Re/writing Reconciliation in Merle Collins's Angel

Abstract

Bodies broken, scattered, bruised.Can you call their names? Who aretheir parents? What are the namesyou are ashamed call?...How pretend not knowof the raw wound in a nationdivided?-Merle Collins, Roll CallIN 2001, A TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION commission was established in Grenada as a means address unresolved tensions in the population surrounding the murders of Maurice Bishop and other Grenadians on 19 October 1983, and other events of national significance. Prime Minister Keith Mitchell contended that a commission modelled after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission's notion of restorative justice would provide a way for the nation address its past, suture deep wounds in the population, and answer lingering questions. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is one of the most famous examples of restorative justice, having been established address the atrocities of apartheid. It is drawn on the Christian idea of forgiveness and the notion of Ubuntu, a word from the Nguni language family, which means that the individual is always seen in relation what is best for the group.1 At its core, this form of restorative justice has a moral imperative of creating a space where past crimes are revealed and acknowledged in order for the nation move forward in the name of restoring a sense of unity, reconciliation, and forgiveness. In its published report, the Grenada Truth and Reconciliation Commission states that aims to provide the nation an opportunity become genuinely reconciled and permanently healed.2The commission focused on the period of January 1976 December 1991, examining, among other things, the evidence of violence surrounding the overthrow of the government of Eric Gairy, which ushered in the New Jewel Movement; the People's Revolutionary Government during its time in power; and the events of October 1983. Primary concerns of the commission included determining the location of the remains of Maurice Bishop and others who were killed during the coup of 19 October, determining reparations for victims of violence, and examining of the case of the Grenada 17, those people who were imprisoned for the killings of Bishop and others. Between October 2001 and August 2002, the commission accumulated information through public hearings, letters, and various public outreach programmes, visiting family members of victims who died as a result of violence, circulating questionnaires, and researching publications and studies of the time period. Approximately seventy people gave oral testimony. After assessing the problems that needed be addressed, the commission ultimately made a number of recommendations such as erecting memorials those who died of political violence, renaming the airport after Maurice Bishop, and finding the remains of Bishop and other missing victims.3 As such, the commission's report, which was released in 2006 after much delay, represents a means of national reconciliation intent on resurrecting the nation, and performing national memory, while also constructing an official narrative about Grenada's traumatic history.-* Yet scholars David Scott and Jermaine McCalpin contend that the Grenada Truth and Reconciliation Commission largely failed in its mission of national reconciliation. McCalpin notes that many of the Grenadians he interviewed were unaware of the commission, which leads one ask, whose memories are included?* Whose are not? David Scott asserts that the commission was a failure because it offers precious little of any substantial 'truths' by which guide the prospect of the 'reconciliation' they hope for.6 He notes that a glaring omission in the commission's report is the absence of testimonies of the Grenada 17.It is within this context of the troubled search for truth, reconciliation and memory that I examine the 2011 reissuing of Grenadian writer Merle Collins's novel Angel, whose eponymous protagonist comes of age during the revolutionary period as a member of the progressive Horizon Party. …