Merle Collins’s reading from her new book, The Ladies Are Upstairs, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts was an exquisite blend of artful prose and personal honesty. It was the first reading I’ve ever seen where people in the audience excitedly shared how moments in the novel reminded them of their own or their parents and grandparents’ experiences. The book follows Doux from her childhood tribulations in Paz to her life as a grandparent in the Northeast of the US (Boston and New York City). However, it is elevated beyond other immigration stories for because of the intimacy the reader feels with Doux. To me it is more a Caribbean life story than it is an immigration story.
The first except Collins read depicted a scene in which young Doux is hit by her teacher who thinks she forgot her homework. Ultimately, after she proves her innocence, the teacher admits he was wrong to hit her in front of the class, shocking the class of young children, convinced still in either the infallibility or stubbornness of adults. The delicate innocence and power of this incident shows Collins’s allure as a writer. She is a true storyteller, a beautiful presenter of oral history. She breathes life into youthful experience, simple but profound. Her words and mellifluous voice filled the small auditorium with almost musical melody and rhythm.
The most evocative passage Collins read follows Doux, now a grandparent in Boston, as she wanders around her basement apartment thinking about, though remarkably without bitterness, how trapped she feels and how it really wouldn’t be much trouble for people to stop by and see her once in a while. Collins presents this moment beautifully. She perfectly captures the wise and noble despair of Doux whose world has all but forgotten her: a new energetic, distracted, and youthful world. Collins doesn’t seem to appraise whether this is good or bad; she delicately depicts the subtle tragedy, a fact of life.
This passage elicited an emotional and excited response from the audience as people were reminded of their own and their forebears migration stories. This speaks to one of the most valuable elements of The Ladies Are Upstairs. It is a Caribbean story, firmly part of a movement to create a collage of experiences. The book is a great assertion of the greater Caribbean story, which claims personal narratives as a cultural resistance to the enduring pains “Othering”. The reading itself was a part of this movement, an honest mapping of oral history.
article by intern David Manning
by Marielle Barrow
