Huracan Quotes

“The imprint of the Tainos was only faintly recorded in language and shards of pottery. She strained to hear sounds of nature, but not even the whistling frogs chirped – too dry, she thought. She stared at the square of night sky through the top of the sash window; it was not the indigo of the country, but iron grey, with the stars faded into each other, forming swathes of paler grey. Here in Kingston, when the bush rustled, she startled and got up, standing on the chair to stare through the window into the night. Here, a rustle in the shrubbery might not just be a lizard or a rat.”
― Diana McCaulay, Huracan

“He watched the old man pick up his naked, violated daughter from where she lay in the dirt. He held her in his arms, her limbs lolling, his head bent to hers as if in silent prayer. He was going to bury her, bury his daughter, perhaps in a peaceful place, and he would say a prayer to his gods over her grave. He would visit his daughter’s grave in the months afterwards, until he too succumbed to disease, overwork or torture. People said slaves did not have souls and were a step removed from people. Zachary watched the old black man in ragged clothes walk away with his dead daughter. In that instant, the differences between Bonnie Valley and Paradise became excuses, mere matters of degree, the difference between twenty-nine strokes of the cowskin lash and thirty strokes, the difference between a bed and a filthy floor after torture, between rape and rape, death now and death tomorrow. There was no difference.”
― Diana McCaulay, Huracan

“Duppy cho cho.” “Why it call that?” “It have fruit just like a cho cho, but if you break it open, it full of feather that float away on the breeze.” A fruit that held feathers instead of flesh, like policemen uniformed to protect and serve who were really killers. In the shadow of the duppy cho cho, she bowed her head in the rain and the night closed in.”
― Diana McCaulay, Huracan