Reading Haiti and Trinidad & Tobago from Guyana

 

(This is not a review of either 'Pleasantview' by Celeste Mohammed or 'What storm what Thunder' by Myriam J. A Chancy There might be some spoilers) 

Domestic workers

May Day morning and I stand with Red Thread for an hour or so to make up for the privilege which includes being in a book club where we discussed two books the day before. 

Red Thread is part of the Caribbean Domestic Workers Network  .  Red Thread and the Network use May Day to advocate for rights of domestic workers and to highlight the value of caring work. 

We chat about caring work, experiences of domestic workers, women who work as security guards while we wait for the May Day parade to pass.

The conversation about domestic workers' experiences is similar to what Sonia says in What Storm What Thunder "My mother had always told me that she wanted me to do something more with my life than work in a rich man’s house. It was too much work, she said, tiring work, she who had worked as a live-in domestic before she was married, before we were born. Work that broke down your body and your mind. You had to be ready at any time of day or night to get out of your bed and do the things you were asked, whether it was to clean, to cook, or to run an errand. You rarely got any time off, and depending on the morals of the family, you could be asked to do things you never had a mind to do."  

 In Pleasantview, "Miss Ivy felt responsible not only to keep house, but also the family’s secrets and domestic peace. She didn’t want to work for a divorced hag—Pleasantview people respected you more when you worked for a proper Santa Marta family. "   

A woman I know dismissed the two domestic workers who did not come to her assistance when her husband was assaulting her. The woman told me the workers hinted that she should not provoke her husband. Another family, the domestic worker told the father of a girl who had died by suicide 'you is a wicked man.. you is a wicked man'. No one knows what she meant, or everyone knows.

The two books, domestic workers in the books, Miss Ivy has a fur coat and she gets some money from her former boss for keeping secrets. 

Haiti , the place Guyana is supposed to be lucky it is not to be , Trinidad - the place Guyana might be on the way to Dubai as oil flows.

One 69 year old woman who comes for money, also does some domestic work as she is able. The oil rich pension and benefits are not enough for her and her son 'who trips out every moonlight'. She has had problems with the bosses asking for more than negotiated.

May Day is a workers' holiday. Regent Street has stores , some of them opening. We hold the placards, watching the homeless and the mentally ill and wonder about whether the workers are getting paid overtime. We wonder whether the workers know if they are supposed to get overtime, whether they would come out and join the parade when it passes. 

We learn that the route of the parade might have changed.

Earthquake, violence, music

January 2010 and we hear of the Haiti earthquake. It would be far away for those who do not know people in Haiti. One of my colleagues,  pragmatic , methodical IT guy, - Stéphane Bruno - sent this email "I am okay with my family and the kids, but Mica lost a few members of her family, aunt, cousin, her sister johanne, niece. The night of the tragedy I was digging out two of her sisters from the debris. We also miraculously saved her nephew 5 year old as he started crying while we were leaving.

We were able to get Johanne corpse but we couldn't reach the others.
We buried her yesterday as it is impossible to find a coffin and morgues are either destroyed or full.

Now we are dealing with wounded survivors, with the little boy in a serious condition with head trauma"

There are other emails, anxiety, helplessness (and relief) that we were not Haiti at the time saying 'we are all Haiti'. Trying to use technologies to help in the post earthquake work.

.

Why write fiction when there are multiple real accounts - multiple stories. Mark Jacobs from Guyana wrote a set of vignettes in 'what a friend we have in jesus' after he visited Haiti.

But, responsibility to book club, community - I think I will read a story or two. Except that Myriam J.A Chancy's prose is beautiful and the story is not about the earthquake and is about people and as with many people, each person is complex. There are horrible  moments in the stories , the violence, in What Storm What Thunder and Pleasantview.. 

In June 2016, another email "...Stéphane Bruno, 42 ans, l’un des visages de l’innovation technologique en Haïti, a été tué par balle..."   Stéphane had gone to check on who was in vehicle, and one of the people shot and killed him.

I realise I am not reading Pleasantview deeply  because well, the headlines from Trinidad which are in Guyana's papers tell stories of violence, gun deaths. 

Frightening places.

Lesbian, masisi

 Pleasantview is described as a 'novel of stories' - What Storm What Thunder is also a novel of stories. It was interesting that both books had 'queer' characters, though the treatment is different. A 'lesbian' couple in Pleasantview (even as one woman did not want to use word , as many others do not); while Sonia tells about Dieudonné - the Fixer - telling her 'I am M.. (masisi). Sonia, herself 'chooses the women she wants to be intimate with' , and the relationship between her and Dieudonné is one of the most beautifully imagined in Caribbean literature and opening up possibilities beyond violence and jealousy and ownership.. which another man Leopold describes "The coldness of the stare conveyed more than a brotherly love for Sonia, something deeper, oceanic, a feeling he, Leopold, had never felt before for a woman but was beginning to understand in that moment of folding
his arms back behind him, holding back, biding his time."

Turtles 

Leopold, who moves drugs between Trinidad and Haiti, changes his life after he survives the earthquake and returns to Trinidad. Leopold recalls his awe at the leatherback turtle hatchlings he saw as a child on a Trinidadian beach. Omar in Pleasantview, is also fond of the Turtles, and also witnesses violence against the turtles.  

Leatherback turtles are endangered species. Leopold and Omar , two men, two different times in two different books, experience a connection which might make them a bit more fantastical and not like 'other real Caribbean people' than the people who kill the turtles.

"Who raising dese men who killing women (and each other..?) nah women?"

Pleasantview has its fare share of gender-based violence. There was a comment in the Bocas Lit Fest 2023 panel with the author which noted that the book was Trinidad (and maybe Guyana, and the rest of the Caribbean? ). 

Celeste Mohammed raised the question of male marginalisation and asked the question about male fragility and 'who is raising these men'.  Some of us in the book club were concerned as we hear that male violence is often the responsibility of 'bitter, violent mothers' and 'absent fathers' . 

Pleasantview though shows how that well, boys are also raised by men in community.. violent Jhagroo loving his son Manohar, Omar being invited to drink alcohol even though he did not want, to feeling betrayed, and then to taking up hustling and the Islamic faith and to provide some different kind of modelling for younger boys.  

In both books, men taking boys to run drugs and guns and so on. Women doing domestic work, or sex work, or shop work.

Healing

One of the members of the book club asked what I asked in my head when reading some of the Caribbean books.. is there no healing and redemption for the characters (us?) . No disruption of this trauma of exploitation? 

We recognised Miss Ivy's opening up at the wake after a catalyst from another woman who breaks silence on a much respected abuser of women, the first step in what could be a journey for healing.  We not sure if the woman killing the man who abused her was part of healing. We recognised Ma Lou bathing in the waterfall in Haiti with the other rape survivor as another kind of healing but not sure if rape survivors in the Caribbean must think that praying things away will remove trauma.

I read the news and realise in upcoming local government elections, that Guyana's democracy will include citizens voting for candidates with unresolved allegations of sexual violence against them.

In What Storm What Thunder, there is Loko, a healer, trying to use traditional healing while collecting rainwater in the camp. Quiet character talked about in the book.  A man from a community which might be Pleasantview talks to me about trying to do something for an abusive man. The man I talk to has shunned the man from the activities which might reinforce the abuse, while recognising that the abuser in addition to therapy will need some kind of community of men to keep him accountable.

And so , beautifully written Caribbean books about Caribbean trauma in different ways.. fiction blurring with non-fiction.

And realising that maybe we also need to write and read more about the communal healing needed, non-fiction and fiction.