Abstract
By CYNTHIA TAMES I begin with an abstract from "Grease," one of the stories in Kamau Brathwaite's latest work, DreamStories (1994).1 I reproduce part of this dream story here, though not in his video style, and apologize immediately because the print version of his language is devalued without this audiovisual overlay of meaning that is part of the coding of his message: "The water of the mirror in the / room was dark green, quiet as translucence. in the light of a limestone cave near the ocean . and it had been pasted on to the wall . like a mop. the shape of an island, one of those lopped jagged halfsquare Caribbean-shaped isles like Trinidad or central Virgin Gorda" (114). The first words of the story made an impact on me partly because at the time I read them I was rooming with a fellow female writer from Tortola. We were at a writers' conference,2 and as can be guessed, I am from Trinidad. But beyond that, in its totality "Grease" reads like parable.
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