Three Generations of Women: The Star Side of Bird Hill – Interview with Naomi Jackson

Abstract

NAOMI JACKSON'S NOVEL THE STAR SIDE OF BIRD HILL (New York: Penguin, 2015) was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Debut Fiction, and longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. It won Late Night Library's Debut-litzer prize, was named an Honor Book for Fiction by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and was selected for the American Booksellers Association's Indies Introduce and Indies Next List programmes.The Star Side of Bird Hill examines the life of two sisters, Phaedra, ten, and Dionne, sixteen, who are sent to Barbados to spend time with their grandmother Hyacinth as a result of their mother's depression and inability to care for them. The novel examines many social issues and cultural motifs, and shows how both sisters deal with their new environment, but in particular, their relationship with their grandmother.Born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents, Naomi Jackson considers herself a pan-Caribbean mongrel as her mother is from Barbados, her father from Antigua, and she has a Jamaican stepmother. As a child, Naomi spent several summers in Barbados, and says all of these places influenced who she is as a writer. Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A recipient of residencies and fellowships, including Bread Loaf, MacDowell Colony, and Djerassi, Naomi Jackson was a visiting writer at Amherst College in Fall 2016.1The following interview took place in June 2016 via the internet.OPA: Although The Star Side of Bird Hill can be said to be a coming-of-age novel, the story is not simply about Dionne. It is as much about her mother Avril, little sister Phaedra and grandmother Hyacinth. Why did you decide to have a community of women as the protagonists?NJ: Thanks so much for noting the fact that Star Side features not just one protagonist but instead a family of women. The novel is told in a close third-person perspective that switches from the younger sister Phaedra to her older sister Dionne to their grandmother Hyacinth; Avril can be said to be a shadow protagonist, as the story is never told from her perspective, but we do experience her through the lens of her family's experiences of her. I am committed to telling stories that employ a broad perspective, reaching beyond one individual's experience in order to tell a more complete, complex story of a family, a church, a district, an island, a community.OPA: Most of Caribbean literature portrays the strong, almost invincible mother, but your mother is the opposite. She is neither strong nor caring. In fact, she emotionally and physically abandons her children, and they have to take care of her as well as fend for themselves. Where does your portrayal of this fragile, depressed, psychologically incapable Caribbean mother reside within the popular existing frame of Caribbean motherhood? What space does it open and how does it reframe Caribbean motherhood?NJ: It's true that the mother in my novel is quite different than the mothers we have seen in anglophone Caribbean literature. That said, I think she bears some traits in common with the mothers in Jamaica Kincaid's novels, especially Annie John, which had a profound influence upon me as a child and continues to inform my writing today. I disagree, however, with your characterisation of Avril as neither strong nor caring. I worked on crafting a mother character in whom readers would recognise resilience as well as fragility, neglect as well as tenderness. Avril, as I imagined her, is a person with a mental illness who has the best intentions for raising her children, but whose struggles eventually get the better of her. I hope that readers will witness her journey with compassion, and that Avril offers a different model of motherhood that is a reflection of an underrepresented reality of Caribbean mothers who toil in the face of considerable obstacles to their wellness. …