Barbados - Cygnus Beta Trilogy

Country: Barbados  
Book: The Best of All Possible Worlds/The Galaxy Game/The Blue, Beautiful World
Author: Karen Lord
Publication Year: 2013/2015/2023
Genre: Speculative/Science Fiction

Sometimes on this journey/exercise, we will have very little to say about the author’s country of birth. In turning to Barbados, our subject takes her Caribbean home and expands it into an entire world.

If you draw a line between the works of Octavia E Butler and Ursula La Guin, somewhere along its length you will fine Karen Lord. Her novels have the world building of Le Guin coupled with the extended friend and family networks of Butler. Lord’s trilogy of books featuring the world of Cygnus Beta feel like Butler’s Parable or Xenogenesis books placed in the worlds of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle.

Like the Hainish Cycle (or Iain M Banks’s Culture series), each book of the Cygnus Beta series is a standalone novel with only some loose connections between them. In creating the world of Cygnus Beta, Lord’s stated aim was to create a world of islands and archipelagos, like the islands of the Antilles wrote large.

That said, only the first book n the series, 2013’s The Best of All Possible Worlds, takes place exclusively on the planet. It’s sequel. the Galaxy Game, published in 2015, is a mixture of on and off world adventures.

After an 8 year break, during which time Lord returned to her fantasy series, Redemption, she wrote the third Cygnus Beta book, The Blue, Beautiful World, published in 2023. However, this time the action takes place almost exclusively on Earth with many of the scenes set on a futuristic version of the island of Haiti.

Each book is quite different, but contain the idea of an extended friend and family group that is a common feature of all of Octavia E Butler’s books. In The Best of All Possible Worlds, a society whose planet has been destroyed and the survivors who reside on Cygnus Beta are mostly male. The book plays out like an island hopping adventure as a team of scientists look for likely candidates to help preserve the race.

However, this is really just a backdrop to the real story, which is the burgeoning romance between the two main characters, the human, Grace Delarua, and Dllenahkh, one of the surviving Sadirans.

Obvious comparisons are drawn with Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, but there is also much of Butler’s Patternmaster series in evidence, especially with Dllenahkh’s manipulative behaviour, reminiscent of Doro in Wilde Seed and Mind of My Mind (but without the body snatching). Though there are a number of characters who use their psionic powers in much the same way as Doro.

Those psionic powers return in The Galaxy Game. Rafi Delarua, Grace’s nephew in The Best of Possible Worlds, had been essentially kept in detention due to the psionic powers he has inherited from his father. He eventually escapes Cygnus Beta for the planet of Punartam, where his psionic powers are a little more accepted. The Sadrian plot from the first book returns with one colony attempting to take passion of all of the remaining females capable of breeding.

To be honest, of the three books in the series, I found this one the most confusing. The narrative routinely switches from the first to third person and back again and I’m not entirely sure who the first person sections are meant to be. Serendipity, I think: the character. who returns in the third book. It’s a kind bildungsroman with some elements of Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, but feels much less like a science fiction book than The Best of All Possible Worlds, despite featuring a number of different planets.

The Blue, Beautiful World is another sort of book altogether. In fact it kind of feels like two or three different books shunted together. It starts with Owen, a charismatic pop star as he tours the world with his entourage. But soon this switches to recruiting a series of young people to take part in a training program using sophisticated VR in Haiti. The real purpose of this training is only revealed to the trainees at the end.

In all, they’re not the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read, but they’re far from the worst either. Somewhere  to the right of average. Lord wears her influences lightly, but the beams of Butler and Le Guin cast long shadows. The idea of a planet like the Caribbean is revolutionary, but doesn’t really persist beyond the first book.

It’s perhaps a little frustrating for a project such as this that when we do reach Earth and the islands of western Atlantic that we don’t land in Barbados itself. Or in Grenada (see: Grenada) or Trinidad and Tobago (see: Trinidad and Tobago). But then so many convergences and connective threads have woven themselves n the books we have reviewed up to now, we shouldn’t be disappointed when the stars do not quite align. Besides, we have visited three Caribbean islands in a row. It’s too much to expect they should all connect together. Time to move on to some other part of the world. Though I will circle back around at some point to the read the two books of the Redemption series. 

Karen Lord

 

Grenada - Black Rain Falling/This is Canon

Country: Grenada  
Book: Black Rain Falling
Author: Jacob Ross
Publication Year: 2020
Genre: Crime/Mystery/Thriller

Country: Grenada   
Book: This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books
Author: Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne, Kadija Sesay
Publication Year: 2021
Genre: Literary Commentary

Of all the books I have read so far in this project, Black Rain Falling takes the prize for the most enjoyable so far. It does not perhaps carry the weight of social commentary of Woman At Point Zero (see: Egypt) , or the autobiographical detail of The Blue Sky (see: Mongolia) or Weep Not, Child (see Kenya). Yet in terms of sheer escapism, Black Rain Falling is unparalleled.

I love hardboiled detective books, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, etc., so a book set in the Antilles, featuring a character, Digger Digson, in the mould of Phillip Marlowe, was not going to be a hard sell. This is the second in the series, following 2016’s The Bone Readers, but I think most of the salient background details are covered in the narrative. That said, I’ll definitely be reading the first book in the near future.

Black Rain Falling takes place on the fictional island of Camaho, which is obviously a composite of several real life countries. Jacob Ross was born in Grenada, but has lived in Britain since the 1980s. Anyone with a passing knowledge of 20^th century history can’t help but raise an eyebrow at reference to the 1983 US invasion of Camaho.

In reality, it was Grenada that was invaded by the US in 1983. The reasons for the invasion are complicated, but one could cynically conclude that there had been a military coup on the island, but as it wasn’t the right kind of coup (i.e. communist), the US opposed it rather than funding, arming and supporting it, as with Chile, Iran, Iraq and far too many others than we have time to discuss here. I’m sure they won’t come up again during this project (sarcasm).

Anyway, the invasion has little to nothing to do with the novel and Camaho has features evocative of other islands in the Antilles. The most obvious analogue is Trinidad and Tobago, what with Kara Island being the smaller sister isle to Camaho, as well as their close proximity to Venezuela (at its closest point, Trinidad is only seven miles from the Venezuelan coast). We covered Trinidad and Tobago is far too little detail in the previous entry (see: Trinidad andTobago).

Anyway, having mapped the terrain, the plot of Black Rain Falling is equally rich. In a classic ‘against the clock’ plot, Digger has six weeks to prove the innocence of his partner, Miss Stanislaus, when she kills the man who raped her as a child. Against this background are cast the shadows of drug smugglers, child exploitation and police corruption.

I don’t really want to say too much about the actual plot here. It’s cinematic in its scope and  it’s honestly best to just sit back and enjoy the ride. If you like the same kind of hardboiled crime fiction I do, or things like The Wire, then you’re going to love this one.

The reason I heard about Black Rain Falling was from a book co-written by another Grenadian born writer, Joan Anim-Addo (like Jacob Ross, Anim-Addo now lives in the UK). This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books, co-written with Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay, is a gold mine for anyone attempting anything like the Reading the World project.

As well as the titular 50 books refereed to, This is the Canon includes an ‘If You Like This, Try...’ section at the end of each entry. In the margins for the entry on Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco (which is on my radar for when I come to Martinique), I first heard about Black Rain Falling and moved it to the top of the queue, not least because I didn’t think This is the Canon was enough to fill my quota for Grenadian writers, excellent a reference book as it is.

Many of the 50 books included in This is the Canon are ones I have read before: Kindred, Beloved, The Color Purple, If Beale Street Could Talk, Things Fall Apart, Wide Sargasso Sea. Masterpieces every single one of them.

Others, like A Grain of Wheat (see: Kenya), Woman At Point Zero (see: Egypt) and The Kite Runner (see: Afghanistan), are books I have already read for this project. Or, like Earl Lovelace’s Salt, books by writers I have read, but not that one book in particular (see: Trinidad and Tobago). And some authors. like Arundhati Roy and Marlon James, were already on the list.

However, there is a plethora of other writers and books that I have discovered from reading This is Canon. It is a book o which I will be returning to time and time again as this project continues. For anyone who doesn’t have time to read books from 195 countries, but wants to step beyond the limitations are white, western centralised literary lists, This is Canon is essential. 

Joan Anim-Addo

All in all, Grenada has been a fertile land to visit. I am enjoying the Caribbean too much to leave its warm waters just yet. Next stop, Barbados, speculative/science fiction and an entire planet based on the geography of the islands of the West Indies.

 

Addendum: Since writing this piece, I went back and read The Bone Readers. A shorter book than Black Rain Falling, but almost as good. Fills in a lot of the blanks I was missing from the sequel, but reading the second book first didn’t diminish its impact very much. I would of course recommend reading The Bone Readers first, so you’re not ahead of the story from reading its sequel. There’s not much to choose between them, both with tight dialogue and well plotted stories. 

Jacob Ross

 

Trinidad and Tobago - Is Just a Movie/Trinidad Noir: The Classics

Country: Trinidad and Tobago      
Book: Is Just a Movie
Author: Earl Lovelace
Publication Year: 2011
Genre: Historical Fiction

Country: Trinidad and Tobago      
Book: Trinidad Noir: The Classics
Author: Earl Lovelace et. al (Editor: Earl Lovelace)
Publication Year: 2007
Genre: Short Story Collection

Trinidad and Tobago is a rich literary island and one in which this first pass cannot even begin to scratch the surface. I will return with a deeper dive later in the project (special edition to come).

That said, let’s talk about Earl Lovelace and then make a sweeping arc through the islands’ best writers via Akashic’s City Noir series.

Earl Lovelace is perhaps the perfect writer embody the two islands of Trinidad and Tobago. He was born in Trinidad (in Toco in the north east), but grew up in Tobago. Like Arto Paasilinna (see Finland), he worked as both a journalist and in forestry and agriculture (though he seems to have been less hands-on than his Finish counterpart). He studied and taught in to the United States, before returning to Trinidad. Yet even before he began his studies, Lovelace was already a published novelist.

While Gods Are Falling was published in 1965, the year before Lovelace began his studies at Howard University in Washington DC. The novel was awarded the British Petroleum Independence Literary Award, which is another way of saying that Trinidad is an oil and gas rich nation and has been active in extraction for over a century. Unusually, the government has actually used the profits to invest in the country’s infrastructure, making it one of the more prosperous nations in the Antilles. I digress.

Since While Gods Are Falling, Lovelace has published infrequently (novels at least; he is also a playwright and essayist). Just six books in total have appeared over the previous sixty years. Is Just A Movie, released in 2011, is his most recent novel. Though it is very much a book rooted in the past.

Is Just A Movie takes place in the fictional fishing port of Cascadu (the name taken from a species of fish). It opens in 1970, following the failure of the island’s Black Power movement. This was a series of demonstrations led by students and trade unionists to protest the elements of colonial repression that had survived the country’s independence from Great Britain in 1962.

What followed was a violent crackdown and the declaration of a State of Emergency. We don’t have to look very far in this project to find parallels in international history. Indeed, it is a mirror image of Kenya (see: Kenya), which gained its independence from Great Britain the following year in 1963. There, however, the repression took place in the years leading to independence.

It’s a timely reminder that public will can be repressed no matter who is in charge. As Noam Chomsky reminds us, whereas protest should be seen as the manifestation of democracy, those in power refer to such actions as ‘The Crisis of Democracy’. They cannot be allowed to stand.

The main narrator of Is Just A Movie, Kangkala, tells the interweaving stories of Cascadu’s villagers. Into this Lovelace weaves politics, cricket and religion, as well as Calypso with its rich history and societal function quite beyond Harry Bellefontaine singing The Banana Boat Song, which is as much as most westerners think about it.

Indeed, calypso music originated in Trinidad, born from the Kaiso music of West Africa, especially Nigeria (though we once again bash our heads against the arbitrary, colonial question of what a country is). Kangkala is a calypso musician. Literary personifications of the communicative function of calypso appear at various points in the book in block capitals.

It’s a decent enough novel and certainly makes me curious to read his other 5 novels. Lovelace’s small town tragic comedy is in the fine tradition of Dubliners, Canary Row/Sweet Thursday and Player Piano to name but a few.

I’m sure I’m not well versed enough in Trini culture to get all of the references and might need to reread it when I’ve been through more of the island’s novels and novelists.

Which brings us to Trinidad Noir: The Classics. The City Noir series brings together short stories set in cities across the world (it’s not just a clever title).

One previous Trinidad book was published in 2008. 2017’s Trinidad Noir: The Classics, edited by Earl Lovelace and Robert Antoni, includes stories and poetry written between 1927 and 2015. Included are many of the giants of Trinbagonian literature, not least Novel Laureate, V. S. Naipaul with his story, Man-Man. Naipaul is at the top of my reading list when I return to the islands. A Bend in the River in particular is one of those books that appears on every list of the greatest novels ever written.

Earl Lovelace also contributes a story to the collection. In Joebell and America, the eponymous Joebell attempts to enter the USA by pretending to have been born in the country. A simple test of his pronunciation by Immigration officers proves his undoing.

Other stories include Samuel Selvon’s The Cricket Match, a comic sketch set in England in the 1950s. Windrush generation factory workers, proud of the West Indies cricket team being in England, challenge their English colleagues to a match, even though few of them have actually played crickt before. A lucky shot sends the ball flying (as well as the bat) well beyond the boundary before rain stops play.

The vast majority of the early stories in the collection are penned by men. The final, post millennial, section, is given over entirely to female writers. In Sharon Millar’s The Dragonfly’s Tale, a 17 year old boy disappears and his mother prays to both Orisha and Christian gods for his safe return. Her quest to find him reveals the violence and corruption of island society.

Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw

In Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw’s The Party, another mother is preparing for her daughter’s birthday party against the background of a spate of recent kidnappings. In The Bonnaire Silk Cotton Tree by Shani Mootoo, an ambitious photographer travels into the wilderness, hoping to meet a jumbie, a mythical creature of the underworld and ask it to make her famous. The parallels with the blues musician meeting the devil at the crossroads to sell his soul for fame should be obvious. Indeed, these stories probably have a lot to do with African religion, demonised by the church.

All in all, it’s a good collection of prose and verse and a useful primer for gaining a working knowledge of Trini literature. Looking through the list of other island nations (Cuba, Haiti etc.) covered by the Akashic series, I’m sure it won’t be the last time I turn to their publications for a foothold in a particular literary culture.

Likesay, I haven’t done more than to scratch the surface of the many writers to have emerged from Trinidad and Tobago. Along with everything else, I will return here periodically, especially through the oeuvre of V. S Naipaul. We will land back on these shores in the not too distant future.

Earl Lovelace