The Timehrian by Andrew Jefferson-Miles

The Timehrian
Andrew Jefferson-Miles
2002
110 pages, post-modern, speculative

Thank you to Peepal Tree Press for providing a review copy of this book. 

After awaking from a six-year madness, Leon-Battista Mondaal writes to his cousin in an attempt to express what he has experienced. The result is this poetic novel that can never tell a straight story, but nevertheless reaches toward the truth - of Guyana’s colonial and post-colonial past, of ethnographic practice, and of the relationships between people.

This book is essentially a prose poem, for better or for worse. At times, it becomes almost incomprehensible, such as:

The tidal wave that swept all away possessed a sort of hybrid vigour that reached over our best attempts at correction. It exhibited an evenhanded kind of intervention in our affairs, entangling and suborning layers and institutions and environments. Former legacies are converted into new bodies whilst old shapes enter the squall and masquerade of memory, whose disguises enact majestic instability in our conception of ourselves. It is a complex, a charged phenomenology of practice and custom intensifying communities diverse in their origins, orientations, dictions.

I don’t usually enjoy reading poetry, but I will try my best to pull out what I understood from this text.

Colonialism and ethnography

Immediately before the tidal wave that caused Leon-Battista’s descent into madness, he was working with an ethnographic team recording the traditional Christmas masquerade in a Guyanese coastal village. However, he seems to be uncomfortable with the whole process, and especially with the functionalist and colonial attitude of Laban, the group’s leader and a renowned anthropologist.

Part of what Leon-Battista points out is a common critique of early forms of anthropology (before the “reflexive turn”). As he notes,

Conventional epistemes for the study of man (social relativism in anthropology, ethnolology, ethnography) tend to benefit least those about whom the study is made. Those about whom the study is made rarely get to participate in it. 

As a discipline, anthropology now recognizes these issues and does its best to rectify them (or at least to be aware of them and their effects on a study) through participative modes of ethnography and research.

However, it seems that Leon-Battista is also referring to the colonial attitudes of some ethnographers, who treat the people they study as a way to produce knowledge, nothing more. Laban is a “native anthropologist:” originally from Guyana, he has returned as a celebrated academic to study his “native” culture. Despite this apparent belonging, he still treats his research participants as subjects of study rather than real, three-dimensional people.

History 

Another issue that Leon-Battista brings out is the complicated history of the area, from both an ecological and cultural standpoint. Apart from the colonists that came from Europe, the people in the area are also the descendants of African slaves, Indian indentured servants, and the Amerindian inhabitants of the area. As all of these groups have combined to form the society of present-day Guyana, so has the environment of the country changed under their influence.

Overall, I did not enjoy reading this book. It was only after I finished it that I realized how thought-provoking it is. If you enjoy reading poetry and/or are interested in experimental writing, you might want to give this one a try.

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Ghosts by Curdella Forbes

Ghosts
Curdella Forbes
2012
179 pages, fictional memoir, speculative, psychological

Many thanks to Peepal Tree Press for providing a review copy of this novel. 

In a future marked by massive environmental changes, a family from the fictional Caribbean island of Jacaranda comes together to write about their brother many years after his death.

This is a strangely mixed book. Is it a memoir? Is it fantasy? Is it a myth? I think it’s all of those. But more than that, it's a beautiful piece of writing.

Grief

This is a book about grief. Grief and guilt. Each of the siblings is sad about their brother’s death, and afraid that they could have done something to prevent it. Evangeline, the Seer in the family, knows what will happen beforehand: could she have stopped it? Their mother was worried about Pete for years, but no one else listened to her. Should they have? When they disapproved of his actions and his personal life what should they have done? Should, should should should.

The major source of this guilt is the family's treatment of Pete when he was alive. His star-crossed, taboo infatuation with a cousin caused deep rifts in the otherwise (at least on the surface) tight-knit family. Later, when he married a woman that his family did not approve of, the family split into factions, led by: his mother, who forbid her daughter-in-law from entering the house; and Evangeline, whose enlightened knowledge places her on a different spiritual field. This leads to the effective ostracism and isolation of Pete, something that the whole family bitterly regrets after his death. In many ways, this is a cautionary tale: don't let your personal disapproval get in the way of a relationship with your relatives.

The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar by Kevin Baldeosingh

The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar
Kevin Baldeosingh
2004, I read 2013
389 pages, speculative, historical fiction

Many thanks to Peepal Tree Press for providing a review copy of this book.

Adam Avatar, a Trinidadian of Indian descent, visits a psychiatrist with a very interesting complaint: he believes he is over 500 years old, having been reborn nine times, and that during his many lives he has witnessed many of the important political and social changes in the Caribbean region. His expressed purpose in visiting this psychiatrist is to present the stories of his other lives and hear the doctor’s opinion on whether or not he is insane.

The psychiatrist reads through the documents that Adam presents, a series of first-person life narratives featuring diverse characters who share some of the same features: piercing green eyes, resistance to aging, and a remarkable healing ability. Their personalities, lives, and even genders vary, but each narrative presents a well-rounded individual in a rich historical tapestry. The magic of the novel arises from the richness of these narratives and their connection with the complicated history of the Caribbean.