if this is paradise

Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield is about Tilla, an allegedly eighteen years old Canadian teenager of Jamaican parentage, who reluctantly travels to Jamaica with her younger sister Mia for the summer, for the first time. They go to spend time with their father, with whom Tilla has a strained relationship, and his family who she does not know. The author attempts to address themes of father and daughter relationships, parental neglect, bullying, black girlhood, colourism, and sexual assault.

Most of the novel is set in Jamaica which meant all of these themes were explored in a Jamaican context. This is the sinkhole through which everything falls. Bromfield’s “complicated” “love letter to the island of Jamaica” was filled with such acerbic caricature that “the ancestors” and the “lost boys and girls of Jamaica” namechecked in her lengthy acknowledgement surely wish to be removed from this narrative. She included scenes that purportedly traced the influence of colonialism in present-day Jamaican society but instead revealed an ignorance of local culture that positioned her too closely to the colonial legacy of travel writers aghast at poor local infrastructure and offended at the moral degradation of backward locals. Her vision of the landscape itself was split between wild hinterland and palm-tree suburbia. I am forced to query what exactly “Jamaica” meant to the writer when her novel seemed largely inspired by late 19th century colonial exhibitions.

The first major red flag was the ten page glossary which preceded the main text. For translators of fiction into English there remains differing opinions about whether glossaries ought to be included. It remains a question because most, regardless of where they fall on this question, are sensitive to how glossaries can play a role in reinforcing the idea of a people as other, exotic, a people who must be rendered completely transparent and subject to a dominant gaze informed by centuries of imperialism and racism. This expectation in the metropoles that those of us elsewhere should not, indeed cannot afford, to be anything else but completely accessible—our creations, our cultures, our bodies, our lands—is inextricably entwined with their history of genocide, theft, enslavement, and exploitation. When the choice is made to include a glossary in translations to English they are rarely longer than two pages, in my experience. How curious then that the author (and editor? marketing?) decided to treat “the lovely island of Jamaica” as if it was an imaginary country in a second world high fantasy novel—a place and people so strange to a US and Canadian audience (which definitely does not include other Caribbean people) that even words like “chat”, “bush”, and “daughta” require translation.

If only the linguistic farce ended there. Tilla and Mia board an Air Jamaica flight in Toronto destined for Kingston, Jamaica. To the surprise of anyone who has…ever taken an Air Jamaica flight (the airline no longer exists) the flight attendant addresses passengers over the intercom as follows:

“Ladiez and gentle-mon, welcome aboard flight 416 departing from Toronto to Kingston on this beautiful Thursday morning. We invite you to sit back, relax and leave your worries behind you. From all of us here at Air Jamaica, it is our pleasure to have you on board.”

I cackled at the opening greeting. It gets weirder once it lands. They are still on the same plane with the same staff that departed from Canada.

Ladiez and gentle-mon, welcome to Kingston, Jamaica. It iz a beautiful day here on the island, and we wish you nothing but irie on your travels. It has been our pleasure to have you on board. As always, thank you for flying Air Jamaica.

Come one, come all, as we enter the Asha Bromfield Minstrel Multiverse in which mere entry into Jamaican air space magically transforms blessedly imaginary flight attendants into lost extras from a lesser version of Cool Runnings.

To ignore the farce for a bit: there is a complicated history with race, language, class, tourism, and how all of these became embodied in gendered front facing roles such as flight attendants. Suffice it to say any employee meant to represent us internationally in a professional setting would speak the crispest, most perfectly toned and melodious English because so much of what Jamaica generally understands as “professional” is tied to standards entrenched in colonial brainwashing from hair to dress to mannerisms to language. Patwa is the country’s unofficial first language and that means there are spaces in which it is expected, accepted and spaces where it is not. There are those who are allowed to breach those boundaries and those who aren’t. And there are writers willing to use their linguistic heritage in the service of presenting us as exotic caricature. For how can her white readership understand any character as Jamaican if they speak or behave in any way similar to Canadian Tilla and Mia, their proxy? (Also…”irie”? I assume that is early promotion for the second novel.) If I were generous enough to read this rendering as to be how Jamaican English sounds to Tilla then Bromfield has artfully aligned the protagonist with other white metropole characters in Caribbean literature who often appear determined to find any Caribbean English as utterly unlike and other. (Think Andrea Levy’s Small Island.)

Bromfield’s determination to fix Tilla to that positioning even as she sought to build and maintain a diaspora narrative’s scaffolding threw the entire endeavour into confusion. In Jamaica, Tilla is at turns impossibly confused by or easily responding to a relative’s “thick country accent” Patwa within a single conversation. When they arrive in Manchester, a rural parish, Tilla’s neighbour Diana is eager to impress upom Tilla her superiority to her local peers by associating herself with “town” (aka Kingston, Jamaica’s capital) via a traditional school placement yet in the next breath mocks Tilla’s accent. Why? It’s long been known that the United States has overtaken the United Kingdom in its influence over Jamaicans and what many deem as aspirational. Tilla’s second tier Canadian accent ought to have been close enough to the real thing to please Diana. To answer this I would have to address how the author’s feeble attempt at a kind of female empowerment manifested in embarrassingly bald misogyny. Every single girl and woman besides the self-insert protagonist, her sister and mother are depicted as jealous of Tilla, obnoxious and malicious to her, or a passive bystander while some other girl or woman horribly mistreats her. Mi cyaan tek dat on right now. I cannot.

One bejewelled point in this crown of lingusitic madness is in this exchange between Tilla and her father.

“Aftanoon, Mass Tyson!” Andre calls, bowing his head respectfully as if my father were the long-lost King of Manchester. I bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“Wha’ppen, Andre. Tek dese bags inside fi me. Put dem inna di kitchen.”

“Yes, Mass Tyson.” Andre grabs the grocery bags and scurries inside like a proud servant. Dad notices me and smiles wide.

“How’s my girl doing?”

“Hey, Dad.” I smile. “What does that mean, ‘Mass Tyson’?”

He lets out an awkward laugh, clearly caught off guard. “Wha yuh mean?”

“The ‘Mass’ part. Why do they call you that?”

“It’s short for Massa.” He pauses. “It’s a term from slavery that they never dropped around here. Old-time thinking. It means master.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a sign of respect.”

I cringe, almost wishing I hadn’t asked.

A simple google search or a reading of any marginally better text set in the so-called Anglo Caribbean whether novel, short story, play or poem would provide the correct definition:

Maas (noun) English translation: Mr.
Example Sentences
Patois: Maas Joe cum by pan Satday
English: Mr. Joe came by on Saturday
jamaicanpatwah.com

Better yet, let me post an excerpt from Kei Miller’s essay “In Defense of Maas Joe”.

Caribbean writing and Caribbean writers have come full circle—to the interesting place where we seem in danger of standing against many of the things we once stood for. For remember we are those whose project was once simple and noble: to challenge various centres of power…Standing there on the outside, on the periphery as it were, we knew how to recognize and then challenge the dangerous cultural hegemonies of elite society. But to do that—to mount such a challenge—we had to privilege the folk and folk culture. We had to privilege people like Maas Joe and the story, perhaps, of his hapless donkey.
from “Writing down the Vision: Essays & Prophecies” (2013) by Kei Miller

Even without any familiarity with the histories and writings Miller addressed, does the image of Maas Joe and his donkey there evoke images of…mastery and slavery to you in the way Bromfield has presented it above?

That’s the last of the abominable linguistic cockfoots I can stand to consider today to bumbo rahtid. (Please…don’t ask.) On to the physical environment.

Let us return to the Norman Manley International Airport of the Bromfield ‘Verse for the sisters’ arrival. (Must we?! I hear us both shriek. Come along.) The novel was set at some point in the 2000s. We know this because Mia owns a Nintendo DS. Take in the capital’s airport, known to have a fairly quiet single ring road and a few taxi drivers on stand by, not unlike many other small country airports. Under Bromfield’s warped gaze it is now a bustling open air market and a heavily trafficked, unruly transport hub.

With our suitcases lugging behind us, we spill out of the doors and into the hot sun. The heat immediately consumes me, and it is amplified by the chaos and noise that surrounds us. The streets are packed. Loud horns blare, and people yell back and forth in thick, heavy Patois accents. Men argue on the side of the road, their dialect harsh as they negotiate the rates for local shuttle buses. Along the roads, merchants sell colorful beaded jewelry and fruit so ripe that I can taste it in the air. Women wear beautiful head wraps and sell plantains and provisions, bartering back and forth with eager travelers. People spew out of overcrowded taxis, desperate to catch their flights as others hop in, desperate to get home. The sun pierces my skin as the humidity and gas fumes fill my lungs. The action is overwhelming, and I feel like a fish out of water. As we wait by the curb, there is no sight of our father.

If this were a film it would be in sepia tone right? Accompanied by a slowed down, slightly sinister version of “Three Little Birds”. Then it would lighten into a corny oversaturated look and a generic “steel pan Caribbean music” track for this overpriced-postcard-sold-in-hotel-built-by-and-for-exploitation milieu.

After a few minutes, we exit the freeway and make our way into town. The paved roads become dirt ones as we drive past old shops, abandoned houses, and stores. Hibiscus flowers are everywhere, and their lush pinks and reds knit together over the zinc walls like crowns as we speed by.

The deeper we get into the city, the more people flood the streets—and the energy is palpable. I watch as a boy with dark, ethereal skin runs alongside his friends as they suck on frozen juice in tiny plastic bags. A small girl sits out front of her house as her mother braids her hair into an intricate design. As we make our way deeper into the town, the battered roads are lined with merchants selling fruit, coconut water, and fresh juices. Men and women sit alongside their artwork, oil canvases painted by hand. Rastas line the streets, locks swinging past their waists, just like my father’s. A man plays steel drums as women carry gray grocery bags and baskets on their heads. Little boys in school shorts chase each other with water bottles, soaking their uniforms. There is laughter everywhere, and I can feel the heartbeat of the island all around me.
*Yes, the flowers are another promotional volley. Incredible world building.

I don’t know where to start. She completely erased the range of businesses that exist not only in Kingston but across the island in any urban area where people *live*–appliance stores, pharmacies, fashion stores–in order to present us as tropical tourist puppets subsisting on fruit, art and bag juice. What on earth does she mean by “dark, ethereal skin”? “Oil canvases painted by hand” as opposed to what?? Wtf is a steel drum doing here??? The closing line should have been enough to trigger a clause to void this book deal.

Once they are out of town it is all shack, zinc and jungle. Not one likkle yard wid a likkle cement wall to cockfoot! (Don’t. Ask.) That can only appear later in the novel. Bromfield appeared to have forgotten what she wrote before. Kingston is now palm tree suburbia.

I feel like a zombie—hollow, tormented, and deprived of rest. Soon, the lack of sleep catches up to me, and I drift off in the car. When I wake up a few hours later, we’ve arrived in Kingston. A complete contrast to the country, it’s filled with modern architecture, and I can immediately sense the shift in class. The roads here are paved and smooth, compared to the roads in the country that were rugged and unkept. Instead of lush forests, we are surrounded by suburban-looking houses and palm trees, and the pace is much less relaxed.

At this point my only question is where the fuck all these palm trees come from. You cannot miss it at this point. The persistent flattening, the rigid binary in her fabulations, the demented constructions in her “It’s a Small World” imaginary. The character must be oblivious to the varied class and “modern architecture” (I am afraid to understand what that means in this part of the multiverse) in country and all of Kingston is the new Devon House but busy.

I wish I could say I had exhaustively analysed what Bromfield scrambled in craven service to the imperial imagination in Hurricane Summer. Here was an entire rural community in awe of random foreign relatives after a century of Jamaican migration, barrel children, brain drain, an economy propped up with overseas remittances etc, so in awe her status is compared to something like a celebrity. So in awe a family stood outside in the rain to greet her arrival holding up “spare shards of zinc” because what is an umbrella to the 21st century Jamaican Yokel. The kids can find bags to carry goods from the corner shop but must resort to wrapping their clothes in fabric tied to a stick like an old Looney Tunes cartoon to go river because “poverty”. (Or maybe only Diana could afford a bag to carry groceries in because her father is a taxi driver. That makes sense.) Tilla and Mia are again unique foreign damsels for owning…backpacks. These Jamaican kids have never heard of Beyonce, only Celine Dion. (Over a century of mutual influence between African American and Jamaican music dash weh deh suh.) In defiance of every relevant Jamaican literature, whether sociological text, memoir, novel etc rural to urban migration is only for the upper class. (“Most people who come from country don’t ever leave. They can’t just afford fi just pack up and go town.”) But I have danced around (with “bright eyes…and…a yelp of laughter”) the worst of it. I will re-read Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark and perhaps one day I may analyse how the author belied every word in her dedication and acknowledgements over and over again in both her depiction of favoured cousin Andre. I want to give that character the care he deserved.

Hurricane Summer was a long exercise in the author’s use of African diaspora ties to access a colonial playfield. It was a self-insert fantasy in which the author could make herself master of an alien domain, the surface story of “the sexual and spiritual wounding that can happen when a girl moves out of her teenage years and into her womanhood” used as narrative vehicle to allow the character a sympathetic triumph to poorly obscure other agendas.

Some asked why I bothered to finish the book. I was curious about how bad it could get and then frustrated at how bad it got. I was and am frustrated at the power dynamics that allow such obviously questionable depictions of Jamaica, however fictional, to be released without any robust conversation on its merits. US publishing and most of its intended white audience are not (interested in being) informed enough to attempt this kind of critical reading and all are too willing to devour what Bromfield was so eager to use her diaspora credentials to serve. Of the Jamaican readers who read and praised it, I must be frank and state there are those who need nothing more than the inclusion of palm trees, “Jamaican soap”, dominoes and a deadbeat dad to be satisfied. The larger reality is that most Jamaicans in the island will never read this book for numerous reasons–most to do with colonialism’s legacy and good taste–and yet we have and will suffer the consequences of these narratives that play into the idea of us being “a shithole country” even as we help the USA and Canada in their continued oppression of fellow Caribbean nations in a futile attempt to escape such judgement.

No doubt there will be the usual lament about mean people back home seeking to disinherit or monopolise Jamaican identity, woe is them the lost people stuck between two worlds etc. This is another simplistic flattening of reality. Diaspora writing has been a part of our understanding of Caribbean literature since the early 20th century. It is quite common to have authors born and raised in Jamaica discuss how they had to interrogate, unlearn colonialist ideas embedded in their society and innovate their way into something like creative freedom. These are the kind of conversations I hope to see more from diaspora alongside the usual assertions oriented around their right to claim. Just as important is the need to unlearn and interrogate what violent ideas they may have internalised living in the various imperial centres not only in the context of their reality in the “global north” but in relation to those they claim elsewhere. There are things more important than your dreams of a publishing contract.