Green Days by the River

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Green Days by the River is an allegorical coming-of-age novel by the Trinidadian author and historian Michael Anthony, written in a complex political environment . It was written during Anthony's time in London and was first published there in 1967 by André Deutsch . The topic is a teenager growing up in rural Trinidad who is torn between two girls with different ethnic and character backgrounds, but primarily has to find himself and his place in society.

action

1952 in colonial Trinidad: The family of 15-year-old Black Shell moves from Radix to Pierre Hill in the Mayaro District (today Mayaro-Rio Claro ). He quickly makes friends with other boys in the village, particularly Lennard and Joe. He also works as an assistant to Mr. Gidharee, the most important farmer in the area. He sees the capable boy as a potential son-in-law and introduces him to his daughter Rosalie. Rosalie is a Dougla , daughter of her Indian father and his black wife, and is popular with the boys of Pierre Hill for her beauty. Shell and Rosalie grow closer, but while the former finds signs of being in love, Rosalie enjoys the other boys' attention and flirts with Lennard and Joe. At a dance event in Mayaro, Shell meets Joan from Sangre Grande , to whom he feels drawn, which causes Rosalie the first signs of jealousy.

Shell's father, who is in bad health, is hospitalized in Port of Spain. Despite encouragement from the neighborhood, especially from Rosalie and her mother, Shell feels alone and overwhelmed. He tells Mr. Gidharee that he will have to drop out of school and find work; he finds these on the coconut plantations in the area. A visit to the father shows him the seriousness of his situation, especially since the father talks to him unusually seriously about his future. On the way back, he stops in Sangre Grande and visits Joan. The two get closer, and over time a relationship develops between the two, which is not significantly strained either by the spatial distance or the educational difference between the villager Shell and the city dweller Joan. When Shell's father comes home for a while over Christmas, he advises his son to have a relationship with Rosalie, but then allows the relationship with Joan out of paternal love.

Shell has sex with Rosalie while drunk at a party. He feels guilty afterwards, but doesn't tell Joan about it. The relationship between the two consolidates. In March, Shell goes back to the fields with Mr. Gidharee. After a few hints, Shell made it clear that he would not tolerate a one-night stand with his daughter and that he expected a commitment to Rosalie. To demonstrate his power, he manipulates his dogs to attack the shell. This suffered significant injuries, which confined him to bed for a few days. In this situation, Shell's father's health deteriorates; he is admitted to the hospital in Port of Spain again and dies shortly afterwards. On the way to Port of Spain, Shell thinks carefully about his situation and that of his mother and, despite his continuing feelings for Joan, decides to live with Rosalie. The novel closes with a scene in the midst of exuberant nature, in which the father figure Gidharee empathically assures his future son-in-law Shell, who is plagued by nervousness and fear of failure about the upcoming wedding to Rosalie, that everything will turn out fine in the end.

background

Green Days by the River takes place in a time of upheaval in Trinidad; the oil industry determined a rapid economic boom, while the desire for independence from the colonial power Great Britain increased. At the time the novel was written, Trinidad had been independent for five years, and Trinidadian writers such as VS Naipaul or Samuel Selvon dealt with political events in their work. In addition to the relationship to the former colonial power and the situation of the workers in the oil and sugar industry, the situation of the African-born Trinidadians was a central issue that accumulated in the Black Power Uprising in April 1970 . Anthony's novel is set shortly before this time, apparently ignoring political developments and concentrating on the living environment of its protagonists in their local environment. By choosing ethnically different main characters, Anthony nevertheless refers to current political issues and paints a liberal and conciliatory picture of society, condensed personified by the village community in Pierre Hill.

Because of its allegorical statement, Green Days by the River became part of the national discourse after its publication. The novel is used in secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago and Great Britain for teaching literature. In 2015 preparations began for a film adaptation of the novel by the Trinidadian director and documentary filmmaker Michael Mooleedhar; the financing came from the Trinidadian communications group TSTT, among others. The film premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2017.

reception

On Goodreads.com 643 ratings add up to an overall rating of 4.06 / 5 points. In a contemporary review in the specialist journal Caribbean Studies, Sylvia Winter established a formal proximity to Samuel Selvon's work . Both of the Caribbean writers are the least likely to be called "intellectuals", and both paint the picture of a cultural fusion in their work that makes people a Trinidadian regardless of the origin of their ancestors. Anthony, like about 40% of the Trinidadian people, has black ancestry, Selvon like about 40% of the Trinidadian people, Indian. In this context, Winter pointed out that Green Days by the River is a political book and represents an alternative to the official racial policy of the colonial system lying in its end - this was Eurocentric at the time of the novel (1952), while Anthony gave a realistic picture of the actual one The circumstances of this time were characterized by culture that means much more than race and that people have different backgrounds but a common present and future. Winter evaluates that Green Days by the River is "the evocation of the officially misunderstood culture of the Caribbean people" and their way of life. Stefano Harney, author and professor of strategic management at the Singapore Management University , analyzed in his book Nationalism and Identity: Culture and the Imagination in a Caribbean Diaspora that Anthony, with Green Days by the River, made his personal contribution to the national identity-finding that dominated the cultural scene at the time by delivering a study of the microcosm of the country's people, the central message of which is that Trinidadians of Indian and African descent share a common culture. In the wedding between Shell and Rosalie, Harney sees an allegory of the "wedding" of the Indo-Trinidadians and the Afro-Trinidadians in the context of the country's independence, which is the result of the three-hundred-year-old tradition of blacks in Trinidad and the native culture of the first In the middle of the 19th century, Indo-Trinidadians native to Trinidad created a new identity based on compromises and abandoning traditional ideas. In the pan- Caribbean lifestyle magazine Caribbean Current , reviewer Kerriann Toby saw two central elements of the novel. The title and the exuberant, but ultimately overripe vegetation of Trinidad described by Anthony vividly are symbols of decisions made out of convenience, where warning signs are ignored in order not to have to worry. In addition, the novel warns that developments and decisions would not happen or be made in a vacuum, but should always be viewed against the background of their socio-cultural embedding. The US magazine Kirkus Reviews saw Anthony's structure of the novel as "the gentle foreplay and the final devastation of a tropical storm". The author has an "inconspicuous" writing style and addresses a "picky but not too special target group" with his novel. Allreaders.com praised the believable main character, who visualized for the reader how the psyche of an adolescent works and why he makes decisions.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Anthony: Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago . Scarecrow Press, London 1997, ISBN 0-8108-3173-2 .
  2. ^ A b Stefano Harney: Nationalism and Identity: Culture and the Imagination in a Caribbean Diaspora . Zed Books, London 1996, ISBN 978-1-85649-376-5 , pp. 38 .
  3. ↑ VanessaSalazar.com: Book Review: Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony. Retrieved March 22, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Guardian.co.uk: Green days by the River. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 14, 2017 ; accessed on March 23, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Green Days to be made into a movie . In: Trinidad Express . 7th August 2015.
  6. ^ Goodreads.com: Green Days by the River. Retrieved March 21, 2017 .
  7. ^ Caribbean Studies Vol. 9, No. 4 (January 1970), p. 113
  8. ↑ TheCaribbeanCurrent.com: Our Green Days by the River. Retrieved March 23, 2017 .
  9. ↑ KirkusReviews.com: Green Days by the River. Retrieved March 20, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Allreaders.com: Green Days by the River Book Review Summary. Retrieved March 20, 2017 .