Other Stuff about Fiction

Here’s some other stuff about fiction that I didn’t cover in class.

I.  Description

A vital element to fiction is actually description.  The description causes readers to recreate the characters, scenes, and actions in a story.  Descriptions can be physical, but they can also be psychological.  Fiction writers, however, are careful about how much description they include because too much description causes a disruption in the narrative.  Mood and atmosphere are important aspects of descriptive writing, and to the degree that descriptions are evocative, they may reached the level of metaphor and symbolism.

 

II.  Dialogue

Now, most people think of the dialogue as the domain of playwrights.  Fiction writers also use this as a tool.  Dialogue is conversation between two people (but more than two people can participate).  When writers write fiction, they use dialogue to break up straight narration and description.  Straight narration and description in a story borderlines pretty closely with journalistic writing, and may end up being nothing more than a report on what characters think, feel, and say.  So, fiction writers use dialogue as a method of showing rather than just telling.  If characters feel love or pain or sadness or excitement, it’s just best to let the characters’ own words to show these feelings rather than having a narrator say that’s the way they felt.

Writers use dialogue to give us clues about their characters’ personalities.  Authors use grammatical mistakes, faulty pronunciations, “proper pronunciations,” slang, speech impediments, private or intimate expressions, voiced pauses, inappropriate words, jargon, cliches, regional sayings, and other dialogue conventions in order to show a character’s intelligence, articulateness, educational levels, and emotional states.  Dialogue also shows personal feelings, reactions to the past, long-kept secrets, , sudden realizations, future plans, changing thoughts, political/social/philosophical/religious ideas, biases, and any other hidden feelings characters may have.

III.  Tone and Irony Guide Our Perceptions of Fictional Works

In every story, we may consider tone, that is, the ways in which authors convey attitude towards readers and also towards the work’s subjects.  Irony, one of the major components of tone, refers to language and situations that seem to reverse normal expectations.  Speaking of dialogue, word choice is the characteristic of verbal irony, in which what is meant is usually the opposite of what is said, as when we mean that people are doing badly  even though we say that they are doing well.  Irony is situational and dramatic.  Situational irony refers to circumstances in which bad things happen to good people, or in which rewards are not earned because forces beyond human comprehension seem to be in total control, making the world seem random and bizarre.  In dramatic irony characters have only a nonexistent, partial, incorrect, or misguided understand of what is happening to them, while both readers and other characters understand the situation more fully.  This draws the reader in. As you read these situations, you become concerned about them and hope that they open their eyes and learn better.

IV.  Symbolism and Allegory

Symbolism and allegory show the relevance of fiction to the larger world.  One of the questions that people outside of literature ask is, “Why study literature?”  To some people studying literature, especially fiction and drama, is a waste of time. However, writers use fiction which is a lie, to tell the truth of a situation.  In literature, even ordinary things may have symbolic value; that is every day objects may be understood to have meanings that are beyond themselves, bigger than themselves.   Some symbols are considered universal: water, rain, flowers, the sun, certain stars, the flag, altars.  Other symbols are contextual which means that they have symbolic meaning only in that individual work.  For example, I told you all in class about Faulkner’s wisteria vines.  Well, that flower was only important in that work, Absalom Absalom!  Now, some writers write works that are complete mirrors of reality.  This is called allegory.  Many stories are not complete allegory, but ALL fictional stories contain some kernel of truth for the author!

V.  Conflict or Conflicts

Conflict is the major element of plot.  Find the conflict, and you will unravel the plot.  The controlling impulse in a connected pattern of cause and effects is conflict, which refers to people or circumstances that a character must face and overcome.  Conflicts bring out extremes in human energy, causing characters to engage in the decisions, actions, responses, and interactions that make up fictional literature.   Simply put, a conflict is the opposition of two people.  A conflict may take the shape of anger, hatred, envy, argument, avoidance, political or moral opposition, gossip, likes, fighting, and many other attitudes and actions.  Conflicts may be external between two individuals or groups of people and easily identifiable in the story (think Batman or Superman here. We can all easily pick out the hero and villain and the reason why they are fighting each other).  Conflicts may be abstract, such as when an individual tries to conquer and element of nature, certain ideas, behavior, or public opinion.  Conflict can even be psychological and within that person.  One reason why I love Joyce’s “Araby” is for the psychological conflict.  He’d built up so much anticipation for this event, only to be disappointed at how cheap and flimsy it all was.

 

Notes from this lecture comes from the source book, Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 7th edition, edited by Edgar Roberts and Henry Jacobs.

 

Dickinson and Hughes

It may seem weird that I paired Dickinson and Hughes.  And I do declare that it’s not because these are the poets that most American high school students are accustomed to.  I chose to put them together because they were a:) transformative poets of their time b:) sometimes rejected by their audiences  c:) actually, writing poetry that was produced by their historical eras.  Sometimes, it is just good to understand something about the historical era in which writers write.  Some of my New Criticism friends would just die reading that last sentence, but it is true.  Now, click on the following links and read a little about the times of Dickinson and Hughes.

 

http://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/roots/legacy/dickinson/

 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/langston-hughes

More Stuff about Poetry

More Poetry Stuff

I know, I know.  Most students HATE world literature, and a great many professors.  I tend to love it, because I have to face the fact that I’m a weirdo.  Most world literature of antiquity, like the Odyssey and the Illiad, is written in verse.  And the verses of antiquity were based solely on prosody, not rhyme.  Remember when Ms. Littlefield and I both confessed that we hated prosody?  You know, the stressed and the unstressed syllables?  Rhymes really didn’t show up in Western poetry until the Middle Ages.  I know that you have already suffered through the many variations of prosody in a previous post.  We only touched on rhyme a little in class.  We touched on how we note rhyme (aabbcc and so on).   Well, rhyme is as varied as meter.  End-rhyme is the form of rhyming we recognize most easily, especially those of us who grew up listening to RAP music.  I must say that this aspect of poetry is the more pleasurable part of poetry.  But did you know that there are different kinds of end rhymes?  Let’s look at this convenient chart that I got from the textbook, Literature: A World of Writing:

Name	Definition	Example
Perfect or exact rhyme:	Sounds of final vowels and consonants are identical
Masculine rhyme	Final syllables of an exact rhyme are stressed and identical	Short-sort, long-throng, side-stride
Feminine or double rhyme	Unstressed rhyming syllable of an exact rhyme follows stressed rhyming syllable	Amphimacer-racer
Triple rhyme	Final three syllables are identical	Merrily-verily
Half-or off-rhyme	Only final consonants rhyme exactly	Ill able-syllable
Other rhymes
Eye rhyme	Two words that look as if they rhyme but are pronounced differently	Blow-plow
Internal rhyme	At least one of the rhyming words is within the line	“In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam” (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”)

 

 

Poetic Diction

By now, we have read enough poetry to know that the language of poetry is not the same as other language.  You know, it is the poet’s liberty to lengthen or shorten words in order to make the rhythm or meter fit.  One technique is called an elision.  An elision is the dropping of letters and syllables and is marked by an apostrophe (‘); when an end syllable, nearly always an –ed, must be pronounced, it is marked with an accent grave: “belov’d” has two syllables.  However, “belove`d” has three (okay, I can’t remember how to put that elision directly over the “e” as it is written in Spanish, but you get the picture!).

Another poetic technique involves word order.  This is simply how the poet chooses to put the words together in the lines. Sometimes, poets invert word order to make an emphasis or to call your attention to certain things in the poem.  Inverting word order will actually give extra weight to certain words.  Read this poem line that I just made up for the purposes of this lecture: “Somewhere, screaming is a child.”  What was the last word you remember?  How did this line make you feel?    If I were to write this as a natural sentence, it would read: “A child is screaming somewhere.”  Does inverting the order make you feel differently about it?

Word choice is another important element of poetic diction.  In prose, words are chosen for their denotation (remember that we said in class that this means dictionary definition).  In poetry, they are chosen for different meanings: semantic meaning; etymology; connotation, origin in another language; the way it sounds; rhythmic properties; symbolism; associations; appearance on the page; and placement in a line.   Now, poets choose different kinds of diction for different reasons.  When we read Shakespeare or John Donne, the language is called high diction. It is proper, the subjects are mostly polite, and there is certainly no profanity!  Now, poets also use low diction or informal language.  Informal language is everyday language, sometimes called colloquial language.  Here’s a special case: Dante’s Inferno is written in the everyday language of Italians during his time.  He was one of the first to put such a touchy subject –sin, death, and the afterlife, in the language of every day folk.  For that, Dante was hailed a hero of Italian language.

Now, diction can be concrete, describing material things in vivid detail.  It can also be abstract, trying to describe emotional/philosophical/spiritual concepts that cannot be conceived with the naked eye.  Emily Dickinson can be hard to read because much of her poetry is in describing the abstract.   She discusses philosophical concepts in poem form.

Poetic Forms

One of the great things about poetry is that it is global, and poets pull from many different cultures in order to form a poem.  One of the maddening things about poetry is that it is global, and poets pull from many different cultures in order to form a poem.  You will find that for almost a millennium, prosody and rhyme guided –no, that’s too nice a word –dictated poetic forms.  Well, starting some time in the  20^th century, poets decided that they didn’t want to be as constricted and experimented with other forms.  Here are some other forms from around the world that we will read.  I am getting this neat table from the same textbook mentioned above:

Name	Definition	Example
Blank verse/unrhymed iambic pentameter, and heroic verse	Found in dramatic or epic verse.  Blank verse mirrors the patter of natural speech in varying degree	Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Milton’s Paradise Lost
Haiku, Tanka, and Other Brief forms from Japan	Determined solely by the syllables; patterns are based on sound, imagery, grammar, associations between words, and parallelism within and between lines
Tanka	Single sentence presented in five lines of five, seven, and seven syllables for a total of 31 syllables
Haiku	Single sentence presented in three lines of five, seven, then five for a total of seventeen syllables.  This is the form that most American high school students are introduced to
Free verse or open form	Completely does away with restrictions on stanza, meter, or rhyme rules.  Became popular in the 20th century
Prose poem	Does not look like a poem, but has poetic function like rhyme, dense imagery, repetition, and lyrical description	Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha

 

Goethe’s Faust

Each time that I teach a survey class, I try to teach a longer work.  This time around, I chose Goethe’s Faust.  Now, I chose this text for several reasons: 1.) This is my first time reading Goethe’s Faust.  When I was an undergraduate, I read Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (c. 1952).  It was a much shorter version.  I know that this sounds like an uber-nerd thing to say, but I enjoy finding and reading new texts.  2.)  This is a dramatic long poem.  I know that it seems long page-wise, but it’s a poem that reads fairly easily and quickly.  3.)  Faust has been around since the Middle Ages (Medieval Period).  For those of you who have already taken Medieval lit, it should be fairly easy to understand.  For those of you who have not taken Medieval lit, it is going to introduce you to the time period.  4.)  It is a continuation of the biblical fiction genre, and it fits into my tirades about how ashamed I am of Americans’ reactions to The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter.  At one point, all of fiction was biblical fiction -fictional stories based on the Bible with some kind of moral cod or lesson.  The figure of Faust reflects the church’s growing concern over people’s attraction to material wealth and physical comfort rather than salvation.  5.)  Faust represents the dual nature in us all.  All of us have the potential for great good or great evil.  All of us struggle with this.  Think about what happens when someone confronts us: most of us would say in public that we tell that pushy boss “God bless you,” but you know most of us think in the backs of our minds, “I ought to cuss her out.”  No matter the belief, all of us struggle with faith in that way.

I want to give you all some directions on how to read the characters of Faust and Mephistopheles.  When I was younger, I saw Faust as the ultimate sinner and Mephistopheles as the Devil tempting us dumb humans into sin.  Now, that I’m the teacher and no longer the student and I’m reading a different version, I don’t see it as quite so simple.  I whole-heartedly agree with the text on several points.  Don’t read Mephistopheles as simply the Devil.  As the text says, “Mephistopheles does not offer Faust a chance to break rules or to challenge authority but rather a chance to explore another reality.  Rather than mind, he offers body; rather than idea, he offers experience.”  Look at the prologue and the opening pages: Faust has learned all that the thinks there is to learn from books and the world.  He thinks that there is nothing that the world has to offer him that will pleasure him.  As a matter of fact, Faust challenges Mephistopheles to show him something in the world that will give him pleasure.

Don’t read Faust as a total sinner.  Yes, his incessant whining at the beginning of the text works my last nerve!  I hope you all see that he even tries to kill himself because his life offers no more pleasure.  He FORCES Mephistopheles to make a deal with him because he wants to feel something.  Now, we could see that as sinful as we sit in the seat of judgment with our holy selves.  Or, we could look at the fact that throughout the play, Faust does try to do good (even though he fails at it horribly) most of the time!  And you know what, most religions and faiths teach that it is very important to try to do good and be good people. Most faith texts teach us not to be selfish.  As a matter of fact, I once read a Catholic book that basically said all of sin can be traced back to selfishness.  I know that that seems hard to believe at first, but think about it and read Faust.  See if that’s true.  While Faust may be misguided, he kind of represents us all with his struggle to do right.  In literature, we would call Faust an everyman, someone who represents humanity’s struggle.

Caribbean Literature of the 1930s-1949

 

Several events occurred in the Caribbean, beginning really in 1929, that set an anticolonial movement in motion throughout the islands.  First, in 1929, Marcus Garvey returned to Jamaica in order to spread his African pride movement to his native land.  Second, the Great Depression greatly exacerbated the poor social conditions (as we have read in the barrackyard fiction), low wages and high infant mortality rate.  Third, there were a series of significant labor strikes on several islands that sent ripples throughout the empire.  In Trinidad and Tobago, there were demonstrations and strikes by the sugar workers in 1934, and an oil-workers strike in 1937 that escalated to a general strike.  Then, there was a wave of riots in Barbados, British Guiana, Jamaica, and Trinidad.  In 1938, there was a dockworkers’ strike in Jamaica that resulted in a clash with colonial law.  Fourth, many people, in the past, traveled to the Panama Canal zone to find work, better living conditions, and good wages.  Well, those things were dried up by the 1930s, and people had nowhere to go.  Fifth, many islands began to agitate for freedom from their respective metropoles –at least the right to vote on important issues as adults.  Sixth, many people of the islands took the crowning of Haile Selassie as emperor of  Ethiopia in 1930 as a sign.  At the same time, the Ras Tafari movement was birth in Jamaica.  Jamaicans familiar with the Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah saw Selassie as Jah Ras Tafari.  Honestly, Rastafarianism is based upon the Old Testament.  There is the verse, “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”  That is Psalm 68:31, and that is your basis for much of the Rastafarianism movement.  Since the British did not support the crowning of the Emperor God, people in the Caribbean started to question and critique Europe, and Rastafarianism grew to be an international force.  Seventh, the United States of America began to establish bases in the Caribbean, and this greatly demystified white folk.  American soldiers, who were white, often did hard manual labor –something many Black Caribbean islanders did not see.  And as Americans are wont to do, they sometimes drank too much and behaved very badly on the weekends with little regard for how the Black islanders would view their behavior.  At any rate, the Americans gave the islanders better jobs and paid higher wages –setting social mobility expectations upward and sometimes away from the dismal conditions described in the barrackyards as the only condition for Black islanders.

What has all of this have to do with writing?  Actually, quite a bit.  It is during this time that Una Marson, C.L.R. James, George Lamming, Aime Cesaire, Jane and Paulette Nardal (sisters), and Roger Mais became some of the most anticolonial voices and writers of the Black Caribbean.  As Black Caribbean islanders began to question and challenge empire, they also began to change the way they wrote and publish their own writings.  There were those writers like McFarlane (who we have already read and you all decided that you hated thoroughly) who felt that poetry should be beyond politics, and that young poets should stick to “traditional” forms.  There were those young writers like George Lamming and C.L.R. James who simply said, “no.”  As Black Caribbean islanders began to express themselves through their own writing styles, they also published newspapers and  magazines that were concerned with galvanizing a Black Caribbean culture void of European forms and influences.  The textbooks states that during the1930s, several  magazines which concerned themselves strictly with culture in the Caribbean were published.  I am glad to have that correction and clarity because I thought they were published around the late 1950s and early 1960s.  These publications included Marcus Garvey’s newspaper, the magazines Picong, Progress, the Forum, Callaloo, The Beacon, and Public Opinion.  Now, some of them were short-lived, but they had an impact on literature.  Some magazines, such as Public Opinion, had many women artists featured and on their boards.

Not only did they publish political and creative pieces, but also literary criticism by writers such as James and Mais.  Sometimes, writers are particularly critical of their cultures and their traditions.  Roger Mais was known for agitating people in order to shock them into some kind of awareness.

While we read some women poets of the early 1900s through the 1920s, notice that none of them were Black Caribbean women.  Amy Garvey (second wife of Marcus Garvey) published prolifically, but her writing was for women’s uplift and were political in nature.  It is during the 1930-1949 time period that Black women writers, particularly poets, began to be published frequently.  We will cover more women poets and writers here.  Now, when women publish, male theoreticians often criticize women’s writing in general for being too emotional or simple.  As we will learn from Marson and Bennett, that there was nothing simple in any of the writings of Black Caribbean women.  I apologize here for not having any Black Caribbean women outside the Anglophone tradition, but ya’ll know that we are on a tight time budget.

Locating A Caribbean Literature

Locating a Caribbean Literature

 

There is no such thing as a Caribbean literature.  Look at the previous lecture of the Caribbean with the map.  You see the fragmented nature of the geography?  Beyond that, look at the many different metropoles (in this case, metropole means the colonizing country) in the Caribbean.  To say that there is “a Caribbean” will almost always mean leaving some literature out.  For example, the textbook that we are using is dominated by the Anglophone Caribbean.  Anglophone simply means the English speaking Caribbean.  The textbook has none of the literature from the Spanish and French speaking Caribbean, and no drama.  To complicate this matter even more, many of the Native American populations of the islands were wiped out with no written literature left behind.  When historians and critics look to a historical culture in order to draw a tradition from, there is not one.  I am not saying that the Arawaks and Tainos didn’t have rich cultures: what I’m saying is that there is no written record of their stories and songs.

Second, there can be no single Caribbean literature because of the history of the Caribbean.  A great number of early literature from the Caribbean is keeping in line with the colonial agenda.  Most of it is either travel logs written by Europeans who wrote to articles in search of something “exotic” and thirsty for the bizarre, or they are poetry written in praise of the colonizing country.  A good example of the travel log of the fantastic is Oroonoko, the Royal Slave by Aphra Behn.  This short piece of fiction is set on the Caribbean nation of Suriname (bordered by French Guiana), and features fantastic descriptions of the surroundings.  It is really a love story about the handsome slave, Oroonoko, and the only love of his life, Imonida.  This text, as problematic as it is, is considered the first British novel, and it is about slavery in the Caribbean.

The early poetry of the Caribbean also advances the colonial agenda.  For example, read Tom Redcam.  While his poetry is beautiful, it does not mention the people of Jamaica at all.  He has love for the island’s geography, but seemingly no knowledge of the people.  This may reflect such long colonial practices of ignoring the Black residents of Jamaica.  Until recently, Miss Jamaica was always white!  If slavery is mentioned, it may be a longing for the times of the Black “nanna,” or other Caribbean characters.  One of the most widely-read texts from the Euro-Creole population is Wide Saragosso Sea by Jean Rhys.  It is an answer to Jane Eyre rather than one that strictly features the Caribbean.  It is a woman scorned with a Caribbean backdrop.  Many Black Caribbean writers do not want these texts read as “real” Caribbean literature.

Another reason for the difficulty in locating a Caribbean literature is because of the population demographics.  The former British colonies, upon emancipation of the slaves, began to pay East Indians to come to the islands for indentured servitude.  They were termed “coolies,” which is a very derogatory term.  When people of East Indian descent began to write, there was some debate as to whether or not they should be included as “West Indian” writers.  This is one reason why even the name “West Indian” became troublesome (I am laughing at this point).  The East West Indians write?  (Okay, it’s clear that I’m a nerd and nobody’s going to get this joke but me).  Writers like V.S. Naipaul and Samuel Selvon, who were very prolific, produced texts which detailed the lives of East Indians in a Caribbean setting.  The history of this population, even in the anti-colonial era, was often overlooked.  While many people are learning about the labor unrest in Trinidad or the Caribbean movement of Marcus Garvey, many people will never learn of the canefield riots.

Linguistic politics also influence Caribbean cultural productions, and it would serve us well to become familiar with some of the terms of the debate.  The term “Creole,” in the Caribbean means those of European descent born in the islands.  There are other terms for them: Euro-Creoles, expatriates, and ‘red legs’.  Their literature is normally written in the language of the metropole.  Since Caribbean literature was “discovered” by the rest of us during a time of the Caribbean’s own Black power and anti-colonial struggle, this literature is not widely circulated, especially the literature produced during the early 1900s.  Nation language is a term for those who speak “dialect” and is more positive than “patois.”  This is the language spoken by everyday people in each island.   For example, the people of Barbados speak Bajan, and many of the writers from the island write in it.  George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin is written in half English and half Bajan.  It shows the difficulty of Black Caribbean people when they must code switch at school and in the business world.  They use nation language at home and the language of the metropole in public.  Still, other writers such as Derek Walcott speak of a creole continuum, and many write this way.  EVERYBODY, these writers believe, speak some form of Caribbean nation language at some point or another.  Yet, it was considered controversial or a mark of denigration to write in a nation language.  The Caribbean poet, Claude McKay, wrote excellent verses in standard English.  It was a white author, Walter Jekyll, who convinced him to write a few verses in Caribbean nation language.  The verses in nation-language are included in our texts.

When the world noticed Caribbean literature, it noticed the outpouring of texts by Black male Caribbean authors.  Please don’t mistake this for an absence of Black women writers of the Caribbean.  While the world may not have been aware of them, they were not silent.  Maryse Conde a Francophone Caribbean and Black woman writer, has had just as much of an influence as Frantz Fanon.  Her most famous text, I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem, connects New England (yes, America’s New England) to slavery in the Caribbean.  Just as Black male Caribbean authors adapt and adopt the figure of Caliban, she adapts and adopts Tituba (please see a lecture on the Salem Witchcraft Trials from the American literature postings on this blog).  She is as seminal as Cesaire or Lamming.   No one argues about the international/transnational appeal of Michelle Cliff’s Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven or any of the novels of Danticat.  Jamaica Kincaid is another transnational Black woman Caribbean writer.  Some other authors who are considered African American women authors may have been born or immigrated to the United States as small children, but have roots in the Caribbean.  One such author is Paule Marshall, whose landmark text is The Chosen Place the Timeless People, set in a fictitious Caribbean island.

It is best to stop thinking of a Caribbean literature and think of it as a multiplicities of identities and cultural productions.  Glissant and Walcott call this type of writing/cultural productions syncretic.   From many sources, something new is created.  For example, Walcott uses the structure of the Greek oral epic such as the Odyssey or Illiad to construct his very layered and complicated Caribbean identity.  He won the Nobel Prize for his poetry.  While the structure may not be Greek, he is not afraid to incorporate some  nation language.  Walcott believes the low status of nation language is only a result of it beginning with the slave, but to exclude it means excluding some of the deepest of Black Caribbeans’ thoughts and beliefs, since everybody speaks some form of nation language at some point in their lives.  A terribly complicated text like In the Castle of My Skin proves Walcott’s point.

Help with Tagore

Reading Tagore

A.  The Hindu Faith and the Text

Why in the world did I pick a text as difficult as Broken Ties?  I know that’s the question.  Here’s why, Tagore was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.  He is as big in India as Ghandi is to African Americans.  We may not know him in the United States, but the man was a Renaissance man, international traveler and lecturer, a subject of British colonial rule, and an advocate of Indian pride and independence.  His education is British and Indian, and his writing style reflects this.  He wrote in the plain language of Indian people, and not the Sanskrit –the language of learned Indians.  The translations of Tagore influenced British poet, William Butler Yeats.  His literature was as much a part of the fight for Indian independence as the actions of Ghandi, and represent a rediscovery of Indian heritage through folktale and rural myth rather than high Sanskrit.

 

In order to understand Tagore, you need to understand something about Hinduism.  Broken Ties is in novella form.  A novella is a short novel.  The novella is essentially a European invention (the Chinese novels of the late 900s and early 1000s are extremely long. Trust me, I know).  Though the form is European, the subject matter is purely East Indian.   From the moment you open the text, you run smack dab into Hinduism.  The scandal, from the beginning, is that Satish is an atheist.  Let me, if you will, say just a little about Hinduism.  It is such a complicated belief system that I hope I can do it justice.  In order to condense it without stumbling all over myself, I take the condensed version directly from www.himalayanacademy.com.   I encourage you, in your spare time, to please visit this website for a fuller understanding of Hinduism.  It is one of the world’s major religions with 1.08 billion believers!  It is the oldest religion in the world.  It predates history in that it is older than any written records.

Nine Essential Beliefs of Hinduism:

1. Hindus believe in a one, all-pervasive Supreme Being who is both immanent and transcendent, both Creator and Unmanifest Reality.
2. Hindus believe in the divinity of the four Vedas, the world’s most ancient scripture, and venerate the Agamas as equally revealed. These primordial hymns are God’s word and the bedrock of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion.
3. Hindus believe that the universe undergoes endless cycles of creation, preservation and dissolution.
4. Hindus believe in karma, the law of cause and effect by which each individual creates his own destiny by his thoughts, words and deeds.
5. Hindus believe that the soul reincarnates, evolving through many births until all karmas have been resolved, and moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirth, is attained. Not a single soul will be deprived of this destiny.
6. Hindus believe that divine beings exist in unseen worlds and that temple worship, rituals, sacraments and personal devotionals create a communion with these devas and Gods.
7. Hindus believe that an enlightened master, or satguru, is essential to know the Transcendent Absolute, as are personal discipline, good conduct, purification, pilgrimage, self-inquiry, meditation and surrender in God.
8. Hindus believe that all life is sacred, to be loved and revered, and therefore practice ahimsa, noninjury, in thought, word and deed.
9. Hindus believe that no religion teaches the only way to salvation above all others, but that all genuine paths are facets of God’s Light, deserving tolerance and understanding.

There are four Hindu denominations:

1. Saivism

Saivite Hindus worship the Supreme God as Siva, the Compassionate One. Saivites esteem self discipline and philosophy and follow a satguru. They worship in the temple and practice yoga, striving to be one with Siva within.

 

2. Shaktism

Shaktas worship the Supreme as the Divine Mother, Shakti or Devi. She has many forms. Some are gentle, some are fierce. Shaktas use chants, real magic, holy diagrams, yoga and rituals to call forth cosmic forces and awaken the great kundalini power within the spine.

 

3. Vaishnavism

Vaishnavites worship the Supreme as Lord Vishnu and His incarnations, especially Krishna and Rama. Vaishnavites are mainly dualistic. They are deeply devotional. Their religion is rich in saints, temples and scriptures.

 

4. Smartism

Smartas worship the Supreme in one of six forms: Ganesha, Siva, Sakti, Vishnu, Surya and Skanda. Because they accept all the major Hindu Gods, they are known as liberal or nonsectarian. They follow a philosophical, meditative path, emphasizing man’s oneness with God through understanding.

 

Hindus believe in one Supreme Being, God who created everything and everybody, and many other gods.  The most prevalent expression of worship for the Hindu comes as devotion to God and the Gods. In the Hindu pantheon there are said to be three hundred and thirty-three million Gods. Hindus believe in one Supreme Being. The plurality of Gods are perceived as divine creations of that one Being. So, Hinduism has one supreme God, but it has an extensive hierarchy of Gods.  Devotion to God and the Gods of Hinduism is known as Bhakti.  In Hinduism, cows are taboo.  They are considered sacred and a source/symbol of life and they must never be killed.  Many people who do not understand the Hindu faith (and for the most part, don’t try) misinterpret this to believe that Indians worship cows.  This is simply not true. This is just one example of the misunderstandings people have about the Hindu faith.  One of the stereotypes about India is to see poor people, filthy water, and cows wandering around unrestrained.  This comes from a lack of understanding about the very complicated Hindu faith.

B.  Broken Ties Family is a Mess

As you read Broken Ties, keep in mind that this family is a hot mess!  It can sometimes be hard to keep up with who’s who.  Let me give you a brief list of characters.

 

1. Srivilas is the first person, omniscient narrator who loves and is obsessed with Satish for some reason.  No, I am not saying the narrator is a homosexual.  He just loves and is enchanted by Satish.
2. Satish is the atheist child of Harimohan. When Satish is born, he does not look like his father at all.  He looks like his uncle.
3. Jagamohan is the uncle of Satish. Since Satish looks so much like him, Jagamohan raises Satish as his own son.  Jagamohan is also an atheist.
4. Harimohan is the very holy (or so he appears and says) father of Satish and Purandar.
5. Purandar is the older brother of Satish. He claims to be holy, too.  He is married, but that does not stop him from always having a chic on the side.  His father, Harimohan, does not think that Purandar is wrong for the way he treats women.
6. Nonibala is the young woman, pregnant out of wedlock, who moves in with Jagamohan and Satish.
7. Damini is the widow who was willed to the Master by her husband.

 

A few terms:

Muhammadans –another word for Muslim.  The world Muslim is also spelled, “Mussulmans” in the text.

Calumny – a word that the uncle Jagamohan uses quite often.  It means something like to “deliberately lie on or slander another.”  Since Jagamohan and Satish are atheists, the uncle says that everything they do will result in calumny.

Taking the dust- this is a greeting phrase in Indian.  Younger people touch the feet of the elder as a sign of respect.

 

 

Travel Narratives: Basho and Khan

How to Read Basho and Khan

 

Why do we travel?  What makes us itch to see other people in other places?  For a very long time, writers traveled, mostly by foot, ship, or horseback, keeping intricate notes and observation of the people and places they encountered.  These are the travel narratives

, and they are a very old precursor to the novel.

One of the reasons why I chose the  “Travels of Mizra Abu Taleb Khan,” is because  we never think of travel as a learning experience.  All learning does not come from the books or the classroom. Travel is an essential part of learning about human nature and life.  Yet, as members of Western society, we seem to only view it as a vacation luxury and not necessary at all.  I’m willing to bet that many of us know people who have never left their own city and feel no need to do so.  I’m willing to bet many of us are frustrated with these people because they seem to be experts on how “country,” “ghetto,” “sinful,” or “backward” these people who they’ve never seen are.   As Khan teaches us though, going to see other people in other places is not just to learn about those other people, but to also learn about ourselves.  We need to understand that sometimes, we’re not that bad.  The things we do are not that bad. The things that we go through are not that bad.  Then, we need to travel so that we understand that the way we do things may not always be the best way.  Somebody else may do it a little bit more efficiently or quicker.  Maybe they have technology that we don’t have.  Khan learns some things about himself, about English people, and about the nature of colonialism during his travels.  What were they?

Basho is considered to be one of the greatest Japanese writers of his time –and even today.  In his travel narrative, “Narrow Road Through the Back Country,” he wrote in prose-poetry.  He initially set out to view some of the sites his favorite writers wrote about.  The beauty of nature inspired his prose-poetry, and he significantly expanded the possibility of the haiku.  In Japanese, prose-poetry style of writing is called a haibun.  His style was to write about ordinary events while maintaining the tension between concrete and abstract.    One of the biggest lessons that students learn from reading “Narrow Road” is that everything and everyone are connect.  Separation of people and places are an illusion we create for ourselves.

The way to read this is to view each paragraph as a little picture.  Don’t try to connect the little pictures with one theme.  Experience and enjoy the pictures he paints for you. Read the haikus the pictures and experiences inspired.  Try to find a connection between the concrete and the abstract.   Perhaps seeing some of the sites that he wrote about would make the reading easier.  The pictures at the beginning of this posts are all things that Basho wanted to see.   Let’s go clockwise: the first picture is a cliff temple, the second is Enlightenment Hall, the third is just some cherry tree blossoms that I found on the Internet, the fourth is Nikko Mountain, and the last is Mt. Fuji.  I don’t know about ya’ll, but every time I see Mt. Fuji, I want to travel myself.

 

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

 

The first part any book is called the matrix chapter.  For the most part, it is chapter one.  For some books, it may take several small chapters in the beginning.  The matrix chapter introduces the reader to the main characters and the major problem or conflict in the narrative.  Think of it as lying a foundation for a house.  As this relates to Things Fall Apart, Achebe takes his time with the matrix or lying the major foundation for the narrative.  As a former news reporter, his wording can be very sparse and he is very methodical.  I like to call this kind of writing tight-writing.  Each and every sentence is related to another sentence and somehow has meaning.  Let me show you a few of the methods that he uses and I’m willing to bet that the first part will make a whole lot more sense to you if this is your first time coming to this text.

• Early in the narrative, Achebe’s narrator lets you know that Okonkwo is the main character, but he has a character flaw.  Look at the very first sentence: “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.  His fame rested on solid personal achievements.”  Many of us in the West love this narrative as opposed to Achebe’s many, many other writings because it features a protagonist who is familiar to us: the lone hero.  But the lone hero, like those of Greek mythology has a character flaw.  Read on.  See the line that says, “And he did pounce on people quite often.  He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists.”  Sounds familiar?  It should.  Moses in the Bible had a stammer and a temper.  See, for some reason, all of my classes turn into Bible study.  Close your eyes and you can hear what I’m about to say next: “Come on Bible scholars.  Come on.  Apply what you already know to this text.”  But Okonkwo’s stammer and temper are not his only problem.  Right after we get that personal problem, the narrator introduces us to the next one: his father, Unoka.  Whereas the narrator describes Okonkwo as a fearless warrior who was also successful, he/she describes Unoka as a failure who was a coward.  Unoka didn’t even play the right kind of instrument.  Whereas other men of the village played the drum –a masculine instrument – Unoka played the flute, a woodwind which is feminine (brass and percussions are masculine: woodwinds and strings are feminine).  Whereas Okonkwo has a barn full of yams and three wives, Unoka owed everybody he knew and only had one wife.
• One other strategy that Achebe uses is to have a split narrator. Yes, the text is in third person omnipotent, but it is also split between points of view.  One narrator is an engaged narrator who seems to be intertwined with the life of the village.  The other narrator is disengaged and seems to be an explainer in chief.  Let me show you how this is demonstrated.  In chapter 2, find the passage that reads, “The night was very quiet.”  For the next two paragraphs, this narrator tells you why these people were afraid of the dark.  This is the disengaged narrator who explains things.  Now, writer Toni Morrison feels that she shouldn’t explain Black culture.  Let people work to understand it.  But I feel this is a result of Achebe’s time as a newspaper reporter.

• These people are very interdependent, and this interdependency is something that Okonkwo fails to recognize. Look at the most powerful deity in the clan: the Oracle of the Hills and Caves.  The text refers to this deity as a male, or god.  Now, this god always has a priestess.  By Okonkwo’s time, the priestess’ name is Chielo.  There is another deity mentioned, Ani.  This deity is a goddess.  She has a priest.   Women have their crops.  Men have theirs.  The men and women’s crops are planted together.  The women’s crops provide much-needed shade for the men’s yams.  Do you all see a pattern here?  Now, how can Okonkwo survive if he denies the usefulness of the female side of his clan?  Does this interdependent nature also speak to Okonkwo’s misperception of his clan?  Achebe demonstrates Okonkwo’s misperception even further.  In chapter 4, find the passage that reads, “Even Okonkwo himself became very fond of the boy –inwardly of course.”  Why does Okonkwo feel that it is feminine weakness to show affection?  It is obvious that Obierika shows his children affection, and nobody would dare call him a coward!
• Okonkwo conveniently picks and chooses when and what about the clan he will obey. He has no problem breaking the peace during the Week of Peace, but he says he cannot find a way NOT to kill Ikemefuna because it was the way of the clan.  Obierika, on the other hand, is a man who thinks about things deeply.  Look at the conversation between Obierika and his brother toward the end of chapter 8.  They are pondering the customs of other people in other places.  Okonkwo seems to lack this capacity.
• Feminists have taken this text to task over the years. While some of their arguments are valid, I tend to disagree with many of them.  Read Chapter 9.  I LOVE chapter 9.  Why?  Because Achebe writes of women’s struggles exclusively.  Throughout the narratives, he gives you hints that Okonkwo will die because of his misogyny (anti-woman thoughts, feelings, and policies).  In chapter 10, there is a trial.  Read the trial.  What is it about?  Can you see the hypocrisy that Achebe puts on display about Okonkwo?   By Chapter 11, we are back to Ekwefi.  The priestess, Chielo, who we met in the first few chapters, comes and takes Ezinma away.  What does Okonkwo always say about Ezinma?  Now, I love the scenes here because Chielo is full of her priestly power and is actually carrying the rather large child on her back.  She pays no attention to the parents.  What do you think she and Ezinma talked about?  Some feminists (and I do agree with these) feel that Chielo brings Ezinma fully into the realm of the feminine.  The child spends a lot of time with her hypermasculine father.  Do you agree with this assessment?

Again, Chapter 12 opens with some of the tribe’s customs.  A young lady is getting married –Obierika’s daughter.  The chapter ends with the engaged narrator letting us get a glimpse of what a wedding party looks like for their tribe.  For the moment, it’s just beautiful.  Chapter 12 ends with a wedding, Chapter 13 opens with a funeral.  Ezeudu, the man who warned Okonkwo about killing the child, died.  Isn’t it ironic that Ezeudu was the one to war Okonkwo about killing Ikemefuna, and Okonkwo accidentally kills someone at the old man’s funeral celebration?  Do ya’ll see that?  Ezeudu, in death, was just as right as Obierika was in life.  For accidentally killing someone, Okonkwo is banished.  And that ends Part I.

• Achebe builds in warning.  We already saw the warning by Ezeudu, which was ignored by Okonkwo.  Here again, an old man is warning him.  This time, the warning is coming from Uchendu.  What is Uchendu telling Okonkwo about how he views women  versus the function women really play in their society?  Now, do you think Okonkwo will listen?  Come on, let’s use some inferring power here.  The first time Okonkwo didn’t listen, he accidently killed someone and was banished from the land.  What do you think will happen this time?
• Chapter 15 is the entry of the missionaries in their land. Obierika tells Okonkwo of these white people, who seem crazy, and how they’re disrupting things.  Chapters 15 and 16 describe these things.  Now, we have seen how harsh Okonkwo was to his son.  By chapter 17, who joins this new religion?  Why would he join this new religion?
• By Part III of the book, things look as if they are falling apart in the clan. Read Chapter 20 carefully.  What does Okonkwo want for his daughters?  Now, what evidence does Achebe give to drive home the point that Okonkwo is still looking down on women?  At home, many things have changed in the clan.  Read Chapters 20, 21, and 22, what are the appeals of the new religion?

Achebe saves the climax of the narrative until the last chapters. Read Chapters 23-25.  Did you not see that coming?  Also, because this climax is at the end, many critics say that Things Fall Apart is like an anthropological study in reverse…if the white people writing them had taken time to understand the culture.  Do you agree with that?

Locating the Caribbean

The very geography of the Caribbean makes it difficult to locate “a Caribbean” culture.  There is not A Caribbean culture, but many cultures.  There are about a thousand islands that stretch from the tip end of Florida to the South America.  I found this very good map by just doing a simple Google sear.  If you want a different one, please Google a map of the Caribbean.  There are tons out there.

Look at all of those islands.  Look at the small square to the upper-right hand corner of this map.  There is practically nothing between these islands and Africa.  That lets you know about the perilous nature of the Middle Passage.  Each island has its own customs, folk, etc.  And as expansive as it seems, Bermuda is not included in this map, and it is normally seen as part of the Caribbean.  Even though we often think of Belize as part of Central America, it is a British-speaking country that is also seen as part of the Caribbean in many pieces of Anglophone (English) Caribbean literature.  Further, Guyana, Suriname, and Cayenne are included in the Greater Caribbean.

One of the limits of looking at the Caribbean through English-speaking countries only is that the entire Caribbean is not English speaking.  Some are Spanish and some are even French.  They also produced their own literature.  For example, Haiti and Martinique are French-speaking islands.  They have produced some of the most poignant literature of the African Diaspora.  The first book we will read from the Caribbean comes from a Francophone (French-speaking) writer.  The man who has been credited with writing the Black Power play book, Frantz Fanon, actually spoke French (he was from Martinique) as his first language, and his two biggest works were translated for African American and other Anglophone readers.

Look at the map.  It is further subdivided into the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles.  The word “Antilles” is left over from European conquest.  At first, the islands were named the “Antilles” based on this legend of a mythical island that was supposed to be somewhere in the Atlantic.  After 1492, when the Atlantic Ocean was being sailed regularly, the mythical island disappeared from literary reference.  Explorers called the Caribbean Islands the Antilles.  As a matter of fact, this is what Columbus was really looking for (in spite of what our textbooks have told us all of these years).  The Sea of the Antilles was another name for the Caribbean.  The islands themselves are divided into the Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles.  The Greater Antilles, which are made of Continental rock, are the four biggest islands.  The one island shared between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is called Hispanola.  The Lesser Antilles, which are made of volcanic rock and coral reefs, are the smaller islands closer to South America.  The Leeward islands and the Windward islands are old nautical terms.  Leeward means to be sheltered from the wind: windward is to face the wind.  The Bahamas are kind of like a bridge from Florida to the Greater Antilles.

It is easy to think of the Lesser Antilles as little specks on a map.  They are not.  They, too, have their own cultures.  Derek Walcott, a poet, won the Nobel Prize for literature, and he is from the Lesser Antilles island of St. Lucia.

The people of the Caribbean before the Europeans, like much of the Americas, were Native Americans.  The Arawaks inhabited much of the Greater Antilles and the Caribs (the Caribbean is eponymous –which means named after).  I want to give us a really neat chart of the Caribbean and what language is spoken there.  Keep in mind, that all of these empires colonized the Caribbean.  Slavery in the Caribbean was real and brutal.  But each of these empires governed in a different way.  This accounts for the differences in Black culture throughout the Caribbean.  Not all islands practiced slavery, and the Native American population was all but wiped out with the exception of a few islands.

Danish (now Virgin Islands)	Dutch	English	French	Spanish
St. Thomas	Curacao	The Bahamas	Guadelope	Cuba
St. John	Bonaire	Barbados	Martinique	Puerto Rico
St. Croix	Sint Maarten (shared with French St. Martin)	Belize	Saint Barthelemy	Dominican Republic
	Sint Eustatius	Bermuda	Saint Martin	Venezuela
	Saba	Anguilla	French Guiana
	Aruba	Antigua and Barbuda	Haiti
		British Virgin Islands	Dominica
		Dominica	St. Lucia (later ceded to Britain)
		Montseratt
		Saint Kitts and Nevis
		Grenada
		St. Lucia
		St. Vincent and Grenadines
		Cayman Islands
		Guyana
		Jamaica
		Trinidad and Tobago
		Turks and Caicos Islands

I want us to also keep in mind that slavery in the Caribbean was sugar-cane slavery.  It was brutal and deadly.  People were worked to death -literally dropping dead in the fields – and quickly replaced by more slaves from Africa.  Also, the brutality of the punishment in Caribbean contributed to the high mortality and infant mortality rates in the slave population.  The raising of sugar cane is mentioned in many, many Afro Caribbean texts.  One of the most haunting is The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat.

Now, in order to get us through Caribbean history, it would take me a whole semester.  There is just so much and I’m not a historian (secretly, I’m jealous of historians).  Thank goodness for secondary sources.  Here’s a nice, neat little timeline from worldatlas.com:

200s – 1300s

• Most of the Caribbean inhabited by Carib, Taino, and Arawak Indians

1400s

• (1492 – 1493) Christopher Columbus made his first voyage to the New World

1500s

• (1500s) The Spanish Empire claimed the entire Caribbean and most of Latin America. Hispanola, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, and Trinidad were settled.
• (1522) Taino Indian leader, Enriquillo, led a successful rebellion again the Spanish granting his people freedoms and rights
• (1524) The Council of the Indies was created by the Spanish as a governing body over Caribbean and Latin American territories
• (1590s) English privateer, Sir Francis Drake, waged war on Spanish ships and ports

1600s

• (1600s) British, French and Dutch forces seized Caribbean territories from failing Spanish Empire. Illegal “piracy” and legal “privateering” began throughout the Caribbean
• (1612) British colonized Bermuda
• (1623) British colonized St. Kitts
• (1627 – 1635) British colonized Barbados, Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla, Tortola and Windward Islands
• (1635) French contested colonization of St. Kitts. French colonized Guadeloupe and Martinique
• (1650 – 1730) The Golden Age of Piracy began in the Caribbean
• (1655) English conquered Jamaica
• (1650 – 1680) Dutch colonized Saba, St. Eustatius, Saint Martin, Curacao, Bonaire, Aruba, Tobago, St. Croix, Tortola, Anegada, Virgin Gorda, Anguilla, and the U.S. Virgin Islands
• (1664 – 1674) St. Eustatius changed hands ten times in British – Dutch disputes over the island
• (1697) Spain ceded Haiti to France. France controlled Tortuga

1700s

• (1700 – 1750s) Caribbean colonies prospered in sugar, tobacco, and rice farming. Trade between colonies and nations prevalent
• (1750s) Turks and Caicos captured by the British
• (1761 – 1778) British captured Dominica from France
• (1763) Britain captured Havana during the Seven Years War. Britain traded that one city for a large area of land in Florida, including St. Augustine.
• (1778 – 1783) French forces recaptured Dominica
• (1762 – 1783) British and French forces contested Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• (1775 – 1783) French Caribbean naval victories over the British aided revolutionary war efforts for the Americans. American Revolutionary War weakened British power.
• (1791) A slave rebellion against French forces, dubbed the Haitian Revolution, established Haiti as the world’s oldest free, black republic. It was also the second oldest republic in the western hemisphere

1800s

• (1821) Haitian forces conquered the rest of Hispanola
• (1825) France recognized Haiti as a free nation
• (1834) Slavery was abolished in the British Empire and in all of their Caribbean colonies
• (1844) Dominican Republic declared its independence from Haiti
• (1863) Dutch empire abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies
• (1896) Captain-General Valeriano Weyler forced peasants into concentration camps

1900s

• (1906) Cuba placed under U.S. occupation
• (1915 – 1934) U.S. occupied Haiti
• (1916 – 1924) U.S. occupied Dominican Republic
• (1917) Danes sold U.S. Virgin Islands to the U.S. for $25 million
• (1940) General Batista elected Cuba’s president
• (1953) Fidel Castro led a revolution against General Batista in Cuba
• (1958 – 1962) The Federation of the West Indies was created – included many Caribbean colonies
• (1962) Dissolution of the Federation of the West Indies inspired Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago to declare independence
• (1962) U-2 spy plane discovered evidence of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba. Cuban Missile Crisis ensued. Russians eventually dismantled Cuban missile bases
• (1966) Barbados declared their independence from Britain
• (1971) “Baby Doc” Jean-Claude Duvalier succeeded his father as head of Haiti
• (1973) The Bahamas declared independence from Britain
• (1974) Grenada declared independence from Britain
• (1986) “Baby-Doc” and wife fled Haiti under protests over corruption

2000s

• (2004) Excessive rain caused flooding in Haiti – claimed 3300 lives
• (2008) Fidel Castro resigned as President of Cuba. Raul Castro became new president
• (2008) Hurricanes killed 800 people in Haiti during a strong hurricane season
• (2010) A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, an estimated 316,000 people died. Over 1,000,000 people made homeless
• (2010) Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded, leaked hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Threatened Caribbean marine life and beaches
• (2011) Rumors continued to suggest that Fidel Castro stepped down as head of the Cuban Communist Party

Missing from this timeline are the Spanish American War of 1898 and the Parsley Massacre of 1937.  It is important that we understand the ramifications of the Spanish-American war.  The United States, when forces got to Cuba to help them, was shocked to see that Cuba was about 75% Black.  Immediately, American forces set up Southern-style segregation, in spite of Black American soldiers fighting bravely in the war.  This event set the stage for the Cuban Revolution, which saw Fidel Castro rise to power.  Part of Castro’s appeal was his promise to right the wrongs implemented in Cuba by the United States.  The Parsley Massacre was one of the worst human rights disasters in the history of mankind.  The ruler of Dominica, an ally of the United States, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, began to scapegoat and  blame the Haitian workers in Dominica for the economic downturn on their side of the island.  For five days in 1937, Haitian men, women, and children were killed by Dominican soldiers.  Anybody suspected of being a Haitian (this includes dark-skinned Dominicans) and anybody caught trying to help Haitians live, were also killed.  Now, they determined who was Haitian and who was Dominican by giving them a phonetic test: dark-skinned people had to say the word “parsley” in Spanish.  People who speak Haitian Creole could not properly pronounce it, and were killed instantly.  Their bodies were dropped en masse in the Massacre River, a river that separates the two parts of the island.  In five days, Trujillo had 20,000 people killed.  Nobody knows why he did it.  He was part-Black himself, but skin color issues in the Caribbean are complicated, and the one-drop rule of America does not apply to many islands in the Caribbean.  Trujillo’s decision almost 75 years ago has lingering consequences.  The Dominican Republic and Haiti had peaceful relations until then, and the Dominican Republic still regularly, legally discriminates against Haitians and darker skinned people in general.

Again, a haunting portrayal of these five days is in Danticat’s The Farming of Bones.