The Last of the African Kings, and: Trans. of Les derniers rois mages by Maryse Condé (review)

Maryse Condé. The Last oftheAfrican Kings. Trans. Richard Philcox. Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1997. Trans, ofLes derniers rois mages. Paris: Gallimard, 1992. 216p. Paula K. Sato University of Virginia Maryse Condes The Last oftheAfrican Kings follows the thoughts ofits protagonist one rainy December 1 0 in South Carolina. Spero is the fictional great grandson ofdie king ofDahomey deposed ofhis throne by the French and deported to Martinique in 1894. However, Spero's grandfather, the illegitimate son of the exiled king, is left behind when the king returns to Africa. Failing to come to terms with their condition ofexile from the royal family, both the abandoned son and his son after him drown themselves in rum as they wait for the world to recognize them as members ofan African dynasty. Spero finds his life shipwrecked as well, even diough he attempts to turn the page on his royal heritage and start life anew in the present. As Richard Philcox points out in the book's preface, Conde goes against the commitment ofmany Caribbean writers to give a positive or sympathetic view of the Caribbean and its people, putting her on the same page as VS. Naipaul (x). In a satirical tone, she pokes fun at die hierarchy ofcolor on the islands and upsets the notion ofwhite as superior and black as inferior when Spero's relative lightness of skin, hair, and attitudes become a handicap for him. In France, people "took him for an Arab and spared him little in the way of insults" (65). He wonders ifhis red hair and skin would be "one ofthe deformities the dynasty detested" and be cause for his banishment from the royal family. He has never heard of WE.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King Jr. (15), prefers westerns to Spike Lee films, refuses to participate in political rallies, "even those in support of Nelson Mandela" (140), and eventually pays a heavy price for not fitting into a politically correct black mold. His "white taste in art causes him to be fired from his job at a mostly black Catholic school" because "the students threaten to go on strike if he returns" (147) and his wife, Debbie, banishes him from her bed as punishment for taking the white Tamara Barnes as a mistress. However, Condé is careful to show that Spero's white attitudes are not due to his skin tone. She demonstrates the error oftrying to delineate a black or mulatto essence at all as she reveals that experiences and points ofview vary from one individual to the next. Agnes Jackson, who is so light she could pass for white, feels more victimized by Whites than anyone in the novel. Isaac, a graduate ofHarvard and professor of Black American history at Berkeley, secretly looks on his brothers in the ghetto with shame and fear, while a younger generation ofBlacks rejects FALL 1999 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 107 the prestigious "white schools," opting instead for the University ofAtlanta and Columbia College in order to discover "what nigger mean[s]" (93). In answer to R. Radhakrishnan's question, "in which narrative should the postcolonial subject be launched on its way to identity?" (758), Condé offers a variety ofsuggestions, yet all are drawn into question and none are presented as totally satisfying. Whereas Debbie, one of the leading specialists on die Reconstruction, sees history as a tale ofblack martyrs and white tormentors (63), bodi Condé and Spero reject Debbie's Manichean historicism opting to look at the more sordid side of African and Afro-American history. Spero notes diat Blacks as well as Mulattoes owned slaves, and Condé is quick to point out that Spero's royal ancestor sacrificed "forty-one young boys and forty-one young girls" during the funeral rites of the latter's late father (15). Condé further turns the table on Debbie's unilinear interpretation ofdie historical genealogy ofAfricans and the diaspora when she illustrates how a black bourgeoisie, which identifies itselfas the victim, can become the victimizer by imposing a repressive unification on Charleston's black community. Amanda, a free spirit who resists die stranglehold of dieir prescriptions , opts to bask in the fluidity of racial boundaries: because she does...