So, after a quick survey of the peeps/tweeps, I’ve decided to host a discussion of Erzulie’s Skirt, possibly the first lesbian novel set in the Dominican Republic and its diaspora by a contemporary Dominican American female author, next month on the blog. We will be reading the book in sections as yet undetermined and all are welcome. Here’s a brief description from the amazing publisher:
Set in the age of urbanization in the Dominican Republic over the course of several lifetimes, Erzulie’s Skirt is a tale of how women and their families struggle with love, tragedy and destiny. Told from the perspectives of three women, Erzulie’s Skirt takes us from rural villages and sugar cane plantations to the poor neighborhoods of Santo Domingo, and through the journey by yola across the sea between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. It is a compelling love story that unearths our deep ancestral connections to land, ritual and memory.
In the interest of full disclosure, I know this author personally.
If you are interested in participating and you have a twitter account please DM me so I can send you a reminder when we start. If you don’t just stop by the blog when we start reading. And please pass this announcement on.
I look forward to talking abt the book w/ all of you. 🙂
Staceyann Chin’s The Other Side of Paradise begins with a mythic birth scene that imagines Chin as wholly unto her own. It is a metaphor that foreshadows the main point of the nearly 300 page autobiography in which Stacyann figures as a precocious, unwanted, and abused child. For the bulk of the book, she is shuttled between relatives and caregivers who provide the littlest amount of care possible. In this version of her childhood, Chin is a victim of overzealous religiosity, classism, colorism, and sexism long before she stumbles on homophobia.
A poor child, abandoned by her mother and rejected by her father, Stacyann spends her early years with her protective brother and her God-fearing, hard working, grandmother. Though they don’t have much, the three of them live mostly happy lives of Bible study, school, and dreams of their mother’s return until they inexplicably lose their house and have to move in with the first of many Aunties. While women unrelated to Chin are often depicted as Aunties who care for her during her stormy childhood typified by severe beatings and humiliation punctuated by Bible passages, her blood relatives are mostly “long suffering black women” who see her as an undue burden. Through it all, her grandmother and her brother do their best to help tame the rage that Staceyann feels at not receiving enough love or being punished for being “too” inquisitive, “to0” self-directed, and “too” forthright.
At age 9, even they fade into the background of increasing poverty, sexualized abuse, and desperation. By the time Staceyann passes her exams to go to high school, her brother doesn’t even talk to her. By the time she is ready for college, he has immigrated to Germany without a word. For most of her tweens, he lives with his father on the other side of town and barely waves at her if they pass by one another on the way to school. Her grandmother is gone from the story all together, left behind when one of their Aunts decides to punish their mother by sending the children back to her. Both of them reappear once or twice in the later half of Staceyann’s story but the ease with which they disappear from her life and her narrative illustrates how fragile and fleeting human relationships are in Chin’s childhood.
Her brother’s slow and unexplained abandonment is typical of the men in The Other Side of Paradise. Men in the book represent a fleeting yet significant presence in Chin’s life. Most of the adult men in her early life are sick, drunk, and/or mentally ill. Their absenteeism is ever present whether it is physical absence or psycho-social.
Her father, who is the most important man in her life b/c of his ongoing absence, denies her to her face. Though he does pay for her schooling, and help her get into college, he treats her as a somewhat unwanted associate never his flesh and blood. While his indifference chafes, her brother’s father’s seeming care is soon undermined in similar ways. Both men write checks, but neither offer love. Worse, though he gives Staceyann money and food, he also makes uncomfortable and unexplained advances on her that often leave her feeling violated by his touch. Other men, like the Preacher in her church make overt sexually advances, behaving in predatory ways that Chin inexplicably avoids.
Young men in the book are almost all sexual aggressors. She spends her tweens and teens dodging three of them in her own home. They try to catch her in the bathroom or changing her clothes, and corner her in various parts of the house. Her first attempt at a boyfriend results in a sexually explicit letter asking for favors she has made clear she is unwilling to give. And tho she has a seemingly normal relationship with her second boyfriend, the normalcy is undermined by his unwillingness to make any real commitment to her, transforming him into another emotionally distant man who uses her for sex. When she comes out in college, these boys transformer into a raving band of rapists in a scene that not only rings true but also reflects a general sense in the narrative the young men are just old rapists and drunks in the making.
Lest anti-feminist readers see this as yet another example of “feminazi man-hating,” women and girls fair little better in Staceyann’s text. Staceyann’s mother starts out as a sympathetic character whose return transforms her into a self-obsessed violent woman. Her erratic behavior and violent shifts from cooing at her children to raking them with her long red nails and bitterness mirror that of clinical schizophrenia so much so that I expected to be told she hadn’t abandoned the children but instead been sent away. Not so. Though Chin makes her mother sound clinically ill, this too is a function of the child narrator, who experiences the terror of her mother’s behavior but has no explanation for it.
The other adult women in Chin’s life, with few exceptions, seem to take great pride in humiliating her in front of classmates and female peers. They demean her because of her heritage, her class, and her inquisitiveness. Most importantly, they check her outspokenness with swift violence designed to silence her voice and teach her to become invisible. Their anxieties about her precociousness and blunt struggles with social norms and religion, speak to the fears of working class and lower middle class women about “respectability” and male power. Yet while Chin is thoughtfully introspective about why she acts out against them, her child narrator is unable to provide similar introspection about the reasons they discipline her so harshly. There is no excuse for their abusiveness, but Chin’s corrective look back on it in the epilogue is lacking in the story itself.
Not only do adult women figure prominently in her ongoing physical abuse, but young girls seem to torment Staceyann wherever she goes. Whether they are relatives or kids at school, the girls Staceyann meets mock and humiliate her because of her color, her class, and sometimes her diction. Colorism and classism dog Staceyann at every institution, in ever person’s home she visits, and even causes a bitter fight between her and her brother. Despite what she says about juxtaposing homophobia in Jamaica to racism in the U.S. in the book promo clip at the beginning of this post, her book makes race (colorism) a central plot point in which it is no less salient to her life than racism would have been in N. America. Her prose is never more honest nor poignant than when lessons about color and poverty hit home in the text.
All of these characters represent the pain and abandonment that is at the center of the entire story. They figure far more prominently than the nuns, teachers, and friends who are actually kind to Staceyann in her childhood. The underdevelopment of the latter gives her story a sense of urgency at the same time that it makes her narrative seem somewhat overdetermined. The truth value of one’s memories is less important to me than what falls out as a result. Because Chin gives us no concentrated description of mentors or heroes her memoir gives us no insight into how she became an artist. Subtle glimpses of her being assigned journaling or finally finding a home in the theater department are like footnotes in the long and painful story of abandonment and abuse. When did she decide words were her refuge? When did she find the excitement in sharing her voice instead of the shame that was almost always put upon her every time she spoke in the book? Where are the inklings of the poet in her childhood?
Those looking for a poignant coming out story that mirrors the powerful and beautiful poetry Chin writes, will also be disappointed. Chin has two crushes in her early childhood but neither are written in a way that foreshadows same sex attraction or the awakening of same sex desire. Instead, one of her crushes isn’t even identified as an object of desire until they mutually come out to one another in college. Her desires for the other girl are easily overlooked by both girls pursuits of boyfriends and Christian morality that permeates their lives. There are subtle ways the prose lets those of us who know what we are seeing, know we are seeing it, but for those uninitiated, much of the subtlety will be lost. In both cases, Staceyann’s emotions for them are wrapped up in class longing, desires for friendship and popularity at school, or gratefulness for the kindness of adults these other girls experience. Thus for many readers, only the very blunt jokes about not marrying boys will hit home in these passages while the homosocial commitment to one another, the subtle care in the way they are with one another, etc. will be lost.
Chin doesn’t speak about her sexuality until the book is almost over. With only 70 pages left, she embarks on the subject of her coming out and trying to find women to be with at a break neck speed that barely leaves any time for character development, internal reflection, or some other narrative device that would make the sea of rejection and hookups crammed into this section as insightful as her poetry on the subject. It’s unfortunate because this portion of the book has an adult narrator who could be introspective and multi-viewed about the characters introduced. In many ways, it feels as though Chin is still holding this part of herself back from her readers, afraid of what prose, as opposed to poetry, might tell us and her about these tumultuous days before she immigrated.
As a result, her coming out years whiz by, literally punctuated by cliched lesbian music and the shaving of her head. While Chin hints at a thriving underground queer culture, she never lets her prose linger on it long enough for us to get a sense of what queer Jamaica looks like to her or how GLBTQI ppl navigate homophobia there. As an insider, her insights on these issues could have been a critical counterpoint to a colonialist gaze on Jamaica that elevates violence against the queer community there while erasing it in the West. It’s unclear if she is trying to protect the women she left behind by not describing them or their encounters in detail or if she has sacrificed this aspect of the story to make her larger point about the homophobia in Jamaica that drove her to leave. If it is the latter, homophobia has not only robbed her of her home but her readers of a story about sexuality and (fraught) communities, for one of violent homophobia. Both are clearly present, but as in other identities represented in the book, the latter dominates.
Thus while women, female lab partners, sexual encounters, and her growing attachment to the stage moves so quickly they blur into nothing, the homophobic potential gang rape Chin survived in her college bathroom is described in detail. For survivors it will likely be triggering. For people inclined to vilify Jamaica as the most homophobic place on earth, it will provide perfect fodder. And yet, this moment is a defining one in Chin’s life. The prose she uses to describe it not only reflect the way time works for some survivors during abuse but also ensures that readers cannot look away from the intersection of sexism and homophobia, fear and male-sanctioned violence. Its familiarity opens the doors for talking about global homophobia, sexism, and male violence in ways that expand rather than contract feminist discourses on the subject for anti-imperialist readers. Not only is this moment critical to understanding Chin’s critique of homophobia, it is also perhaps the most feminist moment in the book because it not only exposes male domination but also demands bodily integrity for all women and feminism from men.
Ultimately, if you commit to the story Staceyann Chin has set out to tell, you will not be disappointed by this book. For those looking for the feisty feminist lesbian who bellows out the words in proud defiance of social norms, you will see glimpses of her here but never quite connect the dots. And those looking for an immigration based bildungsroman ala other Caribbean-American writers, you will have to look elsewhere, as Chin acknowledges the ever-presence of immigration while also proving how life in sending communities is about the dailiness of living not just a holding pattern until one goes abroad. In a world where we have come to expect artists lives to be unique and special, punctuated by clearly defined awakenings, it is an act of extreme bravery to depict oneself as rejected, broken, and yearning for love just like everybody else. That is the story Staceyann wants us to know, the story of a girl who overcame, who makes her living speaking when so many tried beat her into silence. And tho it isn’t the story I was expecting, I for one, respect that.
The Black Lesbian Book Group is discussing this book now. The current discussion question from Luna Kiss is: what were your impressions of the title before you read the book? (Obviously this question is meant to go beyond Chin’s own statement that she was referring to the class divide in the town of Paradise where she spent her formative years.)
July 1st snuck up on us and between doctors appointments and vet appointments and . . . I just didn’t get to the first book of the Black Lesbian Lit Online Book Club over at Swandiver’s yet. I’m hoping to get it read today as our dog has finally started to show signs of improvement and my father’s surgery isn’t scheduled until tomorrow. So I’ll write my review when I get a chance, but you should head on over to Swandiver’s to read her review and all the book club reader’s comments on this month’s book: Passing for Black. click here
update 1 – good news, you have all month to read the book as they have broken it into sections!
update 2 – My quick review: Romance novels are not a genre in which I am well read nor familiar and so I find myself wondering if my problems with the writing – the descriptions of the characters, the 2-dimensional representations of “race men and women” and “feminists [and queers]”, the references to sexual “stirrings” in scenes where they seem completely out of place, etc. are a part of the genre and less a problem with Villarosa’s execution. What I can say is that the story was oft-putting for me from chapter one when both Ethnic Studies Professors (far too obviously represented by a black homophobic man) and Women’s Studies Professors (far too obviously represented by a Foxy Brown worshiping white lesbian) have a trite, vitriolic, clash in the hallway that quickly degenerates into transphobia on both sides. This introductory chapter, both establishes the three main characters in the novel: Angela Wright, Keith Redfield (her husband), Cait Getty (her initial love interest) and the general thesis of the book that “real blackness” is at odds with queer identity and same sex desire. While I empathize with anyone who believes their sexuality is in conflict with their race or ethnicity or has to deal with people who do, I don’t understand why Villarosa would choose to represent this dichotomy in such a flattened out way. By which I mean, there is no similar homophobia in white communities with which she interacts nor does she hold them accountable for their subtle racism; she often undermines characters that do call them on the latter, again as evidenced in the trite confrontation in chapter one. As a result, the narrative presents a picture in which homophobia is an ever present, all-pervasive part of the black community, and the white community is guilt free of any forms of oppression w/ the exception of transphobia which keeps coming up in race vs. sexuality fights as if trans identity is a buffer zone and not an actual subject/identity in the novel in its own right. While this echos narratives of race in the dominant culture, including dominant queer culture, it does not reflect the reality of either racism or homophobia in our society. There are plenty of African-Americans and African diasporic people who are neither homophobic nor think that queerness is a “white thing.” And the nature of race in N. America often means that queers of color worry about their connection to their race and culture when coming out while white people do not have similar concerns b/c whiteness is naturalized and therefore de-cultured and ubiquitous. So if we were to racialize white people’s fears of losing their families, their jobs, their friends, and the lives they had before coming out, we might find that with rare exception what everyone fears is actually homophobia not being part of a culture “everyone knows is more homophobic.” Narratives that center race as inherently anti-gay erase the fact that homophobia exists in every culture and so do support networks of allies. It also helps people shift their focuse from institutional and cultural homophobia to race, and for some allows them an acceptable way to express their racism and/or racial anxieties, which ultimately prevents us from looking closely at the political, economic, and religious systems largely founded and run by white people that perpetuate homophobia. And when we do look at those institutions, the hegemony of whiteness, ensures that we will not make an equally offensive racial argument in which we say white people are more homophobic than other races; if you think ab0ut how the argument would be crafted if those socio-economic-politico-religious institutions were run by black people, you can start to see what I am saying about how racialized thinking and/or racism impacts queer organizing and how this book’s thesis helps play into, rather than dismantle, those problems. To couple her thesis of “real blackness” with a near complete erasure of racism or other oppressions on the part of white folks also reifies a racial binary that I can only hope is not one to which Villarosa actually subscribes. In thinking about these issues, I return to the larger question of authenticity and the ethnic writer.
Why are writers of color read as sociologist or anthropologist insiders rather than writers of fiction like white authors?
What are the consequences of presenting exaggerated aspects of a stigmatized cultural experience, one of many, in fiction
Who is ultimately responsible for those consequences?
Nor do I believe these questions can be asked outside of questions about the publishing industry, and in this case, Villarosa’s publisher in particular:
Why does the publishing industry tend to encourage or gravitate toward stories that reify dominant images of racial groups?
What compromises, if any, are authors of color making in order to publish?
And if they are making them, who bears the larger responsibility – the person who may represent stereotype to publish or the person who encourages it?
What does it mean to work with an editor who may not “get it”?
That last question is directed at Kennsington Books as much as blog readers. Kennsington may be implicated in not asking Villarosa to present more multi-dimensional charcters and storyline (again they may not b/c of genre, others will have to tell me this), but they are certain implicated in including a “reading guide” in the back of the book with questions that are quite telling.
How many times have you picked up a first edition printing of a non-textbook and found it had a reader’s guide?
Given that the answer should be rarely if not never, then why was one included here?
And why are there questions like “Does the author give [male characters] a fair shake?” and “Tatiana is a complicated person – . . . black and conservative, among other things. What do you think of her?”
Do you think these questions would be included in a book written by a man with a male protagonist?
Do you think a black editor or someone with more exposure to black people would need to ask a question about the existence of black conservatives?
And how do either of these questions further your understanding of the basic points of the book, ie: coming out in early adulthood, worrying about homophobic backlash from your race, family, and friends, and learning to be comfortable with yourself and your desires?
Worse, the guide includes a question about whether or not Cait can parent the new baby playing into racial divisions that are echoed by other questions in the guide while once again failing to adequately center the overarching themes of the book
Ultimately, Villarosa’s Passing for Black successfully presents the experience of a bourgeois black woman trying to come to terms with her sexuality and reject both internalized and societal homophobia. While her descriptions of black women are hopelessly mired in colorism and class issues, and her discussion of lesbian sexuality at a lesbian conference is at times laughable, naive, or simply ridiculous (like when she says something along the lines of “or is this just the way things are in a girls dorm” . . . sure if you’re Beebo Brinker), she does manage to give us a believable main character. Moreover, as her character develops, she has more opportunities to discuss the diversity of sexual experience and meet new, if equal one-dimensional, characters that help shape her ultimate decisions. A lot of people on amazon.com more familiar with the romance genre also found the story engaging and I am hoping that the book group members bring that perspective in order to lesson my rather academic read. Don’t get me wrong, there really are major race, sexuality, and gender issues in this book no matter how you read it, and white feminists and transgender people in particular are likely to resent the way they are represented (and so should everyone else), but a lot of what made this book inaccessible for me is likely genre issues and not Villarosa’s story at all.
Villarosa has a long history of writing about black women’s health and edited the African American specific version of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Body and Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. I have used the later in my former practice, gifted it to friends and former students, and as such expected maybe too much from this freshman novel. I wish she had stuck to the tone and focus of these established works when entering into the fictional arena but it wasn’t my story and therefore I have no way of knowing why she chose to tell it this way.
Starting July 1, 2009, Swandiver will be hosting a discussion of lesbian literature by and about African descended authors. The books are varied throughout our shared diaspora and include the first lesbian authored & lesbian character driven Dominican American novel in English: Erzulie’s Skirt, as well as many titles from black lesbian run press Red Bone Press and the first publishers to focus exclusively on women of color authored literature in Canada, Sister Vision Press. The later was co-founded by another one of the authors in the list, Makeda Silvera, and Stephanie Martin. Sharon Bridgforth, another personal fave, is also on the list of readings. I’m very excited to (re)read many of these texts and bump up their sales. And I will admit to suggesting several Red Bone Press books for the purpose of driving traffic to a black owned lesbian press that was founded to fill a need in the gigantic queer lit market. Lisa C. Moore is an amazing person and dedicated author, editor, and thinker. It is both an exciting and telling by product of this reading group that most of these books are published by small, independent, feminist and/or lesbian, publishers and I want to strongly recommend that those of you out there ordering books regularly consider ordering from people who actually have a diverse, feminist, and queer publishing history or who have endeavored to represent the voices that other publishers, including independents, have failed to publish in any significant way. It doesn’t have to be these folks mentioned in the post, but you know, I’ve bought books from most of them and absolutely love working with them to fill class book orders or just chat about upcoming literary events or forthcoming titles.
I’ll be reposting extended versions of my comments over there as posts here so you all can read along. Please participate if you are at all interested in the topic. And for all my academic readers who seem hard pressed to find people other than Lorde and Anzaldua to teach, here’s your chance . . .
I look forward to seeing you all each month over at Swandiver’s and here (‘cos you know I’m wordy & it wouldn’t be fair to monopolize discussion in someone else’s spot) at the start of each month. 😀
Dominican Republic and its diaspora by a contemporary Dominican American female author, next month on the blog. We will be reading the book in sections as yet undetermined and all are welcome. Here’s a brief description from the amazing publisher:
Like a Whisper 