Trouble in Paradise: How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

 

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

Tinder Press

Pp. 308

The title refers to a cautionary tale parents tell their daughters not to be willful, as the child in the narrative loses an arm due to curiosity when she enters a tunnel despite dire warnings. The message misfires when Lala (she who is told the tale by her grandmother, Wilma) wonders whether the girl could cope without the limb, swapped for following passion. She is cautioned, ‘but how will she sweep the house with only one arm’? She questions whether a woman’s worth is judged by her housekeeping, and maybe she would rather lead an adventurous life.

Unfortunately, her adventures do not lead to happiness. The novel is set in Barbados on a beach straight from the brochures of paradise. White folk live in tall, gated houses, while violence, prostitution, drug smuggling, murder and other criminal activities exist beyond their gardens, and everyone carries a gun. The police turn a blind eye to the abuse (particularly of women) until it enters those houses of those who go to embassies and ruin the tourist trade.

The community is steeped in intergenerational violence and abuse. Mothers beat their children because they do not want them to go bad and need to whip the devil out of them; they fear that sparing the rod is the cause of the child’s failings. Lala marries Adan, who regularly beats and rapes her, even while she is recovering from a traumatic birth. He commits robberies to pay for his lifestyle, which escalate to drug smuggling and murder in a sort of subplot to the novel. His cruelty leads to a tug of war with their newborn (known only as Baby because they have not yet decided on a name), which results in the death of the child as she is dropped on the floor.

Girls are routinely raped by their male relatives: Lala is the child of her mother, Esme, and her grandfather, Carter. The young women are sent away to remove the temptation, while the man is not considered to be at fault. Lala is made to sleep in the outhouse to avoid her grandfather’s attentions, or how else can he resist? Women are pursued by men. The policeman who investigates the Baby’s death pursues Sheba and refuses to accept that she doesn’t want his protection; Adan fixates on his ‘outside woman’ despite being married to Lala.

"A grown man cannot help himself, she explains, in the presence of a young Wilkinson girl. This is the way it has been for generations. It is not the man’s fault, says Wilma, there is nothing he can do about it. It was this way with her mother before her, her daughter and granddaughter after her. It was this way with her."

In some ways, the novel, full of descriptive scenes and local patois, is reminiscent of those by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison or Alan Duff. Characters struggle to connect with community and lash out at those who seek to reinforce their culture without understanding the roots of reggae or Rasta, merely turning gangsta. When Wilma holds a funeral for Baby, Adan does not attend because he is wary of her connection to culture, although he tells his friends that she is a bitch and “he not going anywhere around her or her house.” He is alone and left behind in the world where he has lost his local bonds.

Even Lala is infused in her beliefs, although they may not support her – her grief, trauma and post-partum depression are explained in superstition. “She is convinced also that supernatural beings are conspiring on her daughter’s behalf to make her understand that she will pay for her part in her death.” She fears a “wicked duppy” is playing tricks on her, putting cans of formula in the cupboard, although she knows she has thrown them all out, sprinkling the scent of baby powder in the house, and “It is this duppy, or another, equally malevolent, who infuses the peculiar sound the paper bag of flour makes when she is making dumplings and it hits the floor with the same sound she heard when Baby was dropped.”

Reviewers have called the book unflinching, claustrophobic, pitiless, and relentless. Focussing on murder, abuse, a violent marriage and the death of a baby, it is certainly no light-hearted tale, but there is a slight glimmer of hope towards the end, and it is ultimately compelling. It is exquisitely constructed, with flashbacks to flesh out the characters and the pathways that have led them to this Barbadian beach, and it is a great achievement for a debut novel.

Eora by Jake Nash

Eora by Jake Nash

This amazing artwork is Eora by Jake Nash, which is immediately outside the National Office of The Smith Family in Sydney (on the corner of Kent Street and Market Street). 

The Eora are an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales. Eora is the name given by the earliest European settlers to a group of Aboriginal people belonging to the clans along the coastal area of what is now known as the Sydney basin in New South Wales, Australia. The Eora share a language with the Darung people, whose traditional lands lie further inland, to the west of the Eora.

2 Market Street

Jake writes:

"My mother’s Country is Daly River, west of Darwin, and while I am not from Sydney and it is not my ancestral land, for the last twenty years I have lived, worked and created here and it has now become my home and my family’s home.

"Eora sits at the crossroads of the city, a point of intersection between the past, present and future, and is surrounded by institutions that have shaped and governed our land: the Law Courts, the Church, as well as the Hyde Park Barracks. These buildings, both now and in the past, symbolise white governance in this city and represent the very beginnings and formalisation of colonisation.

St James Church from Hyde Park Barracks

"These historical and site-driven factors are what underpin Eora, as the artwork makes a statement about resilience, cultural strength and the everlasting relationship between people and place and reminds us all that the land on which this artwork and these buildings stand, always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

"Eora is a contemporary, timeless symbol and can be passed down through the generations into the future. It is a message stick, within a city which has many cultural narratives running across its surfaces, that describe who we are as a contemporary, multi-cultural people with a shared history and shared future.”

I think it is an outstanding artwork that welcomes interaction and reflection from the design incorporated into the sandstone wall, which we are encouraged to observe, to the outline reflected in the ground on which we walk. I love that this is outside the head office of the place where I work.

Love's Labour's Knots: Ties That Tether

Ties That Tether by Jane Igharo

Jove

Pp. 306

Azere is a young woman of Nigerian descent, living in Canada, who is obsessed with her cultural identity and screen romance. The novel is written in a light, fluffy style, combining the predictable plots of all her favourite films, while hammering home some ethnic issues. Azere falls for a Canadian man of Spanish descent after a one-night stand but tries to do the right thing by her family, even after he shows up at her work (advertising) as the new marketing director. Her mother has another man in mind for her – one with whom she was in love as a young teen, who took her virginity on a camp and never spoke to her again until now. This has all the makings of a modern sassy rom-com with a younger sister and cultural sensitivity thrown in.

In the opening line Azere tells us, “Culture is important. Preserving it, even more important. It’s the reason I’ve always abided by one simple dating rule.” Due to a promise to her father on his death bed, Azere will only date Nigerian men in an attempt to preserve her culture, even after immigrating to Canada. Her mother and sister are aware of this promise, which rules her life. Let’s start with the culture, because that is what the author keeps banging on about with deafening repetition. She claims, “That’s what my mother has been doing since we moved to Canada – shoving my culture down my throat, so I don’t forget where I come from.” After the eighty-fifth reference, I know the feeling.

She explains the richness of her culture and it is clear, and understandable, that she doesn’t want to relinquish it. Her mother is clearly a powerful influence, although not all her cultural strength is positive, as in when she tells Azere, “If you want to be a feminist, fine. But please be a married feminist with at least three children. In our country, a woman’s honour is her husband and her children. A career means nothing.” Her father, before he died, was a commanding force, and she also has a cultural issue of needing to look after her younger sister. Occasionally in trying to explain how special her culture is, she denigrates that of other people. Her mother sees no difference between a white man and a Hispanic one; there are clearly shades of racism at play here.

Azere is motivated by romances and romantic comedies, and all the references are upbeat and contemporary, from Beyoncé to Sex in the City: it’s pure trash but it makes a change from the tired old Jane Austen template. She is self-aware about the narrative structure, pointing out the mechanics of the story including the lead character’s sidekick – “someone bold, witty, and capable of providing comedic relief and harsh truths the lead isn’t willing to face” – or the grand gesture, “one of the most pivotal scenes in romantic movies”, which is meant to prove one’s love, earn a lover’s forgiveness, or win back a lover’s affection. All of these tropes are deployed. Part of the romantic genre is to place an obstacle in the way of the couple; miscommunication of which threatens their relationship and only love can overcome. In this there is an ‘intrigue’ that goes on far too long about Rafael’s ex-partner, but it provides the definitive hurdle: it is forced, but it fits the romantic mould.

The chapters are told from alternating viewpoints – Azere’s and Rafael’s – although the voice is the same. Everyone cares about their wardrobe, hair and make-up and has “perfectly groomed eyebrows”. Rafael describes Azere’s “spaghetti-strap knee-length dress”; it seems incongruous that the male perspective would notice this detail. Of course the woman is petite and the man big and strong: Rafael epitomises the unsavoury aspects of the masculine hero, and when he tells Azere, “You’re mine now, and there’s no way in hell I’m ever giving you up” we are meant to view it as charmingly romantic rather than disturbingly possessive.

The novel is a simple love story which follows the predictable lines of a modern romance. It has an ethnic and cultural element which gives it slightly more depth, but some of the faux-profound asides are out of step and sound a wrong note. It is shallow entertainment and if it accepted itself as such, it would be a more rewarding novel.

On Shifting Sands: Celestial Bodies

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi

Sandstone Press

Pp. 243

Originally titled Sayyidat al-Qamar (Ladies of the Moon), Celestial Bodies is the third of Alharthi’s novels, but the first novel by an Omani woman to be translated into English and the first novel in Arabic to be awarded the Man Booker International Prize (which Alharthi shared with her translator, the Oxford academic Marilyn Booth in 2019). It spans several generations, from the final decades of the 19^th century to the early years of the new millennium, and captures the changing mores and traditions in society, particularly in how they relate to women.

The family tree at the beginning of the book is crucial, and even with constant reference to it, the timelines can be a little hard to follow. The novel focusses on three sisters and their marriage prospects. Mayya marries Abdallah as she is told to after a heartbreak; Asma marries Khalid out of a sense of duty; Khawla rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has immigrated to Canada. It is narrated by an omniscient narrator (who knows all about the women) and alternate chapters (in a different font) by Abdallah (who doesn’t).

Abdallah’s chapters are narrated as he is on a flight from Muscat to Frankfurt and he dreams fretfully of women accused of witchcraft and of the source of his father’s wealth back in his hometown of al-Awafi. Now little more than an oasis for nostalgia, it was once a hub for the slave trade, a practice that was not outlawed in Oman until 1970. It is no accident that the named narrator is not grounded as Alharthi inhabits the liminal space between memory and forgetting; the truth and the stories.

Marriage and childbirth are centre stage: customs are followed or disregarded and everyone has an opinion about how to follow them or not. Asma reads all the books and religious texts that she should, including On Matters of Purity although she finds the chapters so boring that she stops, but not before she gently mocks the highly restrictive guidelines on personal matters. Customs which are only followed for form are ridiculed, whereas those that come from logic and reason are upheld. It is still a patriarchal society, but there are social benefits to marriage. “Now she would be one of the women who sat around their coffee in the late mornings and then again at the end of the day. She would be invited to lunch and dinner, and she would issue her own invitations, since she was no longer merely a girl. Marriage was her identity document, her passport to a world wider than home.”

Women must still strive for individual recognition. When Mayya has her first child, it is a girl, which is considered lucky as it means that boys will follow. “The first one’s a girl, and a girl comes to raise her little brothers.” She calls her London, which name the family ridicule, but Mayya wants to give her a future elsewhere in the world.

The changes are occurring slowly, and the generations have different ideas and ideals. The novel is short and contains vignettes of multiple characters, such as Bedouin businesswomen, slave owners, gossips, poets and arms dealers. Celestial Bodies leaves an ethereal impression of vibrant sketches rather a chronological saga, and it provides a new and appealing voice. In a land of shifting sands, Jokha Alharthi is a shaping energy.

Jokha Alharthi and Marilyn Booth share the Man Booker International Prize for writing and translating Celestial Bodies 

Life and Death: The House of Broken Angels

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

Little Brown

Pp. 321

Big Angel (Miguel Angel de La Cruz) is planning his last birthday party before he succumbs to the cancer that is killing him. And then his mother dies. The family gathers to commemorate her life and to celebrate his over one Rabelaisian weekend of relationships and recriminations in San Diego. Among the guests is Little Angel, Big Angel’s half-brother, who shares the same father, Don Antonio, but a different life: his mother was not Mexican as the rest of the family are, and the racial resentments are evident as stereotypes rub shoulders with sensitivity.

The party is raucous with lots of food and all its cultural associations, and the novel is peopled with a host of characters; there are so many people (and lots of children), that it is hard to keep up with who is related to whom by marriage or previous entanglements, especially when people have nicknames too. When Little Angel arrives he has a notebook in which he keeps a cheat sheet; this is a great idea and one that is highly recommended for the reader.

The divide between the Mexicans and the Americans is blurred. Little Angel wants to speak Spanish to his family, but they don’t accommodate this wish. “He tried, and they insisted on answering him in English. Though they knew perfectly well that he spoke Spanish as well as they did and better than their children did. Each side had something to prove, and none of them knew what it was.” Two different worlds and cultures collide in an unspoken competition. Little Angel feels torn between the nationalities and he refutes the glib assumptions that one has for the other. For many, America is better, but for others, Mexico is superior in its transparency.

The brothers share a father and the memories of his toxic masculinity. Although he was a dominating brute who abandoned both of their mothers, Big and Little Angel loved him and learned some of their behaviour from him. They share experiences in a series of picaresque reminisces. “The brothers lay side by side, shuffling through so many memories. So many imperfect scenes. It felt as though they had opened a box of old photographs, each of the pictures torn and tattered.”

Big Angel also thinks in scents and smells, which trigger memory. As his body deteriorates, other senses float forward: “Early morning before dawn was best, when he didn’t remember he was dying. For a moment, he thought he had a future. And he savoured his past. Today, it tasted of butterscotch.” The novel is elegiac, but it also fluidly distorts linear timelines. It is a riotous, messy book that depicts a celebration and observance of both life and death with a backdrop of cultural confusion. Perhaps we shouldn’t have to identify with one thing or another, but can select the aspects on which we would like to focus, and drift along on currents of abandon.