The following is an excerpt from Ti Marie’s
AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD
I think a romance is best enjoyed if it is read with the heart and not the head, and the heart demands no analysis although sometimes it’s fun to follow the rationale behind the writing of a novel.
I had long been moved by a comment from Cheikh Anta Diop who wrote: “The memory of recent slavery to which the Black race has been subjected, cleverly kept alive in men’s minds and especially in Black minds, often affects Black consciousness negatively.” It occurred to me that even Black writers unwittingly contributed to this, but that with a different emphasis the focus on victim-hood could be interchanged with discussions of consciousness and humanism useful to our own times.
As a great lover of romances, I often found myself wishing that I could read the kind of novel that my countrymen had never had; a native-oriented, ‘feel good’, fairy tale-flavored, ‘as you like it’, romance—preferably historical to add substance—based in my country, Trinidad, and approached from a native point of view. Of course, here was the test case because to make for an entertaining historical romance, it would have to be set in the most exciting time in my country’s relatively short history, which was the late 18th century when the island was the pawn of European powers. But 18th century meant slavery and plantations, and the horrific and sordid aspects of slavery did not lend itself to the ‘tone’ of a romance. It would have to be a careful balancing act between detailing the reality of the age and highlighting exceptional or redeeming forces which might suggest interesting perspectives on human nature in general that had a modern relevance.
What started out as a mere lark stuck with me and, eventually, challenged me to write such a novel, bearing in mind my own humanistic preoccupations, Diop’s words, as well as the post civil rights, post “Roots” awakened consciousness to Black oppression, especially during enslavement. I accepted my own challenge, armed with the assumption that my readers were ready to move up from race-based solidarity to human-based solidarity.
One option was to write a spoof but I didn’t like the connotation of literary snobbery or that of ridiculing the much loved romance genre. I decided on something slightly different. I would write a non-conformist romance in which I would keep the appearance of the stereotypical and its traditional characters—handsome aristocrat, unattainable beauty etc. My idea was to make them the kind of people we might respect, people in a sense, like the reader as his/her contemporary self with modern sensibilities, rather than as victim, spectator or oppressor.
The challenge that I faced, therefore, was to find characters from that time but not of that time—unbeaten blacks and progressive whites. Of course, for my characters to be truly close to the consciousness of the contemporary reader, they would have to be free people.
It was a tall order but the history solved the problem. The period of greatest historical drama—1777-1803— turned out also to be a time of great revolutionary and liberating ideas (Voltaire, Rousseau, revolution in America, France and Haiti), a time when humanistic ideas, not unlike our own modern thinking, were in the air—progressive characters, existed. This gave me the permission to have the modern sensibility that I was seeking, allowing me to target the contemporary reader and even to mention modern times in my text.
In the historical period there was also a preponderance of free coloreds on the island of Trinidad, so here was part of the cast. Some of the other details of Trinidad’s history, such as the lateness of development, the liberalism of the first effective Spanish Governor, etc. indicated a kind of laissez-faire attitude—initially—towards slavery on the island of Trinidad, so a Don Diego came to mind. The relatively liberal times, Diego’s relative benevolence, indolence, and the tolerant, non-demanding personality that would have allowed him to survive in under-developed conditions, suggested that his estate could well be a virtual sanctuary with the kind of “loving nurturing atmosphere”, which could produce an Eléna.
Liberalism, sanctuary and a propensity for freedom seemed to be noticeable characteristics of early Trinidad. In such an atmosphere one could easily picture the development of humanistic consciousness. I decided that I would develop a hierarchy of freemen who possessed varying degrees of consciousness. Since freedom and consciousness would normally lead to idealism—which is as much a dilemma as it is a virtue, and as relevant today as it would have been back then—I decided to make the dilemma of idealism the central theme of the novel, the theme that would challenge the principal lovers.
With all these peculiarities foisted on an ‘as you like it’ fairy tale romance, I had begun to turn the plantation romance on its head, and to introduce a mildly parodic element. Along the way it also became a ‘corrective’ romance (n.b. non-conflicted relationships, game free associations, strong—and incidentally, all beautiful—women, etc.) and a ‘cross over’ book, one which set the formulaic nature of the romance genre against a serious backdrop.
In view of the ‘as you like it’ approach, I had to stick to the prototype or at least to create the illusion of so doing, and so it became an ‘undercover’ book as well, one that could ‘pass’ for and be as—or even more—satisfying a read than the typical, without necessarily revealing its secrets.
The careful reader, however, may have noted some of the illusions, illusions
which serve to…
|
