Clear Word and Third Sight

Calvin, John

doi:10.1215/9780822385097

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The narrator sings a stanza of “Rum and Coca Cola” by Lord Invader that mentions “Both mother and daughter | Working for the Yankee Dollar…” (179), and the mother freezes, burning the shirt she is ironing. Catherine A. John points out that in the Caribbean context, “The song, the folktale, and the poem function as an alternate register of consciousness, one that at its most profound seems to connect to ancestral knowledge in both conscious and unconscious ways” (2003: 2). While what John describes can be easily interpreted as a positive thing, Chariandy’s novel asserts that such ancestral knowledge may well be traumatic rather than uplifting.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Adele conveys, without meaning to, that her mother was one of the women that Lord Invader so cavalierly sang about; her dementia causes her to function, however unwillingly, on this alternate level of consciousness. Indeed, John’s overall argument that song “is a literal strategy of survival, in which the exclusively rational mode of ‘modern’ Western consciousness has reached its metaphysical limitations and something else must step in to save the individual from psychospiritual death” (2003: 2) is worth considering in relation to Adele’s propensity to reveal her past under the guise of song and folklore. Through her songs and stories, Adele’s past leaks into the narrator’s consciousness piece by excruciating piece.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Hidden histories and second generation struggles in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant

Jeffers

2020

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

David Chariandy’s lauded 2007 debut novel Soucouyant explores the way that immigrants transmit lessons, beliefs, and ways of being to their children both intentionally and unintentionally, and the ways that these transmissions can contradict one another. This article argues that while much of the critical writing about Soucouyant has foregrounded the relationship between the unnamed narrator and his dementia-suffering mother, the text is just as concerned with exploring intragenerational relationships as it is with intergenerational ones. Indeed, the text demonstrates the interweaving of both intergenerational and intragenerational relationships in a unique and compelling way. The lessons that get passed on between the generations shape the lives and interactions of second generation subjects between themselves. In particular, the relationship between the narrator and Meera, the mysterious woman who has moved in with and is taking care of his mother when he returns to her home after deserting her for several years, poses the question of how these two second generation subjects of differing class backgrounds might reconcile themselves with both their parents’ Caribbean pasts, their own Canadian presents, and uncertain futures. The novel’s subtitle, “a novel of forgetting,” signals the central role of memory and forgetting play in the novel. The immigrant parents’ desire and attempts to forget the past are not wholly successful and their second generation children are forced to first remember before they can move forward without being haunted by the traumas, silences, and anxieties of their parents. The complex racial and class politics of Trinidad and Canada lead to the narrator and Meera receiving very different legacies from their parents. However, their eventual coming together, in all its difficulty, suggests that there is hope for second generation subjects who wish to choose a different path than the one set for them by either their parents or the nation-state.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%