King of the Carnival and other stories by Willi Chen

Willi Chen is a Trini painter and businessman and this is one of the few collections of short stories from the Caribbean by a descendant of Chinese immigrants to the Caribbean.

I like short stories, and I looked forward to reading this recent collection after reading Sections of an Orange, Fictions and Krik? Krak! . Trini short stories for me meant Miguel Street, so I was looking forward to more of the same.


This edition has a Foreword by Ken Ramchand which gives a history and some context to the stories. The stories are more or less set around the sugar estates, with one or two of them set near the capital.

So, I read the stories. So a good thing generally, Trini culture is used as the back drop - language, taboos, behaviour, ethnic issues , stickfighting, cock fighting, drug trade, wife beating, suicide, etc.

In The Stickfighter, we read of wife abuse ; as we do in Girl from Bastahall and Lalloo's Wrath. The theme runs through a few other stories. The Curse of Mazay is a nice jumbie story, except that, well, the language read like Edgar Allan Poe, that I stop feeling scared and became irritated at the "secret abysmal regions smothered in perpetual twilight".. and less than a page before that the 'dark sky was smothering the dead".. and I thought , in Guyana, we does 'suffacate' and 'press down'..  and the language did not justice to the characters who seemed to be from rural Trinidad speaking and thinking perfect Victorian English.

No pork, Cheese and Trotters are two good stories, about culture and the whole thing about Muslims eating pork. Not sure why two stories about Muslims eating pork..but..
In Guyana, most Hindus do not eat pork, but in Trinidad, that taboo is not the same. Moro has cockfighting in it, good descpriptions you can be there. Six o Clock special and Rikkhi's Statement are related stories. Caesar, about love and giving blow. Assam's Iron Chest is a story which we like read about how a con man could get con. Kimbo, nice story too, but something a bit coolie pitcha about it in terms of how the hero overcomes his enemies. The Killing of Sanchez.. one of the two or three stories where the character's live happily ever after.  Bascombe the Brave.. well ..

 so a lot of misery and so on in this book, and I vex because I wonder whether the people who are written about, the Indians, blacks and the others, if they did not have lives and love and so on in happy ways. One thing which struck me, is how this collection of short stories has Chinese characters in it, mostly shop owners, but they are not main characters.. Kind of quietly there.

How did Chinese  people live in the Caribbean? What were their taboos, what where their triumphs, fears? Apart from Jan Shineborne, and Patricia Powell, will we get other books which fictionalise the Chinese presence?