Big Island, Small by Maureen St. Clair :: A Critical Book Review

  

 Big Island, Small by Maureen St.Clair presents a story of two girls, laid bare on paper, as they fight a familiar battle of self-discovery. Set half on a fictional Caribbean small island, half on a large island in North America, the main characters face one of the most daunting battles of life; the battle to be brave enough to discover and be who they are, while they lean hard on the precipice of adulthood.  St. Clair uses imagery, dual perspective, language, flashbacks and severe contrasts to discuss issues of racial conflict, colorism, sexuality and self-discovery in a contemporary climate. 

The plot is largely rooted in the main characters journey towards identity and how their continued interactions with each other, both verbal and non verbal, help them along the way. Through shared socio-cultural background and the challenge to accept each others different reactions to it, both Sola and Judith learn more of what they want from their conflicted lives. 

Sola is a dark skinned girl who has taken proudly to her use of the Standard English language and wears this accomplishment as a badge of honour, while she pursues her studies on Big Island. Her youth, has been riddled with struggles and advantageous experiences that have catapulted her into a figure of strength in her young adult years. It is a strength her character has had to adorn herself with like a suit of armour. It is strength so brazen that anyone who first encounters her seems to glide over the still young girl sternly holding to bravery. Until, she meets Judith.

Contrastingly, Judith who shares similar origins strikes within Sola an irresistible friendship and is everything opposite to Sola. Judith is a mixed race, fair skinned girl who has privilege thrust upon her. This has made her resentful and rebellious in the face of personal choices that she was never allowed to own. Her youth is sprinkled with an excess of freedom that leaves her longing for a sense of belonging to a crowd that always seems to stand apart from her. Judith, uses her Caribbean English variety like a badge, taking Sola’s disuse of it almost as a personal affront.  Judith’s own earlier years are not without struggle but they are the kind of struggles the majority of children her age, that were within her immediate company, could not readily understand. This reality keeps her lonely in a crowded room. Until, she meets Sola.

Judith aches to fit into skin, history and Caribbean culture while Sola is desperate to stand out despite it. Jointly, they find joy in all things that draw them together and set them apart from the masses. However they also find themselves disagreeing, in seismic proportions, on various world views. “We supposed to meet. It’s fate. Maybe we supposed to argue too. Who knows?”  Judith foreshadows very early in the novel.  

St. Clair places colorism up for discussion continuously throughout the novel with Judith asking "You talking like you know me, you know me?" defensively, when the way she speaks is challenged by Sola. When Judith shares "Later Sola tell me lighting a splif in a crowd isn’t a luxury she has. And I tell she, “I not white. I black too even if you can’t see past my skin.” But I know I not the kind of black she means.” We see again a relevant nod to the present day social injustice marked by race and skin colour.

Their relationship is an open challenge to aforementioned themes of the book. Judith’s choice to embrace her ancestral right, as a mixed race girl, to wear her hair in dreadlocks despite her fair completion causes many disdainful and intrusive personal questions.  Sola’s detainment by public forces, which Sola does not question, also draws focus on racial conflict. Yet, these are questions the two main characters dare at each other and by extension; questions that the author dares the reader to contemplate through the vehicle of their edged dialogue. 

For a moment, their differences and the way the world reacts to them seem big enough to divide the characters forever and a lack of being taught how to communicate their feelings openly, thrusts them into many long, dangerous, uncomfortable silences. It is then we see how culture, paired with the unbending desire to love and be loved in return is spotlighted in the plot.

When words fail, they then bond through touch and music, as seen when Sola muses “She gives me a cd called Throw Sown Your Arms by an Irish woman singing old-time reggae. I never heard of a baldheaded white Rasta before. The first time I hear her voice I lay down on my bed, spread my arms and legs like I am balancing on water, like I am floating to the thunder of her tender, angry voice. The power I feel in my bones is a power unfamiliar and yet it spreads through my body like it belongs there, like it was there even before I was born.”  

They reconnect through food, cultural experiences and the comfort of a shared language popular to their past. “He smiling at me while telling me to try some black cake and a glass of sorrel. I inhale the Christmas vibe…” The author uses beautiful imagery to describe cultural treats such as tamarind balls "burnt brown sugar wrapped in sweet sour flesh.”  submerging readers in a deep sensory experience.  These coping mechanisms allow the characters to grow closer to their personal truths, slowly and with a level of gentility.  

 Eventually they find their way back to each other after devastating changes and traumas they were not prepared to deal with alone and also were not sure to whom they could turn for help. Their personal traumas creep with the passage of time, through their journeys of self-discovery, as the characters creep too towards their hand crafted personal identities.

The author’s use of dual perspective aids the story as the reader is taken along each character’s unravelling interpretations and personal perceptions of major conflicts happening throughout the story.   St. Clair’s use of flashbacks allow us to never lose sight of the constricting, beautiful, small island background where "neighbours missing you if only a day past since they see you last’ and ‘Everybody knowing somebody who know someone who know you."  It is a uniquely ‘Small Island’ Caribbean past that is navigating their understanding of a vast, ‘Big Island’ world.

The reader bears witness to young girls facing issues of sexual assault, violence, racial precedence, anxiety, victim blaming and the questions that come with sexuality and sexual discovery in a way that is made all the more compelling by the events of our current world chatter. Big Island, Small by Maureen St. Clair serves as a Caribbean literary reminder that maybe this big world isn’t so big after all, especially through the small, intimate lens of our shared experiences.

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My Personal reaction to Big Island, Small by Maureen St. Clair:

When I first started reading the book I honestly had a hard time. I had a hard time because I thought it was going to be 'just another love story' which it is not. My personal reading tastes don't see me reading many books where the central focus of a plot is a romance, so after a very early plot twist happened in the novel I found myself wondering what I'd gone and got myself into.

As time passed I returned to the pages of the novel because I was still curious. It is very hard for me to DNF a book and fortunately this remained true with this one.

What really caught me is the authors beautiful writing style. I am an absolute sucker for a beautiful, artistic writing style. She wrote vividly about self discovery, identity and Caribbean culture with this book. She spoke of questions that people have been for decades pretending that we do not have and this drew me in. I had to know where that journey of self discovery took those characters. I had to know even more because their setting and origins so readily reflected my own island. Underscoring the importance of representation.

I am not mixed race, for example but I've had mixed race friends and loved ones and I have found myself at the cross hairs of mistaken identity because of colourism myself. So, watching two young girls deal with those issues amongst others, in a setting that is written similarly to my own life setting, loving the food I love at Christmas and treasuring the parts of culture I have treasured for years was great.

This book wont be for everyone, it has some graphic themes, events and language. It is categorised as women's fiction (on goodreads) but really I find it slips easily into the still budding genre of new adult.  I like that the words are sharp around the edges some times as I find that true to life and to find this truth reflected in contemporary literature I think is necessary. I am grateful that this story too found a place in the world.

I'm going to also take this moment to address the elephant in the room: yes, there is a 'controversial kiss' scene and you will notice that I have not said much about it. This is intentional. I leave it up to every reader to have their own reaction to this issue because for me, my reaction was very important as a person. It was only till an informal conversation with the author herself when she said the words 'but....its not about the kiss' that the way i engaged with the text changed swiftly and deeply. I don't believe literature and it's personal meanings and relevance should be forced upon any reader. I believe everyone has a write to have a personal reaction to literature based on their own experiences. It is not something I seek to take away from anyone. 

Thank you to the author for providing an ARC of the book for review. You can purchase Big Island, Small by Maureen St.Clair here.