It was fascinating to come upon Cyril Dabydeen's new novel, Drums of My Flesh (TSAR Publications, 2006). Dabydeen is a Caribbean-born writer now residing in Ottawa, Canada. His new novel has been nominated for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world's most prestigious prize of its kind, worth 100,000 euros. It was also a finalist for the Ottawa Book Awards in 2006.
Drums of My Flesh has complexities that are challenging and simultaneously enriching for the post-colonial reader (and readers of other genres of fiction as well), due not least to its range and its somewhat poetic rendition of place and imagery.
Cyril Dabydeen has written sixteen other books, including eight collections of poetry, five of short stories, and three novels published in the U.K. He has also edited two key anthologies: A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape (Mosaic Press, l987), and Another Way to Dance: Contemporary Asian Poetry in Canada and the US (TSAR Publications, 1992), which contains works by some of the finest poets currently writing in North America.
Poet Laureate
Dabydeen's own poetry has been acclaimed―he was Poet Laureate of Ottawa from 1984 to l987, and he has read from his books across Canada, the U.S., U.K. and other parts of Europe, Asia, and in the Caribbean, including Cuba and Jamaica. He has read at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa and at Toronto's Harbourfront Reading Series.
An editorial review of his work in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper describes his poetry as having "Stravinsky rhythms," and because of his concerns for the underclass, critic Patricia Morely more than two decades ago described him as the "Pablo Neruda of Ottawa."
The Poetry Quarterly Review in the U.K. says, "Dabydeen writes poems more like Borges...musically fluid and politically charged." The Danforth Review calls him "one of Canada's most popular post-colonial writers."
'Splicing Time and Space'
In Drums of My Flesh, while the narrative seemingly focuses on one generation, the novel is essentially multi-generational. It crosses boundaries of East and West, with mythologies woven together as religions also coalesce. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and the quest for the self permeate the novel—a theme now more relevant in view of our post-9/11 world and the purported clash of civilizations. The Muslim faith in particular is given much focus, seen in the Tiresias-like wandering figure of the half-blind old man Jaffe (Jaffar) with a "moth-laden" eye.
It is not strange to see why the book is set in both Canada (Ottawa) and the tropics (Guyana, part of the Amazon region in South America), since the latter is where Dabydeen grew up, and Ottawa is where he currently resides. He teaches English at the University of Ottawa.
The story, however, is of shifting grounds. It alludes to origins in India and the sometimes distant Muslim worlds as the characters intertwine, including with references to the Irish mythical figure of Cuchulain―all in the novel's range and overall appeal. Flashbacks to the gritty life lived in a sugar plantation are dominant, aligned with an almost Edenic coastal place, all in the context of a post-colonial structure.
In a recent interview with the Danforth Review , Dabydeen indicates that it's a novel "where I am splicing time and space, tropical and temperate worlds."
The story is that of Boyo, sometimes called Boy, in Ottawa with his young Canadian-born daughter Catriona as he looks back at his own difficult childhood in Guyana. Boyo's own growth from innocence to awareness makes up the essence of what occurs.
The motifs and resonances capture the life of a formerly indentured people, brought from India to Guiana by the British to work in the sugar plantation after slavery was abolished, forced to eke out a living and now actualizing themselves. The search for spiritual meanings and themes of fatherhood, motherhood, loyalty and distrust mixed with intense longing inform the novel's texture with key leitmotiv elements.
For instance, Fatima ("dark one") is seen almost as an opposite to the Grandma and Dee figures, and Jaffe (the half-blind "old" man) is the opposite to Gabe (Boyo's father)...all seen through the central character's omnipresent―or overactive―imagination. There's also animal imagery as part of the overall novelistic pattern. The South American jaguar is seen alongside India's Bengal tiga , while the horse and the bull, suggesting Greek mythology, touch on the daemon and the Minotaur myth.
Affirming Life
Toronto's Ryerson University English professor Dr. Anne-Marie Leeloy describes Drums of My Flesh as "highly structured using Jungian psychology and numerous allusions to Western and South American mythologies as organizing principles...is beautifully rendered, intellectually challenging, and deeply satisfying addition to Dabydeen's oeuvre."
She adds: "Although it is in many ways a debut novel, it reveals the masterful craftsmanship of Dabydeen's long years of writing and the confidence of an author hitting his stride in the genre of fiction."
I feel the novel could be seen as the new fiction of diaspora in the Canadian context of "where do we come from...and who are we?" I observe distinct rhythmic elements combining with minimalist prose to portray the story's haunting effects in affirming life in both Canada and the Amazonian region. Fractured experiences mixed with the dialectal elements in the narrative and dialogue make the novel unique, different from others published in Canada in the Anglo-American tradition, as has been said.
The epigraph in the novel has quotations from Michel Foucault and V.S. Naipaul about memory and consciousness, which set the stage for the novel's post-colonial framework, and indeed for how it should be read.
It's interesting also that the book was edited in part by twice-Giller prize winner M.G. Vassanji. Overall it adds to Dabydeen's oeuvre and him being more than an immigrant writer.
What ARC magazine says of Dabydeen's latest poetry book, Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2004), is very much relevant to this novel: Dabydeen "has the rhythms of Al Purdy....His discussions of the life of an immigrant are subtle and moving, and the distinctions he makes between knowledge and wisdom, in the context of place and placelessness, are transformative."
Feeds