Sasenarine PersaudMonsoon on the Fingers of God

Abstract

Books in Review full of pity for the killed creature. Arnar is a wonderful hero to follow as he maneuvers to win over Eir and acquire a farm of his own. The latter dream is fulfilled when he trades his stockpiled driftwood in exchange for a farm. Bergfinn, its owner, needs a seagoing ship to save his large household from death by starvation. Bergfinn’s enterprise is doomed, however. The sea goddess Ran smiles with white teeth as his primitive ark sinks in the cold, raging sea. Nature’s ways of revenge are terrible, but people can match each one, death for death. Arnar, for one, is the target of too much envy and resentment, driven by tribal hatred and religious schism, to be the savior he might have become. Somehow, it feels only too plausible. Everything in this remarkable book has the ring of truth. Anna Paterson Aberdeenshire, United Kingdom Sasenarine Persaud Monsoon on the Fingers of God Toronto, Ontario. Mawenzi House. 2018. 112 pages. Reading Sasenarine Persaud’s newest collection , Monsoon on the Fingers of God, is like stepping inside a clock and running a thumb along each gear and dial in order to better understand time. These poems open with tenderness, as petals unfurl after rain—a rain that finds the speaker everywhere , from Hadrian’s Wall to the internet, gathering pieces of myth and history from all corners of the world to stage an inquiry into identity, language, and empire. With the 2014 Scottish Referendum as an impetus, Persaud calls upon both Lord and Lady Macbeth alongside “SheshaNarayana / serpent god and serpent king kundalini / keeper and guardian,” finding common ground within the fraught history between India and England, Scotland and England: We will never make it to India, you say we are different—our heart is painted Gaelic and yours Britannic, our liver Scoti, yours Sanskrit we know the bile of a thousand years. Muslims dreaming of Mecca—except when we touch arms and our eyes sing: never let me go, never let me go. Readers never know, leaping from one poem to the next, in which century they might end up, speaking what language in what poetic form, to whose deity. Yet what prevails in each moment is the tenderness that is Persaud’s perspective, whether Suzanne Dracius The Dancing Other Trans. Nancy Naomi Carlson & Catherine Maigret Kellogg. Calcutta. Seagull Books. 2018. 256 pages. Who am I? And who are you? Suzanne Dracius explores identity in her recently translated novel, The Dancing Other. First published in French as L’autre qui danse (1989), the book enlarges the individual story of a woman named Rehvana into the universal search for belonging. Dracius employs culture, race, and gender to deconstruct love. Like the author, protagonist Rehvana grew up in Paris but was born in Martinique . Harking back to a colonial past, this eastern Caribbean island is one of France’s eighteen regions, making its residents full French citizens. Hence, decisions affecting them occur over four thousand miles away. No wonder ethnic, class, and economic tensions there are deep-seated. Dracius foreshadows her narrative with two apt epigrams, one by Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén and the other by French poet Arthur Rimbaud. The prologue is a monologue— a two-page “Promonologue” that Rehvana hallucinates while fleeing the rituals of an African sect in Paris conducted by a man she loves named Abdoulaye. Jérémie rescues her, offering protection and love, which Rehvana rejects when she meets Enryck. Feeling alienated in Paris, Rehvana moves back to Martinique with Enryck, thinking a return to her roots will recover her self. The island’s beauty and Creole food help, but its dogma of male domination turns a blind eye to Enryck’s domestic violence—for he and his pal Chabin are macho men. Even her kindly neighbor, Ma Cidalise, is no help. Proud she’s been beaten much worse, Ma tells Rehvana: “You got to harden your body.” To complicate matters, Rehvana realizes she’s pregnant with Jérémie’s baby. Dracius paints a different Martinique than artist Paul Gauguin in his scenes of this windward island. Gauguin’s canvases exhibit no intimate-partner violence, but Dracius...