At the Full and Change of the Moon (review)

In the last decade, several Caribbean and African-American writers have written neo-slave narratives. Neo-slave narratives are novels based on the perspective of a fictional slave protagonist. Like its slave narrative literary ancestor, the neo-slave narrative uses the leitmotifs of resistance and freedom; however, unlike the sentimental and biblical prose of the slave narrative, the neo-slave narrative features post-modernist strategies of flashbacks, cyclical time, and fragmented prose. In the North American context, the most popular examples of this genre are Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979). Dionne Brand's novel, At the Full and Change of the Moon,is a Caribbean neo-slave narrative, which traces the lives of a Trinidadian slave, Marie Ursule, and her descendants. The novel spans the time and geography of the African Diaspora itself, from the early nineteenthcentury to late twentieth century, from the sugar cane plantations of Trinidad to the urban streets of Amsterdam.

The novel opens in Trinidad with the chapter ". . . But a Drink of Water," which describes the early nineteenthcentury mass suicide revolt led by the enslaved Marie Ursule. Brand's revolt is based on one which occurred in 1802, but which the actual slave Thisbeand her fellowslave conspirators did not survive. Brand masterfully blends fact and fiction to create the story of Marie Ursule and the Le Chagrin (French for grief) slave plantation. In the novel, Marie Ursule and her secret society, San Peur ("without fear"), plan a mass suicide in which each slave drinks a cup of poisoned water. They all commit suicide at the new moon because the complete darkness of the sky cloaks their deception and resistance to their slave owner, De Lambert. Although Marie Ursule leads the mass suicide by creating the fatal potion, she ensures that her only daughter, "her one curiosity and one vanity," the young Bola, is saved from death by Marie Ursule's lover, Kamena, a runaway slave. Kamena takes Bola away from the plantation and searches for a fabled maroon society called Terre Bouillante. Kamena obsessively yearns for the freedom of Terre Bouillante, and when he is unable to find it, he resorts to taking Bola to the abandoned Culebra Bay. In this first chapter, Brand establishes that Bola's freedom from slavery is inextricably linked to the death of her mother, Marie Ursule, and to the futile dreams of the escaped slave, Kamena.

Culebra Bay is where Marie Ursule was initially enslaved by an order of Catholic nuns who eventually died,leaving an empty house in an empty village. Culebra Bay is the only character, so to speak, in the novel that rivals Bola in importance and omnipresence. Culebra Bay grows as Bola grows, it is populated as she constantly bears children, and it both loves and stifles its inhabitants as Bola both loves and rejects her children. Because Culebra Bay is so completely desolate when Bola arrives, she is able to literally restore its life by inhabiting and populating it. Culebra Bay and Bola symbiotically provideone another with a sense of freedom and isolation from New World slavery.

Brand includes at the novel's beginning a genealogical chart that documentsBola, her thirteen children, and their offspring. This genealogy is of special importance because Bola gives her children ambiguous names such as"The one unrecalled," "The ones left in sea," "The one she washed out with lime," and "The one who stole her footsteps." The only children with formal names, Eugenia and Rafael, originally namedbyBolarespectively"The one who went to Bonaire in a Basket" and "The one who loved gold things and who was taken to the Main," are reared by others. Bola's peculiar naming practice reflects her desperate attempts to defy the inhumanity of slavery. We learn early on that Bola " . . . spread her children around so that all would never be gathered in the same place to come to the same harm." As both the image of Marie Ursule...