People like me, our life write out before we, without asking we permission. Nothing much we can do 'bout what God decide he want to drop on you. Oh? Is that them call fatalism? I don't know, brethren, that word seem more connected to fatal than it connected to fate. You know something, maybe you should write this book. I know, I know what I just say, but now me checking things deeper. Maybe somebody should pull all of this craziness together, because no Jamaican going to do it. No Jamaican can do it, brother, either we too close or somebody going to stop we. It don't even have to get that far, just the fear that somebody going come after we going make we stop. But none of we going see that far. I mean, shit.I've been to Jamaica briefly: While on a Caribbean cruise, we had a stop in Ochos Rios and Dave and I decided to take an excursion for a relaxing bamboo raft ride down the Martha Brae River. The bus ride to the trip's starting point was rather long and a young Jamaican woman who served as our tour guide entertained us throughout the drive by telling us stories and singing us songs. At one point, she lowered her voice and solemnly informed us that many tourists who come to Jamaica think of Bob Marley as a symbol of joy and love but Jamaicans themselves know better: Rastafarians are evil and filthy and have a twisted view of this life and the next. Dave and I exchanged surprised looks: How could Rasta be evil when reggae's so catchy? The tour guide then switched gears and started singing us a Harry Belafonte song about unfaithful husbands and wives. This experience represents nearly all the knowledge about Jamaica that I brought to reading A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Loosely centered around the 1976 assassination attempt against Bob Marley (known in the book only as “the Singer”), the first thing I needed to do when I finished reading was to confirm that this attempt even occurred (it did, as described) and when I asked everyone I knew if they had ever heard of Bob Marley nearly dying of multiple bullet wounds he received in his own gated home, no one knew this story. Everything's just irie, mon.
With a cast of nearly 75 characters and spanning the 70s to the 90s, A Brief History is centered primarily on Kingston's ghetto life: bathing outdoors in water from standing pipes; open sewers running through the streets; zinc-walled shacks that offer little protection from sprays of bullets from rival gangs; children watching as their parents are murdered, children who must then put themselves under the protection of a gang boss; rape and murder and mayhem, and all of it at the service of one of the two federal political parties because he who rules the ghetto rules the vote. The police are paid off, the army is corrupt, the CIA is afraid Jamaica will fall under Cuban influence and America starts an arms race between the gangs – ultimate authority rests with the gang bosses, and while trying to promote peace between them, Bob Marley gets shot.
As A Brief History is told from so many different points-of-view, in a diverse range of voices (from nearly incomprehensible patois to the spot-on journalese of a New Yorker article), and as in the Acknowledgments author Marlon James thanks his team of researchers, this book has the feeling of a documentary. Despite being fiction (even the gang names and the ghetto setting of “Copenhagen City” are imagined), James captures a 100% authentic experience of what it must have been like to live through those violent times. If it no go so, it go near so. And the entire time that life was treated so cheaply in Kingston, Stella was getting her groove back in Montego Bay and white North Americans were jamming to Get Up, Stand Up in Negril, with their dark rum and cheap ganga, their Jamaican Me Crazy T-shirts and not one clue what Marley was singing about. Because how can Rasta be controversial when reggae's so catchy, right?
But in another city, another valley, another ghetto, another slum, another favela, another township, another intifada, another war, another birth, somebody is singing Redemption Song, as if the Singer wrote it for no other reason but for this sufferah to sing, shout, whisper, weep, bawl, and scream right here, right now.A Brief History is ambitious and sprawling (at nearly 700 pages) and borderline genius. From Kingston to Miami to NYC, these ghetto gangs have branched out and it's timely and urgent to learn this history. Even in Toronto, much of the recent gangland shootings have been amongst Jamaican-Canadians and it's fascinating to trace this cheap view of life back to the cultural effects of colonialism and its aftermath. The book is hugely informative without being didactic, entertaining without descending to violence-porn, and gives a voice to a people who are trying to scratch out a living outside the walls of Jamaican resorts. The patois could make for some dense reading and I couldn't read the Jamaican expletives without smirkingly thinking of the video of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford drunkenly speaking that way. But that's authentic, too.
As for my Jamaican tour guide: James put in at least one character (Nina's devoutly Christian mother) who thinks of Rastas as filthy and evil, but as for the big picture, it seems clear that Marley himself was simply advocating for peace. Beyond supporting 3000 families and being slightly embarrassed by the white world's misunderstanding of the deep messages his songs held (even Eric Clapton is gently ridiculed for remaking I Shot the Sheriff), Marley envisioned the Smile Concert as a way to end the gang violence in Kingston; but, of course, the gangs themselves had nothing to gain through peace. What a fascinating time and place for me to have known so little about. This book was rewarding for me on many levels.
Our Jamaican tour guide was just as described, and the bus driver was this little, old white-haired Jamaican man who kept clucking and shaking his head at everything she said. Before she started the Belafonte song, she explained that Jamaican men are incapable of remaining faithful (cluck and head shake from the driver) and the song was about a young man who tells his father about the girl he wants to marry. The father explains that he should give the girl up because she's secretly the young man's half-sister. When his mother notices that the young man is unhappy and she discovers the story, she says, "No problem, because your father isn't your father, so the girl is not your sister". Happy ending?
I'm including this story because the only Jamaican-Canadian I know in real life is the former husband of a friend of mine. He had been raised in Toronto by a mother who was abandoned by her Jamaican husband, left to raise four sons by herself. I'm imagining that she had tried to impress on her sons how important it is to remain with the family one creates because Rob didn't leave his wife and daughters until a few months after his mother died. I know that a sample size of one doesn't prove anything but I have long thought that Rob left -- at least partially -- because of a cultural acceptance of men leaving.
As for the river rafting, it was relaxing, but we never imagined beforehand how uncomfortable we would feel as two white Canadians being propelled down the river by the physical efforts of a black man. It felt so wrong to be sitting there so comfortably, drinking the Red Stripe beer that Wayne brought for us as he poled and sweated in the heat.
I can't for the life of me find it now, but I know that I wrote of my brother Ken's experience last year when he decided to leave his Jamaican resort -- surrounded by a gang who handed him a cheaply carved wooden mug who then insisted on walking him to a bank machine to take out enough money to pay for it (and thankfully a cab driver recognised Ken and stopped to offer him a ride -- while explaining that Ken would, indeed, need to get some extra cash to pay for the mug he still had in his hand) -- so I have no reason to believe that the real Jamaica isn't still a scary and violent place to live (and am gladdened to have some perspective on it now). As a matter of fact, I read that a 14-year-old boy from Toronto was shot and killed in Kingston just last week while attending a wake. I hope that in the main body of this review I don't sound like I'm dismissing the gang violence in Toronto as a "Jamaican problem", but just like with Rob leaving his family, there seem to be cultural reasons behind these behaviours and knowledge leads to solutions; I may not live in Toronto, but everyone is affected when kids are gunned down, when mothers are left crying in the streets.
*****
This is the next on my list of Man Booker Prize nominees, and in my own untrained opinion, it fails to unseat The Illuminations as my top pick so far, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it make it to the shortlist -- or even win.
Later edit: And A Brief History of Seven Killings wins the Man Booker! It was my favourite from the short list and renews my faith in what was always my favourite literary prize -- being introduced to new voices is what I've always thought was the main draw for the Booker and I'm delighted that Marlon James has brought home the first win for Jamaica.
Man Booker Longlist 2015:
Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have a Family
Anne Enright - The Green Road
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings
Laila Lalami - The Moor's Account
Tom McCarthy - Satin Island
Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen
Andrew O’Hagan - The Illuminations
Marilynne Robinso - Lila
Anuradha Roy - Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways
Anna Smaill - The Chimes
Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread
Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
I was really pleased that A Brief History of Seven Killings took the prize; even more pleased that it didn't go to A Little Life as seemed inevitable.
