Book 229: US Virgin Islands (English) – Land of Love and Drowning (Tiphanie YANIQUE)

I am one of those woman love being big with child. It easy for me. I is at my best. When I pregnant, everything have me happy. I pick mangoes from Mrs. Smalls’s mango tree and they taste sweeter than sweet. I walk to the grocery store at the head of pave Street and my legs feel strong and my belly feel tight as a muscle. A milkman and a fisherman come down our street every morning carrying icebox on their backs and they always come to me early, so I get the fish and milk freshest. People rush to help me even with a bag of plums. Man run down the street to open a door. Me and Gertie liming and though she belly flat, is still me getting watch. Everybody serving me, even the trees bending to me with their fruit and flowers.

Unlike my British Virgin Islands novel, which ticked all the boxes for me, I couldn’t quite make up my mind about this one. This family saga is the story of two very different sisters, Eeona and Anette, who relate their own chapters of this story, and their half brother Jacob (by their captain father’s mistress Rebekah McKenzie). Eeona is beautiful and fairly sensible but not very lucky in life, perhaps at least partly her own fault. Anette is wilder and harder (ultimately impossible) for her older sister to control; she grasps life to the fullest and is totally unapologetic. They even speak very differently – Eeona in fairly ‘normal’ English, Anette in Creole (as in the excerpt above – a bit hard to follow at first but I got used to it) and is given a brilliant voice. When their father drowns in a shipwreck, they are left orphans. (He had had an incestuous relationship with Eeona, but she doesn’t seem to have suffered much from this, in fact she looks back on her childhood as some sort of golden age. You might have noticed that many of the Caribbean islanders often have what other places might consider ‘irregular’ relationships – marriage is often a low priority). 

The story is set from the time of the USVI’s transition in the early 1900s from being a Danish colony (yes Denmark used to be a major colonial power – still is if you include Greenland!) to being a US one, and continues into the 1970s.

I couldn’t really like any of the characters. The Eeona turns out to be a bit too choosy about suitors (and determined to socially climb), and ends up alone. On the other hand, Anette goes for it and cycles through a series of men, sometimes at the same time. I couldn’t like her for the way when, during Hurricane Mary, her devoted husband Frankie goes to help and she hopes that he will be killed so she can marry (also married) Jacob.

As girls they were constantly warned about the dangers of getting involved with Jacob’s family, but strangely were not told why; when they do, nothing much seems to ensue in the way of consequences (apart from more incest – yuck!), which seemed like a bit of a let-down! In the end Anette has children by three lovers.

Eeona is in love with the island of Anegada (the ‘drowned land’ of the title), where we spent our last adventure in the British Virgin Islands.

Their half brother joins the US military in the Second World War and experiences racism in the US south. He eventually returns to the USVI as a doctor.

One thing that resonated with me was the beach apartheid. When I was at university I was shocked when a Mauritian friend told me that the locals were banned from their beautiful beaches in Mauritius – they were reserved for the tourists. The same thing happened in the USVI, which provokes a colourful protest from the locals. No doubt this happens in many tourism-dependent places around the world – and the tourists are in blissful ignorance of this dispossession in their name. I suppose you could argue that the beaches are the only resource here and need to be ‘protected’ – just as other countries protect their vital resources (e.g., Namibia forbids anyone – locals or foreigners – from entering the diamond-producing zone). But it seems very cruel to me that locals should be banned from enjoying their own beautiful land for the sake of foreigners.

The pace is slow, and because so much of the plot has already been telegraphed through flashes into the future, is not very exciting. It’s a bit flat, like Anegada. There are some minor elements of magic or obeah. In the end, all of the relationships in this story seem to be wrong or inappropriate. Very sad. I feel that characters in novels should be (and are) flawed but should develop, these ones don’t, they just keep making mistakes.

I can’t say this was one of my favourites on the reading marathon – not that there was anything wrong with it (except that the age timelines didn’t quite make sense to me), just that it didn’t seem outstanding in any way. I have to say that the incest, and the way it was handled, upset me and I couldn’t get past that to like the book. Not that ugly things don’t happen in the world, and that people shouldn’t write about them – it’s important that they should – but Eeona’s favourable reaction to it spoiled the whole book for me. On the other hand, there is some great writing and, like other novels written by a poet, I can be sure that much of what was behind the story went over my head.  

Yanique, Tiphane, Land of Love and Drowning, Thorndike, 2014, ISBN 9781410472786

Book 218: Northern Marianas (English) – The Master Blaster (P.F. KLUGE)

Then they took us to the A-bomb strips, the main attraction. We sped down unexpected highways, left over from the war. The Americans noticed Tinian was shaped like Manhattan and the thoroughfares they built were named after similarly located Manhattan streets. So we were on Broadway, cutting through cattle fields, past Japanese buildings and temples, bullet pocked. Then we turned and we were bouncing along a dirt track, tunneling through thickets of brushy saplings that covered the sky and slapped at the windows; it smelled green but it was a hot green, like everything was being cooked as it grew. You were fried in the sun, poached in the shade. But at last we felt a hard final bump and we drove out onto North Field, which the guide told us had once been the largest air base in the world, four 8,500-foot runways. We were on one of them now, riding where B-29s had taxied and taken off. The place was deserted. It was like one of those end-of-the-world movies: planes and tents, Quonset huts and hangars and fuel tanks all gone, only the airstrips remained, like footprints of another time, another race even.

Let’s stay in Micronesia for a while and hop across to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. (The Southern Marianas are basically Guam, which is still under the US – as was the CNMI for a long time – but has had a very different history). Sadly, they are best known for their use by the US military, most notoriously when the bombers which dropped the first A-bombs on Japan took off from Tinian island. Although the islands became self-governing, even more than with the other Micronesian members of the former UN Trust Territory, their dependence on the US has not ceased.

This adventure story follows the experience of four outsiders who arrive together on the same plane. George Griffin is a cynical travel writer on a junket who was expecting to get in and away quickly. The academic Stephanie Warner has just separated from her husband. Mel Brodie is a repellent old entrepreneur – a loudmouth, entitled, fugitive financier, real estate shyster, on-the-run realtor. He has his eye out for the main chance here too. Khan comes from Bangladesh to escape poverty in ‘America’ where he suffers the abuse of foreign labour. The story is told in turn with the point of view of each (sadly not of any of the Micronesians).

The final character is the Master Blaster of the title – he is not the pilot of Enola Gay, but a blogger who revels in revealing the ugly side of local life and aims to keep those in power honest, though his identity is itself a mystery to everyone (it is revealed about 2/3 of the way through) and has naturally made a lot of enemies. He knows his truth-telling may be useless, but he feels compelled to do it anyway. As he says, offering his job to one of the newcomers, “At the end… I think what happens in this place is important. Hardly anyone cares, of course. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.” The local politicians and businessmen; the American government and visitors; the guest workers; even the ordinary locals, who understandably turn their favouritism into personal advantage – all are at the mercy of his keyboard. (And where in another one of those island countries where everyone is related and everyone knows each other). One by one those who arrived on same plane have to leave – except perhaps one of them.

The second-hand copy I bought was withdrawn from a US library where it had apparently only been read once. This novel deserves far better than that. It is funny and the dialogues are very good, and yet again I learned an enormous amount about this place and what makes it tick.

Kluge, P.F., The Master Blaster, NY, The Overlook Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59020-322-4

Book 217: Marshall Islands (English) – Melal (Robert BARCLAY)

Not long after Rujen Keju had clipped his Kwajalein Missile Range ID badge to the collar of his overalls, slung his boots over his shoulder, and left his home for the pier, his two sons, Jebro and Nuke, were up and headed in the same direction. Jebro carried a large gray duffel bag. Nuke had a small one-strap backpack. Each held a one-gallon jug of water. Around them, red morning light caught lingering smoke from the dump and the air seemed charmed with a magic pastel glow. Hinges squeaked. Water splashed. Bodies coughed and spat. Calico cats moved low and quick past helter-skelter cemeteries where snoozing mongrel dogs lay by concrete crosses that bore, in English, the names and dates of the dead.

Considering how hard it is to find any novel to read from the Marshalls (or just about anywhere in the Pacific), I was pleasantly surprised that this is such a great book.

It follows a Marshallese family, father and two sons, having a bad day. A really bad day. If you think you’ve had some bad ones…

As with our Hawai’ian novel, we’re exploring the devastating consequences of American colonialism, especially military and nuclear, on a small island country, which is still trying to deal with the consequences of the nuclear bomb and missile tests, nuclear (and consumer) waste, and permanently losing a large amount of their little land to the US military. (Maybe they should be re-named the Martial Islands?)

On this not very good Good Friday in 1981, the two boys, Jebro and Nuke (named after the bomb) decide to go to their ancestral island to visit their grandfather’s grave. A fairly banal exercise of a basic human right, you would think. But Tar-Woj has been taken by the Americans, and Marshallese are forbidden to visit, so the boys have to sneak in.

Of course, the Marshalls are famous as the site of the world’s first atom bomb test, on Bikini Atoll, and the little country has no doubt suffered more from the nuclear cycle than anywhere else on earth. Kwajalein is maybe the world’s largest coral atoll. What a perfect target to throw ICBMs at from California. One of its islets, Kwajalein proper, was cleared of locals for the airport and the missile base staff who live in affluent American suburbia. The Marshallese from all the other islets were concentrated into even more minuscule Ebeye (Meļaļ) islet, though many work menial jobs on Kwaj on day passes, and the greater opportunities there have attracted people from other parts of the Marshalls, so it is one of the most devastatingly overcrowded places on earth. Ebeye is ugly and impoverished, but for the Marshallese it is as close to ‘civilisation’ (American living) as they can get. In the ‘Slum of the Pacific’ they suffer from suicide, sickness, unemployment, boredom, bad imported food, lack of water, a shockingly contaminated lagoon, and a broken sewerage system – and apartheid. (Apparently not much has improved since the ’80s; one could add rising sea levels from global warming).

The Marshalls (along with the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau) signed a “Compact of Free Association” with the US when they became independent (or semi-independent). It will be interesting to see what continuing support and expectations the US will have after the Compact expires in 2023.

So to this great adventure story. We follow the brothers’ dangerous voyage to and from their ancestral island (coming back, American hoons sink their boat), and the shenanigans on Kwaj island, where the father works in the sewerage plant (the church embarrassment scene is masterful, and the incident of the poached dolphin provides a fascinating and thought-provoking insight into the opposing views of the islanders and the Americans, or the West generally).

There is a beautifully portrayed relationship between the brothers. The older Jebro is knowledgeable, intelligent, and mature compared with more impetuous Nuke.

Unusually, the ‘true’ story is interspersed with mythological sections – I don’t know how much of these are based on traditional stories.

Author Robert Barclay lived on Kwajalein for many years and obviously came to understand and sympathise with the Marshallese and their problems.

Another important, and very readable, book which deserves a much wider audience. It’s a great mix of adventure and sociology, a combination of the gritty realism of the American wasteland of nuclear contamination and addictive consumerism, and Marshallese mythology. Highly recommended.

Barclay, Robert, Meļaļ, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8248-2391-8

Book 207: Guam (English) – Mariquita: a tragedy of Guam (Chris Perez HOWARD)

Mariquita was a lovely girl, shapely and petite, a pleasing mixture of several of the races that comprised her native culture. She was part Spanish, Filipino, Chinese and a direct descendant of the last full-blooded Chamorro, the original inhabitants of her island. Her skin was warm brown, smooth and unblemished. and her shoulder-length shiny black hair, curled in the latest fashion and pulled back from her temples and held in place by tiny white barrettes, framed a face which held all the beauty and mystery of the Pacific. But it was her eyes which were most interesting. In her eyes one could detect that she was not the stereotyped island girl depicted in romantic literature – uncomplicated and submissive.

Guam is an “unincorporated territory” (whatever that means) of the US. The author was born in Guam and, after a long stint in the US, returned to live there. This is his story of Mariquita’s, his mother’s, tragically short life. The details are no doubt fictionalised, apart from being based on what facts the author could find. Nevertheless, it is very readable.
Mariquita is a vivacious woman who falls in love with and marries an American sailor. The tale recounts her apparently idyllic life under the US occupation before the war, and the suffering of her, her family and the other people of Guam during the Japanese occupation.
In his epilogue, the author concludes,

The sadness I feel for those who suffered injustice at the hands of the Japanese is deep, but I do not hate. The wanton bombing of the island by the Americans, especially the city of Agana, which had to be bulldozed to restore any semblance of order, to the extent that he old Spanish bridge now only points to where a river once existed, is to me equally unjust.

However, this equivalence does not come across at all in the book. The description of Guam before the Second World War under the Americans seemed to me very idealised, but from my limited knowledge I can’t find fault with any of the facts in the book. The unfailingly exemplary behaviour of the American sailors (apart from one incident of racism – which led to Mariquita marrying her sailor husband) also seemed suspicious to me. The author contends that before the war US sailors had higher standards. (After the war, the US military confiscated a THIRD of the island).
As to the cruelty that natives and Allied soldiers and civilians suffered from the Japanese military, and as portrayed here, that has been well documented from the lands they occupied.

What I loved about the book was that despite its slimness I learnt so much about Chamorro culture and Guam’s history before and during WWII. When elephants fight, the ants get trampled… I was reminded of the similar suffering of the native Okinawans from both sides (about which we were told nothing, and which I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t visited that island), and so many other native peoples (the Burmese to name but one) who suffered from the clash of the giants. Lest we forget them too.

There is an expanded edition entitled ‘Mariquita – Revisited’.

Howard, Chris Perez, Mariquita: a tragedy of Guam, Suva, Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, 1986 [no ISBN]

Book 167: Hawai’i (English) – House of Many Gods (Kiana DAVENPORT)

Lightning season came, the air so electric the fillings in their teeth hummed. Everything they touched just sparked. There were flash floods, the seas gave off a yellow glow. For days, lightning zigzagged up the valley. It hit a wild pig that rolled into their yard completely roasted. One night, herringbones of ions, lightning striking everywhere. no one saw Ava leave the house. But they heard her awful scream, and found Ben standing over her, his hair electrified a gaseous blue.

Some books prove hard to find a single good quote (which doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily bad). Not this one – it was hard to choose!

It is set in Hawai’i and Russia – at first blush it is hard to imagine two lands more different, but the parallels soon become obvious – destruction by respective militaries, horrible consequences of the nuclear cycle, and poverty. (Even so, while both this part of Hawai’i and Russia are poor and polluted I can’t help thinking Hawai’i must be a much nicer place to live, for its climate and natural beauty if nothing else.)

Both suffer environmental degradation and nuclear pollution and sickness from rampant militaries. The beautiful island (home to some of the world’s most unique and endangered creatures) is used for target practice.

Sadly Hawai’i is no longer among the ranks of independent countries. It was deceitfully taken over by a kleptocracy of greedy American businessmen, and handed over to the USA (few Americans seem to be aware of this shameful episode in their history). Since then, the Hawai’ians’ tradition of aloha was taken advantage of by the US military and the Polynesians have been overrun by immigrants and tourists, so that they are only a small minority in their own country now.

The story is set mainly on the poverty-stricken Wai’anae coast of O’ahu. Ana was abandoned when she was a child by her mother Anahola and feels extremely resentful because of this. She meets Nikolai, a Russian who makes films about ecological catastrophes in his home country and in the Pacific, and they come to share common feelings. Having let him go, she heads to Russia to try to track him down.

Meanwhile her mother has thrown herself into the horrible trauma of working in ER departments, and tries fruitlessly to reconnect with her daughter, dying of cancer.

One thing I’d take issue with – having lived through the time of Chernobyl and its aftermath, I don’t remember individual Russians being blamed for it in the West. We saw them as being victims of the system. And another thing – Kazakhstan is not in Russia.

If I can have a little personal rant against American “spell checkers” on behalf of so many non-English writers: Here both the Hawai’ian and Russian languages have fallen victim. In the Polynesian (and Scandinavian) languages ‘i’ means “in”, in the Slavic languages it means “and”. In Polynesian, “a” is a possessive (”of”). Of course, such words shouldn’t be capitalised in the middle of a sentence. But smarty-pants programs like Word assume that they are English words and capitalise them. So despite typing correctly, you have to go back and correct them. Several phrases in both Hawai’ian and Russian have fallen foul of this in this book. Down with cultural imperialism!

This is an amazing novel. Much of the writing is very sensual but there is a lot of volcanic anger seething beneath the surface and often erupting. One that I can’t recommend too highly.

Davenport, Kiana, House of Many Gods, NY, Ballantine, 2006, ISBN 978-0-345-48151-1

Book 123: Nicaragua (Spanish) – Mil y una muertes = A Thousand Deaths Plus One (Sergio RAMÍREZ)

Someone is going round looking for me but I don’t know if we will be able to find each other. Meanwhile, I want to begin my story. Nicaragua, the unusual country where I was born. The Great Lake Cocibolca, the Freshwater (1) Sea which was named by the conquistadores when for the first time they contemplated that grey expanse, with no shores to be seen, which raised proud peaks in the distance, and nevertheless so peaceful were its rippling waves that the wind fell away on the shore, that they went in, horses and all, treading the thick sand so that the animals could slake their thirst. A sea that seethed with carnivorous sharks without being a sea, but which had a door opening towards the Caribbean, the San Juan river, that my father crossed in order that the country, hitherto considered non-existent, would be recognised in the European courts as real (2). A decisive journey for me, to the extent that I owe my existence to it.

(1) or: Sweet
(2) or: royal.

[my translation]


Nowadays many people don’t know that the Transoceanic Canal originally looked likely to go across Nicaragua rather than Panama, and that rather than being designed to benefit the whole world (or at least Central America) it was really conceived as part of US westward expansionism, to make it easy for the east to link with the Gold Rush booming California before the railroad linked them together. You will learn a lot about the Nicaraguan experience of the canal proposal from this novel. Arrogant French, British and American interests all intrigued over the plan, while despising Nicaragua itself.
This is a complicated novel, told partly by Ramírez himself (and being partly autobiographical), and partly by an anonymous writer who turns out to be the object of his researches. This writer’s Uncle Frederick is the King of Mesquitia, the ruler of the jungle region.
The cast of characters who put in a cameo appearance is amazing: Nicaragua’s greatest writer Rubén Darío (who incidentally doesn’t seem to have written a novel of his own, unfortunately, but stars in this one – one reason I chose it), Turgenev, Flaubert, Chopin, George Sand, the American ‘filibuster’ William Walker (who at one time took over Nicaragua), Napoleon III, Queen Victoria, Robinson Crusoe – and the Mauthausen concentration camp. The scene shifts from Europe (especially Mallorca) to the wilds of Central America.
My edition was without photographs; if you can get one with photos, they are apparently fascinating. As usual with historical fiction, I felt uncomfortable not knowing what was actual fact and what was imagined. But I really enjoyed exploring a little-known cul-de-sac of world history, and the well-known figures who played a part in it.
The author served in Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government and was Vice President from 1985 to 1990.

RAMÍREZ, Sergio (1942 – ), Mil y una muertes, México , Delbosillo, 2015 (first published 2004), ISBN 978-607-313-256-5