Rhys was disgusted with Mrs. Rochester's treatment, so chose to writer her backstory as The Wide Sargasso Sea. The book looks at her childhood as a poor white in the Caribbean (Dominica is not actually named in the book), her marriage to the 'socially superior' Rochester, and the breakdown of trust exacerbated by class and caste differences that precipitate her descent into madness.

I found myself really caught up in The Wide Sargasso Sea. There is a quality to the writing that reminded me of Under the Volcano, with a dark, doom-laden feel from the first page to the last. It is only short, but has an epic quality that, similarly to Lowry's book, belies the relatively inconsequential narrative it describes. This is 'just' a story about the breakdown of a relationship, but the admittedly dense writing style gives it weight far beyond that. Rhys' anger crackles on every page, and I imaging her writing this in an almost demonic fit of pique. Whatever the reality, it is a book that clealry comes from somewhere deep within her psyche, one that she felt she had to write long after her literary career was all but over.

All of this talk about Jean Rhys dovetails quite nicely with my next read, which, like sanddancer (message 45) was The Wide Sargasso Sea.

I have read a little bit about Rhys, and it seems that she could be described as a fiery character. She wrote a few books in the 1930s, and was well received at the time, but quickly forgotten. It wasn't until the 1950s that she felt compelled to writer her best-known novel. The Wide Sargasso Sea seems to have been born out of anger at the treatment of both women and West Indian creoles (by which Rhys means white West Indians), exemplified by the first Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre.

WARNING - JANE EYRE SPOILERS?
I haven't read Jane Eyre, so I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is integral to the plot. If so, it may contain spoilers. Anyway, in Bronte's book Mr. Rochester's attempts to woo Jane are hampered by the ghostly figure of a mad woman who lives in the attic of Rochester's house. This is the first Mrs. Rochester, who was transplanted from the Caribbean by Mr. Rochester, and has subsequently suffered mental illness. She is, I think, presented as a malign influence in the book, and her eventual death is greeted as a happy ending.

Rhys was disgusted with Mrs. Rochester's treatment, so chose to writer her backstory as The Wide Sargasso Sea. The book looks at her childhood as a poor white in the Caribbean (Dominica is not actually named in the book), her marriage to the 'socially superior' Rochester, and the breakdown of trust exacerbated by class and caste differences that precipitate her descent into madness.

I found myself really caught up in The Wide Sargasso Sea. There is a quality to the writing that reminded me of Under the Volcano, with a dark, doom-laden feel from the first page to the last. It is only short, but has an epic quality that, similarly to Lowry's book, belies the relatively inconsequential narrative it describes. This is 'just' a story about the breakdown of a relationship, but the admittedly dense writing style gives it weight far beyond that. Rhys' anger crackles on every page, and I imaging her writing this in an almost demonic fit of pique. Whatever the reality, it is a book that clealry comes from somewhere deep within her psyche, one that she felt she had to write long after her literary career was all but over.

Depressaholic - I love your description of Jean Rhys' writing in demonic fit of pique, which seems accurate but may also have contributed to me not liking it - the style gave me headache at times.

-->49 sanddancer:
When I said in my review that I was 'caught up in it', that really is the best way of describing it, because once I put it down it seemed a lot less significant than when I was reading it, if that makes any sense. There was an intensity that may have contributed to your headache that swept me away, but that gives a feeling of importance to what is actually a relatively mundane little story. I did like it, but it was more a book to immerse myself in than to think about after I was done. I'd be interested to see how anyone else feels.

>50 GlebtheDancer: it is interesting that you read the Rhys without ever having read Jane Eyre. In fact, I don't think I've heard of anyone else doing that! I read the Rhys ages ago and remember liking it - enjoying the different perspective of a favorite classic - but I'm afraid details now escape me.

I haven't read Jane Eyre either. I'm seem to be reading around it though, having read Wide Sargasso Sea and The Eyre Affair.

-->46 wandering_star:
I would recommend giving Solibo Magnificent a read. It had all the joys of Texaco with very few of the negatives.

btw I have finally acquired a copy of The Book of Chameleons, that you recommended months (years?) ago. I have added it to my Africa pile, which i will tackle later in the year.

-->51 avaland: & 52
I don't really see The Wide Sargasso Sea as a prequel to Jane Eyre, so much as a reaction to some of the opinions expressed in Bronte's book. It may add weight to Rhys' book to know Mrs. Rochester's eventual fate, but I saw it as a book about caste, race and relationships, rather than 'just' being about her origins. It did make me interested in reading Jane Eyre though.

School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau (4 stars)

Patrick Chamoiseau (1953-) is a renowned and innovative Francophone author from Martinique, who uses a combination of French and Creole in his novels and short stories and writes extensively about Creole culture (créolité). He is best known for his novel Texaco, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1992.

School Days (Chemin d'école) is narrated by a Martiniquan boy (perhaps a younger version of Chamoiseau?) who is the youngest of his family's four children. He sees his brothers and sister go off to school every morning, and endlessly pesters his mother to let him go, too. Naturally, the day comes when he is ready for kindergarten, and, not unexpectedly, he is terrified once he learns that he will be without his beloved mother.

He soon grows to love school, under the kindly tutelage of his first teacher, until it is time to enter first grade, with its older kids and intimidating staff. He and most of the Creole speaking children in his class struggle with the work, as their haughty and Eurocentric teacher insists that they speak only perfectly accented French. His best friend is Big Bellybutton, who falls in disfavor with the teacher because of his impoverished background and inability to speak properly, and is routinely bullied by the older boys during recess while the teachers turn a blind eye.

The quiet and shy, but mischevious narrator learns to respect books and love reading from his first grade teacher. At the same time, he is enriched by the friendship of Big Bellybutton, who shares his "underground language" and joie de vivre with him.

School Days is a lighthearted and humorous tale of the life of a young child in a postcolonial Caribbean country, as he struggles to fit in with his classmates and develop his own identity.

-->55 kidzdoc:
School Days sounds interesting. I noticed in the last sentence you described it as 'light-hearted'. The two books of Chaomoiseau that I have read are both definitely jaunty in tone, but they were also fairly dark in a blackly humorous way. Did you think that School Days was a lighter read? Also, the book sI have read are fairly directly about the preservation of creole heritage on Martinique. It sounds like School Days touches on this, without being quite as directly about it. Does that sound fair?

#56: The only other book I've read by Chamoiseau so far is Creole Folktales; I have Solibo Magnificent and Texaco, but haven't gotten to them yet, so I can't compare them to School Days (hmm, the touchstones are apparently still asleep). I wouldn't describe School Days as dark or blackly humorous, even though the narrator does talk about the preference of his first grade teacher for his pupils that have mixed blood, speak French fluently, or come from a more privileged background, and his own struggle to learn French, as his family spoke only Creole at home. So, yes, your perception of School Days in the last sentence of your message is correct.

For the third time this month I have read a pair of books by a Caribbean writer. This time it was Maryse Conde. Conde was born and raised in Guadeloupe, and lived and travelled extensively in Africa before returning to the Caribbean. The books I have read, Crossing the Mangrove and A Season in Rihata, reflect both of these phases of her life.

Crossing the Mangrove actually covers fairly similar ground to Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnificent, at least in terms of narrative. Set in a fictional village in central Guadeloupe, the story centres around the discovery of a body in the swamp. The dead man is Francis Sacher, an outsider whose arrival in the village caused upheaval. The residents love, loathe and lust after Sacher, and many of them have reasons to see him dead.

The book opens with the discovery of the body, and each subsequent short chapter focuses on a different character as they reminisce about their relationship with the dead man. Although this isn’t a ‘whodunnit’ in the normal, police procedural sense, Conde uses this aspect to drive the narrative along nicely, gradually revealing a little more information about Sacher’s life and death. The thrust of the book, however, is concerned with the contrast between Sacher, the epitome of a 20th Century pan-Caribbean man, and the village, with its parochial mentality. Sacher’s attitudes to life, love and politics are shaped by the social revolutions that swept the Caribbean in the mid-20th Century. To the villagers he is anathema, lacking any sense of traditional values and moral compass that shapes their existence. The internal monologues reveal how this clash led to his death.

I really enjoyed Crossing the Mangrove. There is a darkness to the otherwise quiet village life that Conde brings out brilliantly. The unusual narrative structure carries along what would otherwise have been a fairly heavy read, and the wider point is well made without being overemphasised. Definitely one of the highlights of my Caribbean reads.

The second book, A Season in Rihata, is set in an unnamed central African state. It follows the fortunes of two brothers in a faltering dictatorship. One, Zek, is a minor official in the backwater town of Rihata. The other, Madou, is an important official in the dictator’s government, as well as the dictator’s personal favourite. Zek’s wife, Marie-Helene, an ex-pat from Guadeloupe, is Madou’s former lover, causing the brothers to be estranged. Madou is forced to return to Rihata on government business, reigniting old enmities. Set against this personal battle, a rebellion against the government poses a more physical threat to the well-being of the brothers.

A Season in Rihata has a nice balance between the personal and the political. The relationship between the brothers, and the surfacing of their histories, is really well observed. Marie-Helene also provides an important counterpoint to the political plots, as her roles as wife and lover and their effects on her family are nicely told. The tone, and content, reminded me of Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah. I was a little less taken with this book compared to Crossing the Mangrove, possibly because there were a few too many storylines to comfortably maintain them all in a relatively short book, and a few too many characters to follow. Still a good book, in my opinion, but there was a little less to like and a little more to frustrate for me to give this a whole-hearted recommendation.

Crossing the Mangrove sounds fabulous! Thanks for that great review.

I'm currently reading Street of Lost Footsteps by the Haitian author Lyonel Trouillot, which I should finish by this evening.

Mostly, I've been reading and grading sophomore essays, but I finally finished my Caribbean read:

Erzulie's Skirt by Ana-Maurine Lara is a novel about two Afro-Dominican women, Miriam and Micaela, born in the countryside, steeped in the traditions of Haitian Vodoun and Dominican Vudu, trying to survive in an increasingly urbanized Dominican Republic.

Miriam is the daughter of Haitian immigrants, literally serfs on a sugar-cane plantation, oppressed by poverty, discrimination, and murderous raids. After her parents are killed in an accident, she leaves the plantation for the city of San Cristobal with her lover, by whom she is pregnant.

Micaela's parents are Dominican peasants who own a small farm. Her father is a Vudu priest and healer; her mother, once a Vudu priestess has been lured into the "church women" circle of evangelicos, after a difficult childbirth. When Micaela's younger brother accidentally drowns, her mother blames her and banishes her from the household. She too, ends up in San Cristobal.

Eventually the two women meet as they live in the same slum neighborhood. Micaela has managed to obtain a job as a servant in a wealthy household; Miriam can only find work hawking cheap goods and braiding tourists' hair on the beach. They barely survive a disastrous attempt to emigrate to America and return to the Dominican Republic. Finally, it is the spiritual connection to each other and to the African luases (gods) that allow the two women to survive.

This is Ana-Maurine Lara's first novel, and it has rough edges and unfinished pieces. However, I found it an illuminating journey into a world of grinding poverty that finds hope, and even sometimes joy, in a spiritual connection. It helps to have a bit of background into African-Caribbean religion to read this book, although the author provides a good afterword on Vodoun and Vudu and a glossary of Creole and Dominican terms (which I unfortunately did not discover until I got to the end of the book). Definitely worth the read.

Street of Lost Footsteps by Lyonel Trouillot (3 stars)

The action in this novella takes place during one unspeakable night of violence in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, as the Troops of the Prophet engage in a bloodbath with the forces of the dictator Deceased Forever-Immortal. The three main characters, an aging madam, a post office worker and a taxi driver, all unreliable narrators, relay their tales of the night's events in alternating chapters to an unknown interviewer. They also paint portraits of life in the poverty- and war-stricken country, where even young boys seethe with hatred toward their neighbors. Trouillot includes frequent references to past revolutionary events and violent episodes in the country's history, including the massacre of tens of thousands of innocent Haitians by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1937.

Unfortunately, I did not find this to be a particularly captivating or enlightening story. The taxi driver was the only character who was caught in the midst of the violence of that night, but even his account was not an engaging one. I did enjoy the only other book I've read by this author, Children of Heroes, but this one wasn't nearly as good.

>53 GlebtheDancer: I do agree about The Wide Sargasso Sea being a reaction more than a prequel. I reminds me of a discussion I had somewhere about problems in Barbados (?) alluded to in Austen's Mansfield Park.

>58 GlebtheDancer: Conde has a new (newer) book out - Victoire - where she envisions her grandmother's life in Guadeloupe.

I finished Monkey Hunting by Cristina Garcia, but was disappointed in it in that it did not give me any insight into modern Cuba or the revolution. Instead the book covers 19th Century immigration by the Chinese who were tricked in to making the trip and then enslaved in the sugar cane fields. The main character is Chen Pan who eventually escapes from the fields, makes his way to Havana, and eventually starts an antiques store. After some years he takes a wife, Lucrezia, a former african slave. Through their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren the book moves back to China, to New York, to Saigon, and back to Cuba. I did learn that the Chinese were well assimilated in Cuba and fought in two Cuban civil wars prior to WWI. I enjoyed the book for what it was, but was disappointed that I didn't get the view of Cuba I was hoping for.

I acquired one final book for this month's read. It is The Year in San Fernando by Michael Anthony. Anthony is Trinidadian, and the book is a semi-autobiographical account of a year he spent working as a house boy for a rich man and his mother in the southern town of San Fernando. The boy, called Francis in the book, is 12 years old, and a native of the tiny coastal village of Mayaro. San Fernando looks like a metropolis to the young boy, and the accounts of his impressions of the markets and the busy town are told with a wide-eyed naivety that the author does really well to capture.

The main narrative of the book concerns the relationships between Francis and his employer (I am tempted to say owner) Mr. Chandles, and Mr. Chandles mother. Francis sees their interactions with the eyes of a child. Mr. Chandles has affairs with several women, and acts like a spoilt playboy. We are not told any of this directly, but must piece it together from Francis' observations. In a strange way, it reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, at least in terms of the idea of a reader piecing together a narrative told via a narrator that doesn't understand most of what is going on. This element of the book was really well done, and gave the whole thing a really touching feel.

Anthony is an experienced writer, but not an especially accomplished one. However, there is an element of clumsiness to his prose that actually really suits the book. After a few pages I was expecting not to like this book, but I became completely enveloped in the 12-year old's world. Despite not being especially uplifting in terms of narrative, Francis' resilience actually made this a fairly feel-good read. It is a warm mug of cocoa type-book, but without the sickliness that this sometimes implies. A surprisingly good read.

As ever, there have been some very interesting books and discussion in this thread. The end of the month is on us (well, ever so slightly past). Could I encourage anyone still waiting to post to do so in the next day or two. People should of course feel free to post here whenever they read a book by a Caribbean writer. These threads are never closed. However, as April is upon us, there is a fascinating group read of Ottoman-themed literature about to start. Hope to see as many people as possible over o that thread in the next thirty days.

Very nice review of The Year in San Fernando, Andy; I've added this to my wish list.