Violence in Caribbean Literature: Stories of Stones and Blood by Veronique Maisier (review)

This text, as the introduction states, presents “comparative literary analyses of texts originating in the cultures of Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Jamaica” (xii). The primary texts examined are Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey, Gisèle Pineau’s The Drifting of Spirits, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, and Michelle Cliff’s Abeng. Hodge’s The Life of Laetitia and Dany Bébel-Gisler’s Leonora: The Buried Story of Guadeloupe also receive pertinent critical attention.

The focus on violence in the novels is explored through the recurrence of an incident in each novel where a character picks up a stone and throws it at another character. The choice of this plot element as the thematic basis for analysis is ingenious and effective. The analysis, therefore, is conducted in successive chapters, each focusing largely on one of the main novels and investigates a variety of permutations of violence indicated by the title of each chapter: “The Violence of History: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea” (chapter 1), “An Education in Violence: Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey” (chapter 2), “Gendered Violence: Gisèle Pineau’s The Drifting of Spirits” (chapter 3), “The Politics of Violence: Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco” (chapter 4), and “Violent Dreams: Michelle Cliff’s Abeng” (chapter 5). The discussion moves outside these neat categorizations to include also the violence of nature as a recurrent theme in Caribbean literature (106) as well as chaotic textual violence in the coherence and composition of a text such as Texaco (88). The throwing of a stone is a cleverly observed novelistic and analytic device, and while it is not the only or most significant manifestation of violence, it provides coherence and focus to what might otherwise be a topic too wide-ranging for analytical discussion.

One of the strengths of Violence in Caribbean Literature lies in the admirable and largely successful attempt it makes to contextualize the sometimes confusing complexities (geographical, historical, cultural, sociopolitical) of the Caribbean region by adopting what the author describes in the introduction as a “transnational and polyphonic approach” (xvi). Unfortunately, this approach is only partially successful, because the definition of the Caribbean region that is used in the introduction and that serves as the basis for the analysis that follows is incomplete and therefore limited. The Caribbean region is definitely not merely, as stated in the introduction, “[c]omposed of a multitude of islands” (xi). Such a definition excludes Guyana and Guyane Française, as well as the coastal regions of Venezuela and Colombia as well as Central American territories such as Panama and Costa Rica, which, although they are not “islands,” can all claim to be part of “the Caribbean region” and are regularly treated as such in geopolitical and environmental contexts. Moreover, since Violence centers on a number of texts that reflect this limited interpretation of what constitutes “the Caribbean region,” the lack of reference, even in passing, to two of the largest and most historically, politically, and culturally significant island masses, Cuba and Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic), represents a glaring omission. Even more pertinently, in the context of references to the francophone Caribbean and the “French Oversea Departments,” it is unfortunate that no mention is made of Guyane Française.

While it is understandable that specific references to stones in other narratives emerging from the wider Caribbean may be outside the scope of the present text, it would have been helpful at least to mention the instability of the nomenclature used for the Caribbean (e.g., Caribbean, West Indies, Antilles, Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles—none chosen by the region or territories themselves, but imposed from “outside”), an instability that literally and orally inscribes the violence to which this region has been and continues to be subjected.

Another limitation in accuracy is to be found in the description of Rhys and Cliff both as “White Creoles” (xxvi). While such a designation may appropriately be applied...