Swimming upstream: The struggle for identity

Jan 06, 2019 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: With Slight Pepper – A Novel
Author: Sherwyn Besson
Critic: Glenville Ashby, PhD

From its opening salvo, ‘With Slight Pepper’ delivers a healthy dose of island nostalgia, never letting up, even when its actors anchor in a distant land.
Showcasing a culture generously sprinkled with fine Trinidad argot, we relish and recoil at every serving. Humour, called picong, is an imaginatively brutal art delivered by the glib and heartless. It is unbridled, trampling on every decency. Its ruthlessness, while terrifying, can steel the resolve of those willing to endure.
But picong is fueled by a penchant for infidelity, a sore practice called horning, a cultural malaise that runs roughshod on this tropical island. Unbowed by a typology worthy of laboured scrutiny, writer Sherwyn Besson delves, head first.
Horning commands its own etiology, its standardization long immortalized in song. In archetypal terms, it absorbs the imagination of young and old, driving every impulse.
“Horn,” we learn, “was vibrant life, and tragic death. But horn, was Trinidad.”
Still, with nurturing, some manage to escape its strangulation. Ronald, the protagonist, is surrounded by culprits and victims of this clandestine and woeful act. In fact, the escapades of his beloved soccer coach leads to his violent demise.
Ronald’s mother, a paragon of virtue, becomes the neighbourhood comforter, lending counsel to bruised hearts.
Besson elaborates, “When Ronald reflected on [horning], he only saw the pain it caused the people who were cheated-on, the selfishness of cheaters, and the hurt of broken families that resulted. Ronald could not laugh at the carnage as the other boys did. His experiences were too close to his skin. From the loss of his mentor, Stool, to the loss of respect for cheating Mrs. Joseph, to all the women who visited his mom with broken hearts, horn was a malicious entity and it didn’t pick sides.”
It is in New York that Ronald, the young professional, is tested. He is “immediately aware of the acute nuances in American dating.” He learns that “the dimensions were deeper and wider than Trinidad boundaries.” Expectedly, his “evolving adaptation threatened to betray his values. Like an aquarium fish freed into a lake, Ronald knew he would have to grow into his new habitat and much of this growth would be at the expense of his hallowed truths”.
Ronald, ever averse to philandering, impulsively pledges commitment to a love-interest in his adopted home. But his idealism is shattered. “I am bi-sexual,” he is told, “[her] affection…based on a more provisional and flexible covenant; not one bound by morality and traditional values.”
Ronald’s defences against a cruel world are threatened.
He is unyielding, though, determined to experience authentic love amid the city’s turbulence. At times, he wavers, sowing his wild oats, but he remains characteristically measured, a modern man clothed in tradition.
Throughout, inner struggles surface: “Ronald quietly struggled with his evolution. He felt shame because he was adopting and not adapting to the culture of foreign. His fear of becoming indulgent was being realized…”
An unlikely relationship with Karen, a young mother, blossoms. A family unit takes shape as “[Ronald] was becoming fatherly, liming less, citing daddy duty as a regular excuse, and leaving to make pick-ups and drop-offs on schedule.”
But Karen, holding a skewed interpretation of independence, risks losing a devoted man, dismissing the most measured counsel: “When you are in a relationship, it’s not just about you anymore. It’s about your partner too. What you do wear, and say from here on out, will define your relationship to yourself and others”.
‘With Slight Pepper’ takes on new meaning with a thorny breakup to this promising union. Ronald subliminally shifts focus if only to safeguard a frayed ego. As a promising educator, he challenges longstanding issues that hinder student progress, identifying racial and cultural intensity, anachronistic pedagogy, and a corrupt culture that is inimical to a student body that is largely black and Hispanic.
Besson pens, “He saw the underbelly of the school system, its corrupt politics, its deceitful machinations on race, and the shifting dynamics of gender roles…”
He advocates “for courses like Public Speaking, Filmmaking, Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance, Coding, Architectural Design, career-tec courses and Africana Studies. Those are game-changers for our students”. But his entreaties are trivialized.
Ronald’s youthful indiscretions and political naivety weigh heavily on him. Coupled with the tragic demise of Karen, manhood, with all its unforgiving responsibilities, is hoisted on him.
An astute listener, Ronald must channel the admonition of an elderly neighbour he befriended in his native land: “Remember, ask God for what yuh want. Always be patient. Pause to pray. Pause to play. Pause to think. You’ll make better decisions.” Surely, “he saved it for times of crisis.”
Twice-removed from the toxicity of infidelity and the banter of childhood and adult life, ‘With Slight Pepper’ is a novel look at social psychology and psychoanalysis. Traversing the choppy waters of identity and acculturation, the world is presented as a mirror image of ourselves.
Despite the established theories on self and society, we are left with the distinct possibility that what we become is determined by an indefinable seed long planted before culture. In the end, Ronald’s lineage speaks with clarity, preserving the bloodline from the infection of cultural malaise.
Feedback: glenvilleashby@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
With Slight Pepper by Sherwyn Besson 2017
ISBN: 978-1-54395-004-5
Available at Amazon and BookBaby
Ratings: recommended

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