Saturday 9 May 2020

“Oh, no dolls. Books!”

Brown Girl, Brownstones | Book

Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...

- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Regulars to our read-zone here would by now have conjectured the speaker of this beautiful quote! Ain’t ya?

Yes! It’s by Francie Nolan, the 11-year old lead character of the semi-autobiographical ‘Betty Smith’ novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Though this little girl Francie is from a highly impoverished family, her imagination, her passionate love for reading and her abundant zest for life have helped her greatly in giving her those much-needed ‘flights of fantasy’ on the ‘viewless wings of poesy’ and for her solace and sustenance in her life as well!

You may want to read more on li’l Francie and her zest for life, on our past post HERE!

As Francie to Brooklyn, Selina Boyce to Brownstones!

Brown Girl, Brownstones!

Now for more of Brown Girl, Brownstones!

Paule Marshall’s debut novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones, was first published in the year 1959, the self-same year when our ever-favvy childhood comic character Asterix was also first published!


Brown Girl, Brownstones is about Boyce! Selina Boyce!

A ten-year old, bookish girl, a loner again, like Francie!

But Selina has much more obstacles and hurdles through which she’s got to negotiate her way, to claim her own sweet identity!

Theirs is a family of Bajan (or Barbadian) immigrants who’ve now settled in Brooklyn in the United States!

Hence Selina has to find her way, her space and her identity in an altogether new world all by herself!

Like the precarious aka liminal predicament of Peri in Shafak’s Three Daughters of Eve, Selina is caught between polarities in her parents, between two extremes!

As such, her descriptions of her mother and father merit an intriguing study in itself!

With such a pragmatic mom and an idealistic dreamer for a father, Perina oops Selina has to charter her own identity and have a room of her own!

For example, her mother is keen on selling away their ancestral land in Barbados and getting for themselves a house in Brooklyn.

On the other hand, their father Deighton Boyce is so fond of his homeland, and hence wants to build a palatial white house in Barbados!

So when he comes to know through Selina that their mother is planning to secretly dispense with their ancestral land, he feels the shock of his life!

The dialogue that follows bespeaks to the purest love of a daughter for her father in all its grandeur!

And yup!

Only a Paule Marshall could have pulled off the following dialogues that happen between father and daughter with such elegance!

Here goes the conversation between an idealistic, dreamer-father Deighton Boyce and his daughter Selina Boyce for y’all to relish [in that beautiful West Indian (Barbadian) accent - ]

“Once I get started I gon make ’nough money. Then these Bajan with their few raw-mouth houses will see what real money is!”.

“Everybody gon say: Deighton Boyce is one man that makes good money and lives good. He wear the best of clothes”.

“He eat the finest. He rides in the swellest cars”.

“That’s the way a man does do things . . .”

His eyes flashed and the trumpet flashed as he gestured with it. Seeing that golden streak in the twilit room, Selina imagined that all the things he mentioned would magically appear.

He raised the trumpet and again lowered it.

“Did I tell yuh I gon plant ladies-of-the-night round the house?”

“What’re those?” she whispered, remembering with a wrench the mother’s vow.

“A flower that does smell only at night. When you in your bed you can smell it and it’s like the night-self is the thing smelling so sweet . . . And in the front yard I gon have a flamboyant tree. You ain never seen anything like that tree, lady-folks”.

“Daddy”, she whispered, and he waved the trumpet, silencing her.

“And I got the house clear-clear in my mind now. I gon build it out of good Bajan coral stone and paint it white. Everything gon be white! A gallery with tall white columns at the front like some temple or the other.

A parlor with ’nough furnitures and a dining room with glasses of every description and flowers from we own garden . . .”

“Daddy”. She strained toward him.

“And upstairs ’nough bedrooms with their own bathroom—and every bathroom with a stained-glass window like in a church. People gon come from all over to see those stained-glass windows . . .”

Suddenly Selina leaped up, and as the trumpet made another wide dazzling arc she grabbed it, screaming, “She’s gonna sell it. She’s gonna sell it all”.

“What, lady-folks? Who selling what?”

“Mother. She swore to Iris Hurley and Florrie Trotman that she’s gonna sell the land. Your land”.

The shouted confession took all her strength and, still clinging to the trumpet, she slid to the floor at his feet.

He dropped beside her. “Girl, what you saying? What you saying?” he demanded harshly and, grabbing her chin, forced her head up.

When she saw his eyes and the fear crouched there she knew that she should have said nothing—for it was like shattering his life.

A fierce protectiveness welled in her.

She knew suddenly that she had to lull him with lies.

Slowly she raised her hand to calm him and said softly,

“I . . . I’m . . . sorry, Daddy . . . I didn’t mean . . . to scare you . . . It was . . . nothing”.

She was just kinda showing off for them. Y’ know how she always fusses about it . . . and talks big about what she’s gonna do if you don’t sell . . . But it was nothing . . .”

Under her soothing voice, the fear dropped from his eyes and he rose, picking up the trumpet.

“She’s always talking big,” he said with a short empty laugh, “but there’s not a thing she can do. Don let she frighten you with her guff, girl.

“But maybe you should write anyway and ask your sister if everything’s okay . . .” she pleaded.

“But the very first money I make from it gon be ours,lady-folks, yours and mine. And we gon lick it out like sailors . . . Come, what you want? Tell me quick!”

Numbed, beaten, she murmured, “A new coat, I guess”.

“A coat! Two coats! And a big doll like you once had”.

“Oh, no dolls. Books”.

“We gon fill the house with books”, he shouted and then paused.

No spoilers though! ;-)

Then follows for Selina, the lead girl of the novel, a series of humiliations and dejections, which devastate her morale completely.

How she emerges triumphant and unscathed from all these turmoil, and finds for herself, her authentic voice and comes to terms with her identity forms the crux and the rest of the story.

To sum it up, the novel traces the growth of its lead character Selina from being a lonely and timid little girl, to becoming a confident and cheerful young woman, who has, at last found for herself a unique identity of her own, and a beautiful space of her own!

As a little Post Script, may I also give a gentle little note of caution on this Paule Marshall read: Well, parental advice might be needed while reading this novel! Hope you sincerely follow my suggestion on that! :-)

Thank you

&

Happy reading folks!
image: amazondotcom