Guadeloupe: The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwartz-Bart

[Carol]

This is the discussion thread for our August Read Around the World group read, The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart, which takes place in Guadeloupe.

Simone Schwarz-Bart (paraphrased from the NYRB site)

Simone Schwarz-Bart is a novelist and playwright of Guadeloupian origin, and both of her parents were originally rom Guadeloupe. She was born in 1938 on the southwest coast of France, and moved with her mother to Guadeloupe before she turned one. At age 18 while studying in Paris, she met her future husband, the French writer André Schwarz-Bart. They married in 1960 and collaborated on two novels, Un plat de porc aux bananes verts (A Dish of Pork with Green Bananas) and La mulâtresse Solitude (A Woman Named Solitude), as well as a six-volume encyclopedic work, Hommage à la femme noire (In Praise of Black Women). In 1972, Schwarz-Bart published The Bridge of Beyond, a best-seller which also is widely considered a masterpiece of Caribbean literature. She has traveled widely, living in Senegal and Switzerland and Paris, and eventually settling in Goyave, a small community in Guadeloupe.

The Bridge of Beyond

From NYRB: This is an intoxicating tale of love and wonder, mothers and daughters, spiritual values and the grim legacy of slavery on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Here long-suffering Telumee tells her life story and tells us about the proud line of Lougandor women she continues to draw strength from. Time flows unevenly during the long hot blue days as the madness of the island swirls around the villages, and Telumee, raised in the shelter of wide skirts, must learn how to navigate the adversities of a peasant community, the ecstasies of love, and domestic realities while arriving at her own precious happiness. In the words of Toussine, the wise, tender grandmother who raises her, “Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn’t ride you, you must ride it.”

Translator, Barbara Bray

Barbara Bray (Nov 24, 1924 - Feb 25, 2010), whose translation of The Bridge of Beyond is characterized as brilliant by anyone who reviews the novel, was an English translator and critic, "BBC script editor and champion of French avant- garde writers including Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh and Alain Robbe-Grillet; she was also, for more than 30 years, intellectual soulmate and mistress of the playwright Samuel Beckett," as per the Telegraph. I am not a fan of the fact that this entire article on Bray's life is through the lens of her relationship with Beckett, but wanted to share it nonetheless.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...

Let us know if you plan to participate or if you've read either Bridge or another novel by Schwarz-Bart before and what you thought of it, any first impressions, questions, comments. Also, has anyone traveled to Guadeloupe?

[Liesl]

I have the book but am just finishing off another read first. I've never read any works by Schwarz-Bart.

[Cam]

My library only has it in French but I should be able to pick it up next week and join you! I've never read any works by her but my knowledge of Caribbean literature is pretty shocking...

[Ann]

I read this book earlier this year and really recommend it. I loved the language ...the images have stayed with me. Enjoy the read.

[Carol]

I found this April 21, 2018 article from The Atlantic on the history of Guadaloupe, current political tensions based on that history and more, and thought others might be interested in it. Here's an excerpt, but there's so much more I learned from reading it:

Not unlike Puerto Rico for America or Anguilla for Britain, Guadeloupe is France’s modern colonial problem. Guadeloupeans have French passports, can travel freely within the European Union, and can vote in French elections. (In the last presidential election, Guadeloupe’s abstention rates were higher than 60 percent.) Outside of the classroom and outside of the cities, Creole is the unofficial language. Guadeloupeans follow the French legal and political system; in school, they learn from the same curriculum as students in mainland France.

But few in Guadeloupe enjoy a quality of life comparable to that of mainland France. Although Guadeloupe receives 972 million euros from the EU each year, its youth-unemployment rate has hovered around 50 percent for decades. Much of the local economy is still controlled by békés, descendents of white French slave owners who received reparations from the French government after 1848 after losing their livelihoods.

https://www.theatlantic.com/internati...

[Carol]

This history of Guadeloupe provides a narrative and, if you scroll down, a helpful timeline.

https://blackhistory938.wordpress.com...

and a site with several Guadeloupe maps.

http://www.frenchcaribbean.com/Guadel...

[Carol]

Several intriguing, insightful reviews. The Three Percent review is a spoiler bonanza, but the other two reviews don't present any spoilers IMO. As always, proceed at your own risk if you seek to avoid knowing anything about the plot.

World Literature Today
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...

Three Percent (U of Rochester) http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

Ethnic Studies Review (Journal) https://esr.ucpress.edu/content/ESS-3...

[El]

I really enjoyed this book. My library copy came in earlier than anticipated, so I finished before the thread opened. I agree with Ann about the beautiful language.

This is one of those books that I had difficulty picking the book up after putting it down, but then while I was reading, I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm not sure why I had such hesitancy picking it up again between reads. I look forward to seeing others' thoughts when they read it.

[〰️Beth〰️]

Thank you for the helpful information Carol. This has been on my TBR for some time so I am excited to read and discuss.

[Carol]

Kristin wrote: "I hope to be able to get to this one this month, after failing terribly with last month's books. I ordered it from ILL so I am going to try my hardest to fit it in. From the comments above, it seem..."

It would be great if you can. Fingers crossed on timely delivery and no "life happens" barriers.

[Cam]

Thanks for all the info Carol, I'll have a read in the next few days. I just finished the book yesterday and still not quite sure what I think of it. The writing is quite hypnotic and so the book is a quick and enjoyable read. But I kept wanting something more for literature written in the 1970s. It read more like literature from the 1930s-1950s with some heavy riffing on Négritude without saying the word. It covers similar grounds to Maryse Condé's Victoire: My Mother's Mother, but I didn't find Télumée Miracle/Bridge of Beyond as compelling...

[Sophie]

Telumee's story and the story she tells of previous generations of women in her family is magical. She gave her heart to a man who turns out not to be who she thought. Others she gave her heart to are taken away. Her grandmother does all she can to keep Telumee from working in the cane fields.
Thank you Carol for the links to history sites and the reviews. They were very interesting.

[Liesl]

I just finished this. As Cam mentioned, the writing is quite hypnotic and I enjoyed the small window into the Gaudeloupean culture.

During the first few chapters I felt that I was only get a superficial story. By that, I mean lacking in depth. Trying to tell the stories of different generations in so few pages leaves very little character development. Later when the story focused on Telumee, that criticism disappears.

One of the reviews suggests that there are two questions pervading the story: what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be a slave. But I feel that the second question is really what it means to be a Negro. The slavery is a chapter of their history that encompasses their suffering but it does not define who they are. I felt that they were trying to understand their place in a world that accepted the idea of enslaving them.