Abeng Book

3.5*

Michelle Cliff is the next Jamaican author that I'm reading during my Jamaican literary journey. I've spotted the book cover "Abeng" long before I started this challenge and was always intrigued what it meant in Jamaican patois (in Indonesian "abang" means "older brother"). Compared to most of the Jamaican books that I read this year (Marlon James, Kei Miller, Lorna Goodison, Margaret Cezaire-Thompson...), this book is kind of "old school" in that it was published in the 80s.

"Abeng" is a coming of age story of a light-skinned, middle class Jamaican girl Clare Savage. She is trying to make sense of Jamaica's history of slavery, the current race relations of her country and her own identity. On the one hand, she is the daughter of a "buckra"(white person) man, whose ancestors were slave owners. On the other hand, her mother's family's ancestry consists of indigenous, black and white people, but are still looked down upon by the white elite. Clare is just 12 years old and is trying to understand what happened. It is not surprising that Anne Frank is often mentioned in this story and that the British curriculum (official history) is criticized for glorifying the English instead of the local Jamaicans.

I can imagine that for first-time Jamaica readers, this book would include a lot of fascinating facts and information. I could follow a lot of the author's musings, but I thought that the depiction of the Maroon people was a tad too romanticized (she left out the part that the Maroons themselves would sell back runaway slaves to the buckras).

Another aspect that I didn't enjoy about this book was the way the story was told. The novel would go into so many different directions and jump into other character's stories so abruptly (the author was trying to make another point about racism in Jamaica) that the basic plot didn't flow well at all. On top of Clare's exploration of Jamaica's past and her own family, she is spending the summer at her grandmother's house in the countryside. She plays with a girl called Zoe, who is considered to be from a lower class family. An unfortunate incident separates the girls and she is forced to leave her grandmother's house.

The written speech was in Jamaican patois, but most of the story was told in regular English, which is quite different from the other Jamaican authors I read this year (they wrote in a lot of patois). All in all, this is a very eye-opening book. However, the plot of the story did not flow well at all and caused the overall novel to feel very "academic" and contrived. I heard that the next book (continuing Clare Savage's story) is much better, so I won't give up on this author.