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Oct 22, 2017 Book Review…, Features / Columnists
Book: Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab
Author: Shani Mootoo
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby
Shani Mootoo’s Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab is a provocative narrative rooted in existentialism and cries for redemption. Her main character, Sydney, is hardly sympathetic. He lacks compunction, despite abandoning
his son in Canada.
He appears self-serving, repentant only in the last throes of life. At that point, every utterance is arguably questionable. A catharsis he yearns, but his salvation is weighed down by his inability to be fully expressive. He suffocates on his own complexes.
Jonathan, his son, seeks answers. Abandonment can be traumatic and is arguably the cause of anti-social and asocial behaviours. Jonathan has braved challenging periods but now seems grounded. Still, he must seek his parent, the once caring parent that inexplicably disappeared. His anguish is palpable, his search is exhaustive.
He finds Sydney in Trinidad, his native country. He visits on several occasions and each time Sydney is weaker. It’s a race against time, a race for both father and son to heal wounded psyches.
Unlike Sydney, we root for Jonathan. His patience, forbearance and resilience are admirable. He is authentic and his inexhaustible compassion bleeds through Mootoo’s work.
Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab is a wistful, nostalgic and painfully lugubrious.
Mootoo is a sound writer deftly using colour and tone to fashion her characters. She is equally adept at creating atmosphere and mood. We are moved by her vivid description of Trinidad’s idiosyncratic template. And her characters are clearly defined, distinct, feeding off each other.
But Mootoo’s psychological themes of identity and individuation are at times eclipsed by social commentary. And for readers familiar with the twin island state, Jonathan’s recapitulation is incisively accurate. Despite safety concerns, nature glows, matched only by endearing familial and social warmth. The same cannot be said for Canada, Jonathan’s home.
Mootoo speaks to culture and acculturation. Of Canada, Sydney recalls, “With its complicated protocols and rules of conduct, [it] is a test indeed to the mettle of anyone who arrives there from a tropical country.”
He is smothered by a society that he could never embrace. He lived in a place where “he had no relatives, [where] he traveled the streets daily and yet hardly ever crossed paths with people [he] knew, where [he] lived in rooms that stored no childhood memories.” He asks rhetorically, “Which is my real life?”
He is fatigued by sexual and gender complexities; he is self-deprecating and emotionally paralyzed, unable to fight back, unable to fight for Jonathan. He returns to his homeland, beaten, defeated, and mindful that he never really stood a chance.
“Indira warned me not to try to fight her for any rights to Jonathan. As an immigrant, as a non-wage-earning person, and most importantly, as a person without her connections, I would, she assured me, lose in every way.”
And when she opts for transitioning (gender change), she is admittedly anticipatory, expectant, fearful and even excited. During the counseling process her feelings rage. “I would breathe less with the excitement of recognition. I would want to collapse with the relief at the prospect of my own change. I would feel envy and impatience that I was not further along on my own path.”
Jonathan needs to know of this experience, and more, much more. Sid’s transitioning, from a woman to his present identity as Sydney – the man – demands an explanation.
Compounding an already fragile mind, Sid must contend with the murder of his endearing friend. Theirs was intense unspoken love that would never be expressed. There lurks an unresolved gender issue that chokes Sid’s fullest fruition.
”Zain would be alive today had I been a different person,” he laments. “How could Trinidad exist without my dearest Zain?”
In one scene, Sid is unable to comfort his distraught friend. “I wanted to put my hand on her cheek, but I dare not. I wanted to take her hand and pull her to me, but that would have been foolish. Any other two women…could have interacted so, and others would have seen one woman comforting another. But I didn’t look like other woman.”
She later ruminates, “If I were asked if we had ever kissed, or been sexual with each other, I would truthfully say we hadn’t, by my answer would elude the intensity of our bond and the intimacy that at times blinded me, and that she had felt too.”
Sid is alone, philosophically divorced from his opulent, imperial and supercilious parents. His confessions to Jonathan might just be the psychological and emotional balm he seeks. But his revelations are tediously complex.
”When in the past Sydney would tell me his stories…his words fell…but never [landed].” But to make sense of his abandonment and ordeal, Jonathan concedes that he must be patient, that [he] had to hear all the stories, in a seemingly digressive way, for anyone to make sense.” Only then can he be judicious and impartial. Still, Jonathan is pained “of having figured so little in the stories he told [him].”
After Sydney’s passing, Jonathan continues his search for healing. Missives written by Zain to Sydney afford him a deeper understanding of life and the choices we make. But is there really a sense of closure?
The second phase of Jonathan’s journey is equally captivating.
Mootoo’s characters cling to a burdensome life, ever searching for meaning, for resolution. They persevere.
There is sadness, a what-if, regretful ring to Mootoo’s weighty offering. Life is never what we dream of; it stands combative, disarming and formidable. Only courage and candour can lead us safely through the inescapable valley of hell.
Mootoo raises topical, tortuous issues best addressed by an able psychoanalyst. Measured, subtle and deliberate, she delivers an artful work that deserves our rapt attention.
Feedback: [email protected]/www.glenvillewellness.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab by Shani Mootoo 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61775-577-4
Publisher: Akashic Books, New York
Ratings: Recommended
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