Books by Dionne Brand

Prose _
Bread
Rivers Have Sources, TjeeS Have Roots (1986) out
No Burden to Capyt^Narratives of Black Working
Women ijv Ontario (1991) of
Fiction
Stone
Sans Souci and Other Stories (1988) recollections sex
recognitions race
Poetry dreaming politics
'Fore Day Morning (1978)
Earth Magic (1979)
Primitive Offensive (1983)
Winter Epigrams and Epigrams to Ernesto Gardena
in Defense of Claudia (1983) DIONNE
Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984)
No Language Is Neutral (1990) BRAND

I I Coach House Press

 -PR
9/ 7 f.;?
't,(pS3
Coach House Press For Zakiya and Faith Eileen
50 Prince Arthur Avenue, Suite 107
Toronto, Canada M5R 1B5

© Dionne Brand 1994.

F irst E dition
135798642
Published in Canada 1994
Published in the United States 1995
Printed in Canada

Published with the assistance of the Canada Council, the Ontario

Arts Council, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Ontario
Publishing Centre.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Brand, Dionne, 1953-
Bread out of Stone
ISBN 0-88910-492-1
I. Title.
PS8553.R275B71994 C814'.54 C94-931752-7
PR9199.3.B73B7 1994
ai
Contents

Bread out of Stone 9

This Body for Itself 25
Just Rain, Bacolet 51
Bathurst 67
Job 83
Cuba 85
Brownman, Tiger ... 101
Water More Than Flour 123
Nothing of Egypt 131
Whose Gaze and Who Speaks for Whom 145
Seeing 169
Notes for Writing thru Race 173
On Poetry 181
 Bread
out
of
Stone

I am writing this in Cuba. Playas del Este. It is

January. The weather is humid. In Toronto I live in
the semi-detached, old new-immigrant houses,
where Italians, Chinese, Blacks, Koreans, South
Asians and Portuguese make a rough peace, and the
Humtoingbird Grocery stands next to the Bargain
Harold's, the Italian cheese shop, the Portuguese
chicken place and the Eritrean fast-food restaurant.
There's a hit-and-run game of police and drug deal­
ers in my part of the city, from Christie Pits, gaping
wide and strewn with syringes, to Lansdowne and
Bloor, where my cousin and so many young men
and women walk, hustle, dry-eyed, haunted, hun­
gry and busily, toward a fix. Here, the police carry
out this country's legacy of racial violence in two
killings of Black men and one shooting of a young
Black woman in this city that calls its racism subtle.
Bread out of Stone Bread out of Stone

and the air stinks with the sanguine pronounce­ Black, as if there were a moment she wasn't white.
ments of Canadian civility: 'Oh no, we're not like the She asks me this because she sees her sex and takes
United States,' be grateful for the not-as-badj;acism her race as normal. On the Playas del Este, near
here. I'm writing this just after the.massacre of four­ Guanabo, 1 bend closely to edit the oral histories of
teen women in Montreal and the apologias of 'm ad­ older Black women as 1 remember this encounter. I
man', 'aberration', in a country where most violent put the sun outside at the back of my head.
deaths of women are the result of male violence. On the Playas del Este, from M arazul to
Don't talk about the skeletons! Helen Betty Osborne Guanabo, men yell at me and my partner, ‘Aye que
dying in The Pas seventeen years ago, tortured and rica!' ‘Aye mamita, cosita!‘ ‘Que te la chupo!' They
murdered by this country's fine young white men whistle without relief. In the first days, we yell back
and denied justice by this country's white law and English obscenities, shake fists at them. But they are
white law enforcers in this country with its patho­ unrelenting. And women do not own enough
logical hate for Native people. What with all that, it obscenities to fill the air. Men own this language. We
ain't easy. So I began writing this essay weeks ago in ignore the gauntlet of sucking lips and stares. They
Toronto but could not find the right way of starting. do it so religiously, we realise it is a duty.
Somewhere in all of that there wasn't time. The real Outside the Brunswick Tavern on Bloor Street one
was more pressing than any rendering. night, a bunch of young white boys from the sub­
On the Playas del Este, near Guanabo, I'm editing urbs follow three of us. They say some words loud­
oral histories of older Black women in Ontario. The ly, nothing understandable, but loudly and at us.
book, will become a film, but that's much later. By They hit their feet against the pavement, come close
now it's going on three years and I ask myself why 1 to us. We cross the road. All of us are older than
started this at all. Something about recovering histo­ these teenagers escaped from Mississauga, but they
ry, history important only to me and women like me, make us cross the road. White and male, they own it.
so 1 couldn't just drop it, no matter how long it took. A policeman tells a friend of mine, 'Well, obvi­
And then, I remember a white woman asking me ously the guy finds you attractive. You're an attrac­
how did 1 decide which to be—Black or woman— tive woman, after all.' This about the man living
and when. As if she didn't have to decide which to opposite who has hassled her since she moved into
be, white or woman, and when. As if there were a the neighbourhood. The whole neighbourhood
moment 1 wasn't a woman and a moment 1 wasn't knows he yells and screams alone in his apartment
 Bread out of Stone Bread out of Stone

about 'bitches' and 'whores'. They've heard him. But ,descriptions of farmers, so they can get money to
the policeman sees nothing amiss with the world produce food, from people in Europe and North
here, only an occasion for solidarity w ith jh e man America who read and love descriptions of farmers.
living opposite who wants to killaTVoman. I take the last swig of my beer, feeling its mixture
In my hotel on the Playas del Este, as I read about with the noon heat make me cool. There's another
a Black woman's childhood on the Prairies—'... and difficulty: writer, information officer, or farmer, I will
because I was a girl I did everything ...'—I remem­ walk the streets, paved or unpaved, as a woman.
ber one noon in hilly St. Georges. I'm walking up An interviewer on the CBC asks me: 'Isn't it a
that fatal hill in the hot sun. This is before those days burden to have to write about being Black?' What
when everything caved in. My legs hurt, I'm won­ else would I write about? What would be more
dering what I'm doing here ih Grenada with the sun important? Since these things are inseparable, and
so hot and the hill so hard to climb. Passing me since I do not wish to be separated from them, I take
going up and down are people going to lunch, kids on the responsibility of defending them. I have a
yelling to each other, the dark cooler interiors of the choice in this.
shops and stores. The electricity has broken down. 1 Outside Wilson's, between Shaw and Ossington,
decide to have a beer at Rudolph's. The customers, before it closed down. Black men stare me down the
men alone or women accompanied by men, turn to street, informing me silently that they can and want
look at me. I ignore this as I've been doing walking to control the terms under which I appear, on the
through town. Tm used to masculinity. It's more street, the sidewalk, the high wire, the string for
colourful on some street corners; in this bar it's less Black women to trip on, even more vulnerable to
ostentatious but more powerful. A turn of the head white men and Black men because Black women
is sufficient. I take a swig of my beer. I open my cannot, won't, throw Black men to white men. I stare
diary. Tm here because I've decided that writing is the brothers back. They see my sex. My race is only
not enough. Black liberation needs more than that. a deed to their ownership. Their eyes do not move.
How, I ask myself, can writing help in the revolu­ If some of this finds its way into some piece of fic­
tion? You need your bare hands for this. I drink my tion, a line of poetry, an image on a screen, no won­
beer over my open diary and face this dilemma. I der. On the Playas del Este, I am editing an oral his­
wish I were a farmer. I could then at least grow food. tory of older Black women, furiously.
I have a job as an information officer. I write reports. Tm working on a film. It is a film about women in
Bread out of Stone
Bread out of Stone
■...

my community. I've dredmt this film as a book,

<^Uriously, children.
dreamt it as a face, dreamt it at a window. I am edit­
We make a warm and respectful film. She hates it,
ing it on the Playas del Este; a woman's face, old and
thinking it is infected by my love for women. The
a little tired, deep brown and black,.^ creased with
night of the first showing. Black women's faces
everything that can be lived, and calm, a woman's
move toward us, smiling. They hug us, their eyes
face that will fade if I do not dream it, write it, put it
watery from that well, centuries-old but this time
in a film. I write it, try to make everyone else dream
joyful, thanking us for making this film.
it, too; if -they dream it, they will know something
On the shoot, we are an all-woman crew. We are
more, love this woman's face, this woman I will
three Black women and three white. I am the only
become, this woman they will become. I will sacri­
lesbian. I prepare my questions, sit next to the lens of
fice something for this dream: safety. To dream about
the camera, look into these old women's eyes, try in
a woman, even an old woman, is dangerous; to
ten-minute episodes to spin the thread between
dream about a Black woman, even an old Black
those eyes and mine, taut or liquid, to sew a patch of
woman, is dangerous even in a Black dream, an old
black, rich with moment and things never talked
dream, a Black woman's dream, even in a dream
about in public: Black womanhood. We are all ner­
where you are the dreamer. Even in a Black dream,
vous, the Black women nervous at what we will
where I, too, am a dreamer, a lesbian is suspect; a
hear; some part of us knows that in the moment of
woman is suspect even to other women, especially if
telling we will be as betrayed as much as we will be
she dreams of women.
free. I feel the other two behind me; they are ner­
I am working on a film. Another woman is work­
vous, too. Am I a sister? Will I be sister to their, our,
ing with me. She is a friend. I've known her for eigh­
silence? All three of us know that each question I ask
teen years. For four of those years. I've been a les­
must account for our race. I know that each question
bian, and we've lost touch. She's told me nothing
I ask must account for our sex. In the end I am aban­
has changed, people still love me even though ... I
doned to that question because women are taught to
tell her everything has changed ... She tells me I've
abandon each other to the suffering of their sex,
changed since ... In secret, she says I hate men and
most of all Black women who have the hard white
children, that's why I only want to write about, to
world in front of us so much that the tyranny of sex
work around, women ... She thinks my love for
is a small price, or so we think. The white women are
women must be predicated on a hatred of men and.
nervous, hidden under the technical functions they
 Bread out of Stone
Bread out of Stone

something that says we do not need to leave our­

have to perform. They, too, may not be able to bear
selves stranded, we can be whole, and these old
the sound of this truth woven between those old
women need us to do something different, that is
eyes and mine.
why they're telling us this story. This story is not an
Each night I go to my room alotte after the shoot.
object of art, they did not live some huge mistake,
More and more I skip dinner as the talk around the
they are not old and cute and useless, they're show­
table flickers as S fire on the edge of a blowing skirt.
ing us the art of something, it is not perfect, and they
It's that talk of women suddenly finding themselves
know it. They do not want us to repeat it.
alone with each other, inadvertently.
I am working on a film. Another Black woman is
If men brag when they're together, women deny.
working with me. We're making a film about
They make sure there is no sign of themselves, they
women. Old women. All have lived for more than
assure each other of their love for men, they lie to
sixty years, and there are five minutes in which to
each other, they tell stories about their erasure, they
speak, to feel those years. In a film, in a Black dream,
compete to erase themselves, they rap each other in
will it be all right if five old women speak
weary repetitions, they stop each other from talking.
for five minutes? Black women are so familiar with
The talk becomes thin, the language grinds down to
erasure, it is so much the cloth against the skin, that
brittle domesticity. To prove that they are good
this is a real question. In a Black dream, do women
women the conversations singe the borders of les­
tell stories? If a Black woman tells the story in a
bian hate ('... well, why do they have to flaunt it?'),
Black dream, is it still a Black dream? The voices of
play at the burned edges, firing them to the one
old women never frighten me. I will pay for this
point of unity between Black and white women:
fearlessness.
fear, contempt for women who love women. I rise
I listen to an old man's voice describing an old
and leave. One night I see the fire lighting and I
woman's life. The other woman is now the question­
speak. The next night I take dinner in my room.
er; she has turned to the old man and asked the old
And the old women doing the telling, making the
man about the old woman's life. From the back of
film—impatience crosses the other Black woman's
the room where we are filming, I suddenly ask the
face as they tell it. Perhaps she is not listening, per­
old woman, 'How was it for you?' I wanted to hear
haps she is thinking of her own life, perhaps she is
her voice. She was standing silently. We had come to
going over in her mind a pained phone call to anoth­
film her. My voice breaks the room, her voice
er city. But balancing on this thread, if she looks, is
 Bread out of Stone Bread out of Stone

answers me, she comes alive, we rejoin the thread. haven't bent my back to a Black man, and I have
The roll of film runs out. The assistant camera •' loved Black women.
secures that self-doubt in a can marked 'exposed — ' In the cutting room of the film someone decides
film' and loads the camera again. ,The -d ld ^ o m an that my race should be cut from me for these last
speaks this time. sins. For each frame of film a year of my committed
'How was it fppyou?' A simple question about a struggle is forfeited. My placard ... my protest chant
dream at the Window. They say it is because I am les­ ... my face on a demonstration ... silen t... forgotten,
bian that I've asked, and that because I am a lesbian my poems ... I am losing my life just to hear old
I am not a Black woman, and because I've asked I'm women talk. Someone decides that my sex should be
not Black, and because I do not erase myself I am not cut into me. Not the first sex, not the second sex. The
a Black woman, and because I do not think that 'third sex'. Only the first two can be impartial, only
Black women can wait for freedom either, I am not the first two make no decision based on their sex.
... and because I do not dream myself ten paces The .third sex is all sex, no reason. In the cutting
behind, and because I do not dream a male dream room I reason, talk, persuade, cajole, finally insist
but a Black dream where a woman tells the story, away any erasure of these women. But erasure is
they say I'm n o t... How was it for you? In the Black their life. Yes, but it is not the truth.
gauze of our history how was it for you? Your face In the oral histories and in the film, the women
might appear if I ask this. I would ask you this what­ say. This day I did this, this day I did that, this day
ever the price. I am not afraid of your voice. How I did day's work, this day I took care of things, and
was it for you? well, we got along all right, you know. The
I've worked in my community for eighteen years, Depression wasn't so bad for us, we were used to the
licking envelopes, postering lamp posts, carrying hard times. But I worked just like a man, oh yes.'
placards, teaching children, counselling women, As the cutting ends, I feel the full rain of hate for
organizing meetings (though I never cooked food), lesbians; it hits the ground, its natural place. It mixes
chanting on the megaphone (though I never "made a with the soil ready with hate of women, the con­
speech), calling down racists, calling down the State, tempt for women that women, too, eat. For me, it
writing about our lives so we'd have something pushes up a hoary blossom sheltered in race. I will
more to read than the bullshit in the mainstream smell this blossom, I know, for many years to come.
press. I've even run off to join the revolution. But I And it will push up everywhere and sometimes it

t
 Bread out of Stone
Bread out of Stone

will smother me. I am a woman. Black and lesbian;

the Playas del Este and beyond the bridge, pulls my
the evidence of this is inescapable and interesting.
eyes away from the oral histories and into its own
At a screening of the film about old Blaclcwomen,
memory. I am a little girl growing beside the same
a Black man first commends the frlm, through barely
ocean on the other island some years before. I
open teeth, then he suggests more detail in future
remember seeing women and men sitting quietly in
films, details about husbands, he says, details about
the still midday heat of that town of my childhood,
children. He wants these details to set his picture
saying, 'Something must happen, something bound
right; he cannot see these women without himself.
to come.' They were waiting, after waiting for crop
Even now as they are old he will not give them the
and pay, after waiting for cousin and auntie, after
right of the aged to speak, to speak about what they
waiting for patience and grace, they were waiting for
know; he must edit them with his presence, the pres­
god.
ence of husbands to make them wives, children to
Exasperated after hours of my crying for sweet
make them mothers. His picture is incomplete with­
water, opening her mouth wide, my mama would
out their subordination. The blossom between his
say to me, 'Look inside! Aaah! You see anything in
teeth, as it bursts into words, is not just for me.
here? You want me to make bread out of stone?'
The night of the first showing, fifteen hundred
At a poetry reading on Spadina, another male
people come to see the film. The theatre crackles
writer tells me, 'You write very well, but stay away
with joy; they recognize themselves.
from the politics.' I look at this big white man from
You can see a hanging bridge through my hotel
another planet and smile the dissembling and dan­
window on the Playas del Este. The Boca Ciega
gerous smile of my foremothers.
River, running underneath to the ocean, is shallow in
In my mama's mouth, 1saw the struggle for small
the afternoon, deep in the evening. I only mention
things.
this because from my window on my street in
Listen, 1am a Black woman whose ancestors were
Toronto the movement of the world is not as simple
brought to a new world laying tightly packed in
or perceptible, but more frightening.
ships. Fifteen million of them survived the voyage,
Once a Czech emigre writer, now very popular in
five>million of them women; millions among them
the 'free world', looked me dead in my Black eyes
died, were killed, committed suicide in the Middle
and explained the meaning of jazz to me.
Passage.
The Atlantic, yawning blue out of my window on
When I come back to Toronto from the Playas del
 Bread out of Stone Bread out of Stone

Este, I will pass a flashing neon sign hanging over about i t ... have to fight every day for our humanity
the Gardiner Expressway. 'Lloyds Bank', it will say. ... redeem it every day.
Lloyds, as in Lloyds of London. They got their bull­ And I live that memory as a woman. Coming
ish start insuring slave cargo. - - home from the Playas del Este, hugging the edited
At an exhibition at.the'^oyal Ontario Museum in oral histories, there is always something more to be
June 1990, there is a display of the colonists' view of written, something more important. You are always
the plunder of Africa. 'Superior' Europeans and ahead of yourself. There is always something that
'prim itive' Africans abound, missionaries and must be remembered, something that cannot be for­
marauders bring 'civilisation' 'into the heart of gotten, something that must be weighed. There is
Africa'. 'Into the Heart of Africa.' The name of the always something more, whether we say these
ROM exhibition itself is drenched in racism, the things today or tomorrow, or whether silence is a
finest, most skilful racism yet developed: the naming better tactic.
of things, the writing of history, the creation of cul­ There is never room, though there is always risk.
«*

tural consent. Outside the museum, African- There is never the room that white writers have in
Canadians demonstrate against the exhibition every never speaking for their whole race, yet in speaking
Saturday. Ten men and women have been beaten, the most secret and cowardly language of normalcy
strip-searched, arrested by the Toronto police and and affirmation, speaking for the whole race. There
bonded not to come within one thousand feet of the is only writing that is significant, honest, neces­
museum. An injunction by what the demonstrators sary—making bread out of stone—so that stone
call the 'Racist Ontario Museum' prevents any becomes pliant under the hands.
demonstration within fifty yards of the building. There is an unburdening, uncovering the most
Still pounding the pavement for the ground on vulnerable parts of ourselves, uncovering beauty,
which to stand, after so long. All Black people here possibility. Coming home from the Playas del Este...
have a memory, whether they know it or not,
whether they like it or not, whether they remember
it or not, and in that memory are such words as land,
sea, whip, work, rape, coffle, sing, sweat, release,
days ... without ... this ... pain ... coming ... We
know ... have a s^nse ... hold a look in our eyes ...
 This
Body
for
Itself

Here I listen to writer after writer talk about their

work. 1 have plans to talk myself on 'Poetry and
Politics'. It is the First Caribbean Women Writers
Conference, held at Wellesley College in
Massachusetts. It is probably not even necessary to
say 'poetry a n i politics' as if those words are dis­
tinct, but I've become so used to explaining and
explaining their dependency on each other to
Canadian reviewers and audiences that I've forgot­
ten that it is unnecessary here. One thing you do not
have to do at a Caribbean writers' conference or per­
haps any writers' conference outside Canada is
explain that writers mean to change the world. But
I've been in Canada so long I forget and always have
to change my plans once I get out in the world. But
that later. I'm in my sin. Some of the women I've
read, some of the women I've learnt from, are here
Bread out of Stone This Body for Itself

and all the style and gesture of the Caribbean is here, For several days I listen and listen, and then it is my
or at least what writers store up living in London turn and then it comes to me and then I know what
and The Hague and Philadelphia and Port-of-Spain— <* I have not hdard, what has not been said. Then I
and New York and Edinburgh and-'Toronto. The know what the eyes have not read passing over that
hands flying when we talk, the drama in the voice earth and river and swamp and dust, more accurate­
leaking out across a metropolitan street. The lan­ ly, what the eyes demur, what is missing: the sexual
guage is a feast. All those cities have inflected the body. How often have I sat in a room and not heard
Trinidadian and the Jamaican and the Belizean and it and not said it, myself so busy outlining the failure
the Grenadian as much as they inflect each other as and the make-do, the forbearance. So busy holding
they meet. I've never been to Jamaica, but as I've the front line against certain assault, so busy know­
learnt it in Toronto it inflects my speech, and I can ing that it would be useless to try to express this
tell if you're from Mandeville or Kingston, and here, body without somebody or other taking it over,
too, I learned to tell if you're from Roseau or Marigot inventing it for themselves, so busy finding it
in Dominica or if your French is Haitian or St. Lucian. uncomfortable to live in this body and so busy wait­
All that and the sway and gait, swing and stalk, the ing for and knowing that the world won't change.
parry and retreat of the body. All of that is here, too. And then again it's self-preservation. In a world
And then the sense of valour. Look how many roads where Black women's bodies are so sexualized,
each of us have footed. Who would have thought avoiding the body as sexual is a strategy. So is writ­
through the bush at Guaya, the red earth at ing it in the most conservative terms, striving in the
Trelawny, the black sand at Mahaut, the river beds in text for conformity to the norm of monogamous het­
tributaries of the Orinoco, the rice fields at Demerara erosexual male gratification. Leaving pleasure to
that we would dust and dry our feet off here, and the men, that's a strategy, too. I know that not talking
leaf and sand and mud and dirt of those places about the sexual Black female self at all is as much an
would tumble out of the pages into these concrete anti-colonial strategy as armed struggle. But what a
rooms when we opened the books we write? trap. Often when we talk about the wonderful Black
For several days I listen for the footfalls and they women in our lives, their valour, their emotional
come walking hard labour and worries, they come strength, their psychic endurance overwhelm our
tinkling the few pennies, the facefuls of grief, the texts so much so that we forget that apart from learn­
hand-hipped sighs, the brace of steady foreheads. ing the elegant art of survival from them, we also
 Bread out of Stone This Body for Itself

learn in their gestures the fine art of sensuality, the this symbolism was sacred and somehow inalien­
fleshy art of pleasure and desire. The women who able. And* another defended the Virginal in Jacques
I taught us these are strewn as heavily across our ^ ■ ^ u m a in 's M asters o f the Dew as the correct symbol-
landscapes as the women who taught us-tfrstruggle * 'f e m for tbe pristine land ravaged by the colonisers. It
against hardship. Often they-wgre and are one and Is amazing to me that this symbolism in this context
the same. Didn't w e'take in their sweetness, their escapes being criticised as hackneyed, dated and
28 skinniness, theit voluptuousness, their ample arms, ': simplistic. And so if this language belongs only to
their bone-sharp adroitness, their incandescent 29
■male writers as the most radical inscription of colo-
darkness; the texture of their skin, its plumminess, ': ijialism/anti-colonialism, then how does any one
its pliancy; their angularity, their style when danc­ else dare use it, even those of us whom the body
ing, their stride across a piece of yard that sets the belongs to, how do we loosen it from this 'high
yard off, their shake as they sense the earth under moral' use which of course also charges it with its
their feet, their rock, the way they take music in their opposite?
shoulder, the way they pause and then shimmy and 'Poetry aijd Politics' became less pressing then, as
let it roll? Didn't we take in their meaning? I sat listening to everyone avoid the body for itself,
Often we cannot find words that are not already and even more redundant because if we couldn't
taken up to say this. I had been thinking a long time have our bodies we couldn't have anything. So
about this, that we couldn't describe this with any when it was my turn, I apologised for bringing sex
confidence or control, and here it was two days and up and said these things and read my story,
not a word. At Cafibbean writers' conferences you 'Madame Alaird's Breasts', about how girls in an all­
do not meet with resistance on politics, just on what girls school love the French mistress's breasts.
kind of politics. The politics of the body, the female Laughter. And I warned against the laughter
sexual body, is closed or open only to the taken-for- because laughter is another strategy. But I read in
granted. At another conference, I remember a male spite of where I knew this story was going and
writer being nonplussed at the suggestion that Ayei might be swamped, in the only way that people
Kwi Amah could be questioned about the portrayal know how to read the female body, because if I did
of white women in W hy Are We So Blest? Of course not make room for this story ...
the white woman represented Europe and her torture Outrage. I hear that some think that I've ridiculed
the recovery of African manhood, he asserted, as if the woman in the story. I've been indecorous. No
Bread out of Stone
This Body for Itself

one tells me directly, but 1 sense that I've crossed the of our description.
line. Only the feminists and the lesbians talk to me To write this body for itself feels like grappling
after that. I'm late and I hear that the next session is for it, like trying to take it away from some force.
charged with questions about lesbianism-afid homo­ Reaction to the story confirms this territorial pull
sexuality. It has taken the lunch hour for the story to and tug. One never sets out to be unloved. I could
sneak up on the audience. The lesbian double entendre return to the fold by saying that it was an innocuous
has just dawned on some. After lunch some astute story not meant to sheer the seamlessness, not meant
man rises to challenge, as if the conference has to put to offend and not meant to have fun just so, by itself.
this thing back in its place, these girls loving a wom­ In my room I examine loneliness until Joan Riley's
an's breasts. Michelle Cliff, the novelist, presenting girl-child comes looking for someone to talk with. I
in the next session, has to answer for my indiscre­ take her back to her room. Tm not sure if Joan feels
tion. I've fired the lunch tables and the low-lighted the same as everyone else. I cautiously tell her how I
theatre with indignation. When I come near, people feel. She says, 'Don't worry about it. You have to
stop talking; friends look glazed, as if they do not write the truth and it doesn't matter if nobody likes
want to show me the least recognition lest they be it.' Then she tells me the outrage in the community,
associated with my travesty, or they whisper behind in London, that met her book. The Unbelonging. We
my back. I retreat to the hotel, hurt by the reaction, talk late.
and I know I've called it upon myself. I was uncom­ I have to trust what I know. I write .in one of my
fortable with the seamless, undifferentiated female stories that my grandfather put the sound in my
sex constructed in the talk, the sex without sexuality name and my grandmother put the silence after it. It
for herself, and I was bothered that this woman was a silence rich and profound in its comment
might be me or my aunt or my mother or my grand­ about how my grandfather came at the world. It was
mother and part of her might be missing, part of her a silence that grew even more textured as their life
she might enjoy for herself. I was worried that she together continued and she ceased to speak with
might not want to be a symbol for any writer's pain, him entirely. Instead, she sent messages to him from
mine included. I was sure there were times when she one part of the room to the other through us, her
did not want to be our mother or our role model grandchildren, even though she was only two feet
for forbearance, times that she wanted to collapse away. 'Tell you grandfather I said. ...' He at first
under the weight of our dependence and the tyranny tried to respond directly, but she answered with
 Bread out of Stone
This Body for Itself

more messages. Tell you papa I can't hear him.' Through these sounds she had sent messages for
Then he understood and he sent messages too. After fj?, her woman-children, parables on how we should
their long life together, what she meant and what he e in the world. She could not think herself past her
understood I can only surmise. He understood that le and her context, so her statements though pro-
she meant that he could say ndthing more that could ind were somewhat unfinished. They only hinted
change her wprld. My grandmother had made a the real. Her body huddled in a question mark on
departure.. T once wrote of her 'swimming in the le bed most days. She was, however, as suggestive
brutish rain/ at once she lost her voice/ since all of 33
she could be about taking power, her fingers thick
its words contained her dow nfall/ she gargled f#ith wash water. But her warnings were sprinkled
instead the coarse water from her eyes/ the inces­ «^,^|vlrequently and sufficiently enough to be libation for
sant nights/ the crickets call/ and the drooping " f' the woman-spirit in us: her chuckle at a soucouyant
tree,/ breathed, in gasps what was left in the air/ v.-.i, changing her skin in a barrel of rain water, the smil-
after husband and two generations of children.' A- '4ng suggestion that she was a shapely woman once.
But where my grandmother left my grandfather 1 think that women learn about sexual pleasure
to silence, she revealed to us the grand and dark ele­ m from women. The strict code of heterosexuality
gance of language in stories that filled our nights would have us think that we come upon sexual plea­
without electricity, our nights of dry faces and often sure when we notice men or that we should. But
empty stomachs. Using her stories like food, she codes are only necessary where there is variation,
filled us up with legends of flying women who questions of power. The need to regulate reveals the
inhabited the billowing darkness. As if letting out possible. Despite all this, 1 think we catch a glimpse,
the day, rearranging the world, she in her nightly we apprehend a gesture. We remember despite the
cadences would set the events, the real meanings of conditioning we receive as women not to remember
the world, right. The blunt edges of the days, the other women, or to be ashamed of that memory or to
brutality of want, she would set to their dialectic, think it immature. This gesture is where we learn
their causes and their redemption. Every child our sexuality, however—lesbian and straight. When
where I was born heard these stories but what 1 I try to trace my lesbian sensibility I arrive at early
remember about her stories of the soucouyant and la images: the woman living up the street from me,
jablesse, women so unlike her, is how they drove her nicknamed 'Sours' for a red and sweet candy; the
voice to its most guttural and its most honeyed. woman who lived across the street, whose laugh
Bread out of Stone

rippled seductively up and down our street; the , temaie ooay is euner motneriy V 1 1 ^ 1 1 1, W llll- U

woman caught in the last sunlight of High Street, ^mounts to the same thing—like land to be traversed
San Fernando, smiling a gold-toothed smile; one _ owned. Their descriptions are idylls, paeans.
aunt of mine hidden in the dawn on-the'w randah, 'jiHiaginary, and inescapably about territory, conti-
surprising another sneaking'in by singing her the i’^ n t . Here Lovelace, speaking through his female
calypso 'Where you been last night, Caroline' and Barrator Eva in The Wine o f Astonishm ent: 'And here
chuckling. These were signals of sensuality, desire f fe this girl, Eulalie Clifford from River Road, belle of
and pleasure, these and more have become part of t the village/ a young filly frisking her tail, moving
my consciousness, as much in the historical land­ with that smooth, soft teasing womanness, with her
scape as the woman getting up at dawn, hoe over eyes bold and down-looking and smiling and
her shoulder, leaving the slave barracks for the field. ' though her dress make out of the same material they
Janice Lee Liddell in an essay in O u t o f the Kumbla use to make dresses for any girl, Eulalie Clifford
writes, 'The image of mother—giver and nurturer of dress have a kind of spring in it, a kinda thing, a life
life; teacher and instiller of values and mores—has ta it that when she walk, her skirt hit her hips and
indeed become one of the most persistent of the cloth dance up and hold onto her body and
Caribbean archetypes. In the Caribbean as in nearly Strain against her flesh as if is not cloth at all but a
every place in the world, any criticism of this most living thing. Here is a girl ... swinging across the
celebrated and procreative human role will more unpave roads, watering the mouths of every male
than likely be met with wild-eyed contempt by that she see and making the old women smile and
women and men, both of whom have so internalised nod their heads and want to reach out and touch her
the myths of motherhood as to ignore its harsh real­ with their hands to bless.' ^ The female is made for a
ities. ... It has been difficult for women—and practi­ man, carnally knowledgeable in the essential female
cally impossible for men—to admit that this most body but young, hapless, inexperienced, waiting for
honorable woman-destiny can be and usually is inevitable control and ownership. Here Jacques
both restrictive and debilitating; that society's Roumain in Masters of the Dew. Here it is the woman
pressure to be "the good mumma" almost always ob­ as country, virginal, unspoiled land, as territory for
structs more aeative opportunities than it provides.'! anti-colonial struggle. These are not writers with bad
In male writers' work like that of Jacques intentions, but their approach to the Black female
Roumain or Earl Lovelace or George Lamming the body is as redeemer of the violated, and builder of
Bread out of Stone
This Body for Itself

the binary pedestal. Rejection she encounters at Aunt Beatrice's. Crick

In female writers there is the safety of the mother, )-Crack is a genteel treatment of the growing up of a
the auntie, and protection from and resistance to the. ^ 1 in Caribbean society; the themes of race and
outside. In Crick Crack Monicey, J4erle"H odge's sfoionialism are consistent with male texts, but
women figures dominate the hovel as much as they iiHodge's novel draws from inside the lives of
dominate the interiors of their own lives. Though :^ m e n . That heroic and all-powerful grandmother
women do not dominate political life or life outside I#!' aunt becomes the source of the most lyrical
the home they control what they can, given the 37
||te c rip tiv e writing. Tee sees her grandmother Ma in
social alignment of women and men in Caribbean the description. 'Ma awoke every morning with a
society. Not usually found in nuclear patrilineal fam­ ■groan qifickly routed by a brief loud cheups. She
ilies, they run their families through matrilineal at a nameless hour and in my half sleep I saw a
structures. Tee, the narrator, is growing up with her <nountain shaking off mist in one mighty shudder
Tanti after her mother has died in childbirth and her ^^nd the ipist falling away in little drops of clouds.
father has sailed to England. Tanti is a joyous strug­
gle of a woman prone to laughter, drinking and
fierce defence of her children and her class. Her chil­
dren are Tee, Toddan (Tee's brother) and Mikey
(their teenage cousin). None of them are Tanti's birth
children but they are no less her children. Aunt
t : The cheups with which Ma greeted the day
impressed her essential attitude before the whole of
■' 'existence—what yuh mus' beat-up yuself for? In the
face of the distasteful and unavoidable, the unex-
, pected and irreversible, all that Ma could not crush
confound with a barked word or surmount with
Beatrice, Tee's mother's sister and known in Tanti's her lioness strength, she reacted to with a cheups,
lexicon and the lexicon of Tanti's street and house­ more or less loud, more or less long.' 3 We get a sense
hold as 'the bitch', wants to take Tee and Toddan of Tee's physical, sensual and historic connection to
from Tanti's life, a life which Beatrice calls 'niggary- '... the agreeableness of sitting clamped between
ness'. Tee ends up going to live with Aunt Beatrice hla's knees having one's hair plaited. The cream air
and by the end of the novel is on her way to in the middle part of the day was like time staring at
England, ambivalent about Tanti's world, which she itself in a mirror, the two faces locked dreamily in an
has been made to feel ashamed of. Yet Tanti's world eternal gaze. I was Ma's own-own bold face Tee,
is the place where she has felt most safe and most harden' as the Devil's shit but that is yu great great
human, a refuge from the embarrassment and grandmother, that is she, t'ank Gord. Sometimes
Bread out of Stone

when the others were not about she would accost me l^tlf-hatred, fear around her race and her sex. Not
suddenly; "An who is Ma sugar-cake?"' I j^ ly does she not belong to England and white peo-
I was curious about what drew such howls of ®'|^e, she does not belong to her body, her growing
rage in Joan Riley's works and understoO d^hen I
read them, finding not the heroic mother or auntie or
grandmother but the exposed, betrayed, valiant and
violated female self, the vulnerable and fearful, the
woman waiting for the probable' invasion. But what
( |yomanness. Her female self is a dangerous thing she
forced to carry around; it is the symbol for attack
li^ r the men she encounters as she flees her father's
*lious^ and is put in care until the age of eighteen. As
tsnuch as her Black self is the signal for attack to a
must have damned Riley was her pointing to the Awhite British world, in the world of white people
men as the source of this exploitation in those wom­ ^ d Black men, Hyacinthe walks a tenuous and
en's lives. The novel The Unbelonging is about a despairing line, her self-revulsion and isolation
young girl, Hyacinthe, who is sent to England to tightening around her daily. Even the dreams that
meet her father, leaving her Aunt Joyce and two are idyllic at the beginning of the novel become more
friends, Florence and Cynthia. She is eleven on and more suffused with the terror of the present and
arrival in England and encounters a brutal father the possibility that the dreams are not true.
and a stepmother who is spiteful in the face of her The burden of the body is as persistent an image
own battering by the father. Living in coldness and in Caribbean women's literature as it is in Black
poverty in one of England's Black slums, Jamaica, women's lives and only becomes less so in the aged
Aunt Joyce, Florence and Cynthia become more and woman who has already passed through—like Aunt
more Edenic in Hyacinthe's dreams. Riley intercuts Joyce's body: 'They had been lucky to get a place to
the texts with Hyacinthe's dreams, which are filled the front and she pressed closer to Aunt Joyce's reas­
with such longing and fear that the young girl suf­ suring bulk as the crowd surged against her.' 5 The
fers from bed-wetting at the waking to reality. Her progress of Aunt Joyce's body over the course of the
father beats her every day until the day that her peri­ novel from 'big and im patient... good natured face'
od arrives and then he begins to threaten her sexual­ to 'a withered old woman ... the lined drawn face,
ly. Hyacinthe's life is one of terror of her father's with its sunken eyes and air of death,' is directly
beatings, of his sexual assaults and of the racial linked to Hyacinthe's sanity. She returns to Jamaica
assaults she also confronts daily in the schoolyard to recover herself, depending on the safety of Aunt
and classrooms. Her character moulds into Joyce's bulk and her own anticipation of passing
Bread out of Stone <s This Body for Itself

into that safety. Instead she meets an Aunt Joyce as body, felt shame at the wisps of black hair that had
emaciated and timorous as herself and as horrifying. started to grow on her pubic area and the fact that
'And inside her deep down, buried inside her worn- her breasts had started to swell.' » 'You must watch
an's body, trapped and bleeding-irrTfie deepest your father' her stepmother tells her when she
recesses of her a young, gifl screamed.' ®Riley leaves begins to menstruate. 'You old enough for him to
us with an im a g e of the Black woman still to be trouble you like he did with your cousin.' 'They
healed, made whole between the mother and the don't like neaga here' her father tells her about the
damaged, a Black female self 'trapped and bleeding'. whites. The warnings are the same, sex or race.
Riley's book had violated the law of silence set down In another of Riley's novels. W aiting in the
for Black womanhood. She had said that far from Twilight, 'the heroine, Adella, ends up living in a
being there for the sensuality of men or the ravaging 'yard' with other women in her predicament—
like land by the colonist, it was injured and recover­ unmarried, children, poor and dependent. The
able only by itself, if at all. 'yard' in Jamaican city life is an enclosure of shanties
In The Unbelonging the gaze of race and the gaze and rooms populated primarily by women and Chil­
of sex are almost identically described: 'She hated dren. In the yard Adella learns early of the precari­
the communal showers, hated having to step naked ousness of dependence on men. The yard is the ter­
and defenceless along its length, her blackness rain of hunger, male exploitation, make-do, econom­
exposed for all to see, to snigger about behind her ic dependence and bitterness. Women are not only
back. She knew they did it, though they were always hardened by but blamed for their fecundity, even as
careful to hide it from her.' 7 'She had managed to it is their duty to breed, to become the mother. Old
put the whole incident aside, when he started to age is the only time that women escape the precari­
watch her bathe. Hyacinthe hated these times. She ous and dangerous load of fecundity. Until then, and
would sit in the water dying from embarrassment. if they survive womanhood, a litany of hardship is
"Wash yourself girl" he would say and she would allotted to their sex and race. It is impossible to find
hang her head in shame, as she scrubbed the top part in Riley's novels Black women experiencing sexual
of her body, praying that he would leave before she pleasure. From the beginning of the novel Waiting in
had to stand up. Many times he would order her to the Twilight, the female body is portrayed as burden­
stand up and wash and the knowledge of the lump some, useless, out of the control of the self. The
in his trousers would force her to obey. She hated her 'threcIF of fecundity overshadows the lives of the
Bread out of Stone This Body for Itself
s.

women in the novel. The woman as mother, as fallen she posits the mother as body text for the growth of
woman once she has children out of wedlock, and as Annie even as the mother assumes her own physical
rejected woman because she cannot produce a son integrity. In the chapter called 'The Circling Hand',
defines Adella's life and the lives o f - t f ie ' Black Annie observes the mother having sex with her
women on the London streets where she lives. father and feels betrayed and revolted. In the moth­
After we've read Waiting in the Twilight we won­ er's distance from Annie in this act, Kincaid allows
der why these women are alive at all; if this despair­ each sovereignty even as this sovereignty separates
ing picture of Black womanhood that Riley paints is the two. Kincaid is also not afraid to have her char­
correct, what possible reason would Black women acters claim the lesbian erotic as a feature of female
have to live? 'Pain neva kill nobody,' Adella says. life. Annie's fascination with the lawless, the free,
Pose Riley's description of the female life against the through an intensely sensual relationship with 'the
passage quoted earlier from Lovelace's W ine of red girl', breaks with the tradition of not disclosing
A stonishm ent. The collusion in female objectification the range of the erotic that women experience and
by the old women is embedded in Lovelace's gloss, defies the danger of disclosing any eroticism which
as is his complete romanticization of Black female is not for male consumption. But it would seem as if
life, but Riley shows this collusion as a cruel sen­ no Caribbean woman writer can resist the great big
tence passed on from generation to generation. We mother, whether she is a grandmother, auntie or
cannot dispute the sobering similarity to real life in elder.
Riley's novels though she gives no relief from its In Kincaid's collection A t the Bottom of the River, in
dreadfulness. Some woman some time, 1 think, must a story called 'My Mother', the spectre of the moth­
have had some agency in the sensual, in the pleasur­ er is grand and beautifully terrifying: 'My mother
able and the sovereign. removed her clothes and covered thoroughly her
Jamaica Kincaid's work is distinct for its chal­ skin with a thick gold-coloured oil, which had
lenge to these themes on Black Caribbean women's recently been rendered in a hot pan from the livers of
bodies. She examines the sensual connections reptiles with pouched throats. ... She uncoiled her
between mother and daughter in a revealing and hair from her head and then removed her hair alto­
candid way in A nnie John and in a way which before gether. Taking her head into her palms, she flattened
her intervention only male Caribbean Bildungsroman it so that her eyes which were by now ablaze, sat on
held sway. Reading the anti-colonial text as gendered. top of her head. ... Then making two lines on the
Bread out of Stone V This Body for Itself

soles of each foot, she divided her feet into cross­ Kincaid contents herself not with creating para­
digms but with unfixing the fixed, with going about
roads. Silently, she had instructed me to follow her
example.' ^ And perhaps no Caribbean woman writer our business.
can resist the knowledge that the mother is her own In O ut o f the Kumbla, the Caribbean critic Carol
Boyce Davies discusses the 'female self' as largely
future. Here again Kincaid is expressing all our fear,
entitlement, ambiguity and self-recognition. 'My concerned with m other-daughter identity and
mother haS grown to an enormous height. I have makes only passing reference to sexuality and sen­
grown to an enormous height also, but my mother s suality. Even when faced with explicit sexual and
height is three times mine. Sometimes I cannot see ser\sual references, as in the work of lesbian writers
Audre Lorde and Michelle Cliff, or when referring to
from her breasts on up, so lost is she in the atmos­
what I read as a lesbian-erotic passage in Kincaid's
phere. One day, seeing her sitting on the seashore,
A t the Bottom of the River, Boyce Davies submerges
her hand reaching out in the deep to caress the belly
these in a Freudian (reversal) analysis of the mother-
of a striped fish as he swam through a place where
daughter relationship. 'Mother-daughter' is the only
seas met, I glowed red with anger ... 1 adorned the
'female' self Boyce-Davies allows within what she
face of each moon with expressions I had seen on my
says is an examination of Caribbean women writers'
mother's face. All the expressions favoured me.' ’o
This is a mother to rival Paule Marshall's Silla in 'self definition which takes into account both gender
Brown Girl, Brown Stones in power and physicality. In
and heritage.' Though calling her focus a Black fem­
Kincaid's next work of fiction, Lucy, the mother is inist critical one in her essay 'Writing Home', she
ignores the 'female self' in anything other than the
further away but present. To create herself anew, the
mother-daughter relation. These big mothers over­
protagonist stops reading her mother's letters.
whelming our texts cannot fit so neatly into Euro-
Both A nnie John and Lucy are anti-colonial and
anti-patriarchy texts, making critiques of both condi­ conscious categories precisely because they exist
tions simultaneously. But they also do something despite those categories. And one wonders if this
else. The heras break with the compelling conven­ temptation to fit them in is not itself a strategy to
tions of both. The texts reject these conventions and regularize our relationships as proof of our same­
ness, humanness, by way of European paradigms.
talk about what we are really concerned with in
Or perhaps it is just a preoccupation with Christian
our daily lives; not only the external, the encounter
with 'w hiteness', but the ongoing internality. moral rectitude—the good daughter and the good
Bread out of Stone
This Body for Itself
V

mother. Or perhaps it is fear of sexuality itself and for example, there used to be gangs of women called
the way it leaks out of these texts, defying literary or jamettes. Jamette means loose woman. It is taken,
social category. suggests Bridgette Brereton, from the French diame-
I grew up in a society where sensuajity-was not tre or underworld. The word is still current for a
forbidden, where calypso crystallised the sexual dou­ brash, loud, sexually 'loose' woman or whore. That
ble entendre, where two days of Carnival encouraged
women lived in various kinds of relationships,
sexual display, but this did not mean sexual freedom including lesbian relationships, is suggested by
for women. All the openness and display took place David Trotman in his article 'Women and Crime in
within the context of serving male sexuality. Perhaps Late Nineteenth Century Trinidad'.
there were more exceptions, or at least I'd like to My grandmother used to say, 'Don't go out there
think so, of female sexuality for itself, but the street and behave like a little jamette,' and she used to say
corners were full of anti-female sexual heckling, and that my uncle was turning into a jamette man, and
despite the cross-dressing Carnival Mondays (most­ my aunt would throw words at her mother, saying
ly men dressed as women), on Ash Wednesday a les­ 'You already say I is a jamette' when my grand­
bian could be raped for such public display. mother disapproved of her going out.
For me the most radical strategy of the female Most notorious among the jamettes, Trotman
body for itself is the lesbian body confessing all the says, were Bodicea and Petite Belle Lili. I remember
desire and fascination for itself. 'Madame Alaird's hearing about Bodicea when I was a little girl, the
Breasts' was my first overt admission of that desire connotation being that not only was she a whore but
and also an honest rendering of what really hap­ also a lesbian and a brawling fighting woman.
pens. We hear rumours. And of course we hear them Trotman suggests that indications of lesbianism can
in the language. The earliest rumour that I can find be found among the jamettes, if we look at the court
of lesbian life in the Caribbean comes from the late records of the day which say, for example, that this
nineteenth century. Leaving the plantations where or that woman and her friend were involved in a fra­
women's labour was paid half of men's, women cas, or this woman and her friend were charged with
dominated the cities in number and culture. They beating up a man who had bothered them. The
made up the majority of the poor and they organised housewifing of women in the early twentieth centu­
into an underclass with a style and culture which ry, the use of the police to contain their culture and
they themselves made. In Port-of-Spain, Trinidad,
styles'drove the culture underground, leaving only
Bread out of Stone This Body for Itself

fragments of it in the language, the parts of it that Perhaps the great big mother appears in all our texts,
referred to male sexuality. So jamette had become bursting the seams and out of control in order to
strictly whore by the time 1 heard it. remind us.
Zami, meaning woman-lo.ving, or zaming and
making zami meaning 'women fucking or making
love. Sometimes the language is less obvious
because i t is so commonly affectionate. So my aunt
says When I ask her if she ever knew any lesbians
that, yes, there was a woman once, a beautiful
woman, she says, who told her that she loved her
and my aunt said, 'Well, you know how we talk so I
never thought anything of it.' Until her husband told
her what the woman really meant. But I remember
the way women's names were said; suggesting
brashness because these women were also fighters,
well, because they had to fight.
What made me interested in these women was
the insistence in the culture that they did not or don't
exist and that they did not craft our sexuality and
therefore our history. Perhaps they do not appear
because they are inconvenient, as inconvenient as
Tanti is for Aunt Beatrice in Crick Crack M onkey. In
the construction of neo-colonial classes through gen­
der and privilege, such sexual leakages are inconve­
nient, unseemly; they do not conform to the struc­
tures for complete control and exploitation of
women within these classes.
There is a curiously 'civilising' discourse in all
this—pulling the Black female body into line.