Abeng

Abeng is a coming-of-age story about a bi-racial adolescent girl in Jamaica who must face questions of race, class, sexuality, dominant ideology and identity. The book is also a stirring exploration of the fragility of friendship; it depicts trust, betrayal, and redemption. It is also a geography of the complexity and nuance of family. There are very few books that can handle such complex subject matter with the honesty and lyricism found here. I read this book several years ago and it has stayed with me. I should point out that it is at times disturbing, but also funny, moving, and thought-provoking. Sometimes I return to the last passages since they so beautifully convey the poignancy of childhood. Ultimately the book traces the early formation of the protagonist's revolutionary consciousness.

The plot meanders somewhat and skirts ideological analysis. However, in the end all the strands dovetail beautifully. The language, imagery, and symbolism are rich. Abeng shows us how our hearts and minds are born of the world around us, but also that we can change that world by discovering new worlds inside of us.


Colourism, colonisation & reclaimation of identity.   December 22, 2002
Samantha (Minneapolis, Fort Belknap rez & London)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful

Abeng is an incredible work of post-colonial literature, that via the life of protagonist Clare Savage, vividly explores the notions and ways in which racism, colourism, homophobia and economic-class division has embedded itself in the social fabric of British-dominated Jamaica.

While I cannot describe in totality the immense power such writing has---if I were to advise the potential reader of anything they should seek in the text it would be the parallel identity Clare feels between the cultural attachments and perspectives of her parents Boy and Kitty. And subsequently how their behaviour is exemplified through the world at large around Clare. "She felt split into two parts---white and not white, town and country, scholarship and privilege, Boy and Kitty (Cliff 119.")

Boy engrossed in his own sad hegemony, is a "cuffy"-want-to-be "Buckra" * The epitome of the social problems facing Jamaican society, his denial of his own "blackness" has led him to despise and criticise those whose pigmentation is darker than his, whose economic situation is more desolate---and particularly those whose connections to their African heritage have not been severed. He carries with him the belief that western idealisms and civilisation are superior.

Kitty, also of multi-racial heritage is the near opposite of her husband. She cherishes her Black ancestry, but as Cliff indirectly (and then directly towards the end) notes in the novel, her love of Blackness is rooted in victimisation and kept secret from her bigot husband. While she may appear to be submissive to the reader, she is indeed the stronger half in her marriage; and just as strong of a influence on her Daughter(s) as Boy.

I absolutely recommend this novel to any interested reader, more than another piece of liberal-historical fiction, Abeng is likely to invoke various reactions from the reader. As a woman of colour, born into a post-colonial British-Native American family (Gros Ventre tribe/Lac Courte Orielles tribes) this novel has further heightened my appreciation of the commonalities all colonised individuals share, irregardless of exact societal or geographic location.

*cuffy: hegemonic individual.
*Buckra: "white person" Jamaica
Internal Quotation from Abeng.