How to Escape From a Leper Colony
(2010) by Tiphanie Yanique
I
must admit that I've read very few Caribbean writers (I have
read Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipal, and Jamaica Kinkaid, but that was back
in college...). Yanique's collection of stories in How
to Escape From a Leper Colony
makes me want to read so much more by writers from this part of the
world.
While the term "Caribbean" fails to convey the vibrant
multitude of peoples and cultural practices from Haiti to Jamaica,
the Virgin Islands to Trinidad, and beyond, Yanique offers us stories
that reveal the richness and diversity of the region. Moving from
1930s Trinidad to the Virgin Islands of the present day, and from
Florida to England, these stories of interracial relationships,
coffin-shop owners, Carnival participants, and artists are
fully-imagined worlds.
Yanique dwells on each character's ambitions
and desires with a patience born of intense curiosity. Often, within
a story, she will present different perspectives on the same event,
creating a kind of 3-D image in our mind's eye. It is this element in
particular that drew me wholeheartedly into this collection.
One
especially interesting example of this is in "The Bridge
Stories: A Short Collection." In each of the four brief stories,
one character describes events happening to another character, all
involving a bridge connecting two of the islands. The first story- a
parable- invites us to read an attempt to connect all of the
Caribbean islands as naive, since a man-made structure alone cannot
bridge linguistic, cultural, and religious differences. Each narrator
has a distinctive voice, and each brief story describes a life
impacted by the bridge. Indeed, many of the stories in this
collection are about metaphorical bridges, mostly connecting lovers
of different religions or races.
I
look forward to reading Yanique's upcoming novel, Land
of Love and Drowning
(out this July).
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