Monday, October 31, 2005

Review of Julie Mango

Julie Mango by N.D. Williams. Xlibris Corporation. 300pages. USA. 2000.

Reviewed by D. Gokarran Sukhdeo
 (Winner, 1998 Guyana Prize for Literature.)

The last decade or so has seen an immense number of published works emanating from Guyanese writers at home and abroad; some good, some mediocre. One of these works stands head and shoulders among its contemporaries, and certainly ranks among good modern writing. Julie Mangois a collection of short stories by N. D. Williams. It is however surprising and unfortunate that little is known of this author who has written prodigiously before.

Born in Guyana, he was educated at the University of the West Indies and lived a good deal in the islands before migrating to the U.S. Hence, he writes about the West Indian experience �” poverty and astigmatic politics, the astonishing beauty of the Caribbean, and of the anguished peoples sequestered by the sea, their yearning to break out from the limits of their horizons, the opening up of the minds of those who succeed in breaking out, and the sad experiences of those returning to the Caribbean shores.

Good literature is about the purposeful presentation of the lives of people through a language style and structure that will open up the souls of the common man to the reader. It inexorably arouses not just the five senses, but also the deepest emotions, and consequently effects a change in the reader. The reader becomes more informed, more empathetic, more motivated, and more involved. When the good writer describes a desert, the reader must experience a thirst; when he speaks of love, the reader must be ecstatic. The reader must become the protagonist and cry when the hero (or heroine) suffers or triumphs. In the end there must be a lesson to be learned, an example to emulate, or an error to avoid. In effect, good literature, as against the tradition of western popular writings, satisfies a dual purpose �” it represents reality, and promotes morality; or simply put, it both informs and improves the reader. The writer therefore has a responsibility to the reader and to society. He must look beyond the mercenary, as one who is responsible for shaping the mind of his younger brother, one who does not merely strut and fret his hour upon the stage, but also one who must leave social and historical footprints. It is within these parameters that good literature such as Julie Mango is examined.

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Posted by Milton Drepaul at 23:02:14 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Monday, February 14, 2005

N. D. Williams, Prash and Ras

N. D. Williams, Prash and Ras
Lilieth Lejo Bailey, The Caribbean Writer

In his attempt to pay attention to the inner self, N. D. Williams’ Prash and Rasgives the reader a ‘hill and gully ride’ filled with rejection, acceptance, anger, sadness, boredom, but never joy. It is not a comfortable text; you will either hate it and thrust it aside, or plough through the unbelievability of the first story, ‘My Planet of Ras,’ only to be treated to the exploration of psychic fragility in ‘What Happening There, Prash?’ I suggest skipping the first of the two novellas and going straight to ‘Prash.’

Williams seems to be using ‘My Planet of Ras,’ as a tool for endorsing a sub-culture that alienates itself from the larger society. Through its experimental life, ‘My Planet’ becomes a dysfunctional and vacuous society which seems to be designed to serve the whims of Selassie, the main character. Kristal, the young German tourist; Ikael, the artist; and Kilmanjaro, the drummer, organize their lives in order to satisfy the needs of the main character, Selassie, whose answer to everything is the spliff.

The story is a bit of a cliché - young, white woman escapes to island paradise to forget the pains of lost love. She encounters the hospitable natives (Rastafarians) who take her into their homes and lives. They all feed on ital food, philosophise, and smoke marijuana, ‘the healing of the nation.’ All is well once one alienates oneself from family and the rest of society, for even a trip to the market place can be a dangerously damaging experience.

Although ‘My Planet’ attempts to paint a restorative picture of a ‘righteous’ Rastafarian community, the author’s voice comes through as an interference to Kristal’s recording. It is highly unlikely that the young woman could be as well-voiced in Rastafarianist diatribe as Williams presents her to be. Selassie rules his kingdom with quiet distance, philosophical ramblings, and the herb. A wish on the part of the author, perhaps?

Both ‘My Planet’ and the second novella, ‘What Happening There, Prash’ tend to be metaphorical warnings against the dangers of going beyond the confines of ‘the village’. Whether the village is psychological or physical, stepping outside the boundaries can break down unity and upset the balance of power.

Prash is a Guyanese taxi driver, who emigrates with his wife and two children to New York. In this story, Williams has captured well the feelings of alienation, hope, and confusion that are constant companions to the newly transplanted. The desire to ‘be successful,’ however, is the most intimate of those companions, for not only must one prove that uprooting the family was a wise decision, but to be in ‘the land of opportunity’ and not improve oneself is tantamount to stamping ‘Failure’ on one’s forehead.

Coming from a male-dominated society, Prash finds that the balance of power is disrupted in America. He becomes dependent upon his sister for shelter; he must watch his wife, Sookmoon, become a self-assured, independent wage earner, and he must accept the fact that his daughter, not his son, has a clear sense of purpose. But most of all, Prash must now pretend to be successful. Here, Williams explores the character’s inner self - a place where an internal battle rages between the desire for success and the threat of failure.

Perhaps Prash comes to terms with himself when he accepts his identity, not only as a displaced soul in a confining society, but as a husband, father, and friend. Throughout the narrative, Williams makes the point that in an unhealthy, foreign, and oppressive society, one must employ certain psychic mechanisms for survival. To maintain psychic balance these mechanisms may become damaging, but on the other hand, they can serve to empower the individual. Clearly, the unity one experiences in family togetherness helps to validate one’s identity.

Finally, Williams uses the discourse to effectively convey the potential tragedy or victory that can accompany the sudden and subtle shifts. Although ‘My Planet Ras’ is an exploration into a seemingly meaningless existence, ‘What Happening There, Prash’ is well worth the read.

Posted by Milton Drepaul at 23:36:01 | Permalink | No Comments »

‘Life under western influence’: The Crying of Rainbirds

‘Life under western influence’: The Crying of Rainbirds

Chris Searle, Liberation

The Leeds-based publishing house, Peepal Tree Books, has made a genuinely pioneering contribution to Caribbean literature in the books it has published, both in their outstanding quality and the sheer quantity of their output. These books are beautiful artifacts in themselves, with evocative and imaginatively designed covers, always finished in a way which dignifies the creative works even more and gives them a ‘feel’ and look of real distinction which matches their content And all this at a price which is below the mass-published price of contemporary novels - emphasising Peepal Tree’s all-round publishing achievement. From Guyana on the South American mainland to Jamaica, Peepal Tree’s writers come and there is a seminal sense of Caribbean unity about the publisher’s list.

[T]he skilfully-woven stories of the Guyanese writer Noel Williams concentrate on the sense of entrapment within the neocolonial economies on small islands that many of his characters feel in the stories of The Crying of Rainbirds. In ‘Life Sentences’ this frustration rises to a climax as a young man declares: ‘I’ve got to break out, get away, before I’m sentenced to this life’ as he listens to the submission of an elderly man who has found one way to deal with his lost hopes - ‘create for yourself an asylum, and therein shelter your heart’.

The explosion of the joy and pride of small-nationhood felt within Grenada during its ‘Revo’ years is replaced by a tragic emptiness of life expressed by Williams in these stories of Caribbean people ‘washed this way and that like holed coconut shells on the beach.’ There is escape by the ‘great leap’ to the ‘life and leisure of the hills’ engineered by a small group of prosperous commercial dealers and bureaucrats or the illusion of escape from the ‘poverty inside’, made ambiguously real by Zeke’s dive into the sea and passage to Africa.

In Williams’ brilliant final story of a rastaman’s return to his primal continent, the boiled-up urge to find release and return is given mystical and memorable expression: ‘He felt driven, herded, rounded up, penned inside his heart’s bitter walling.’

Posted by Milton Drepaul at 23:09:28 | Permalink | No Comments »

Memory of pain and history’: The Silence of Islands

‘Memory of pain and history’: The Silence of Islands

Chris Searle, Morning Star

ND Williams is another Guyanese novelist writing abroad, but whereas D’Aguiar writes from London, he is based in New York. His new novel, The Silence Of Islands, is about another kind of escape and slavery. Delia, an Indo-Caribbean woman from a small island is also on the run, an illegal alien without a green card in the US. In this new country, a ‘runaway’ who carries her bags with her wherever she goes, Delia is determined to find herself and search out ‘the text of a new life’.

Like D’Aguiar’s novel, The Silence Of Islands is ‘a rinsing of the memory bowl,’ as Delia remembers her girlhood in her island, her engagement with its education system, her friends and teachers and the people she has encountered in New York, all runaways too, living like ‘too many strangers, with too little room for love to breathe.’

The alienation and loneliness of these insecure islanders in a huge city of foreign ways creates a terse and uncomfortable novel, which is executed with an impressive detachment, reflecting the starving hearts of the exiles. These two novels attest again that the writers of Guyana carry a brilliance which is unique within such a small and world-scattered population.

Posted by Milton Drepaul at 23:07:30 | Permalink | No Comments »