Reflections of Loko Miwa: A Novel

Reflections of Loko Miwa: A Novel. Lilas Desquiron. Translated from French by Robin Orr Bodkin. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1998. xxxii + 183 pages. $55.00 cloth; $16.95 paper. Reflections of Loko Miwa by Lilas Desquiron, recently translated from the French, is aimed at readers "outside its narrative space," writes Marie-Agnes Sourieau in her introduction. Reflections certainly does open up a world only vaguely familiar to the average American reader in its relentless critique of the inner hypocrisies of Haitian society. The inevitable challenge of writing such a novel is in integrating strong, character-powered fiction with a political statement that doesn't preach to the reader. Though weaknesses in character development at times prevent the novel from wholly achieving such an integration, Reflections sheds significant light onto the complexities of class and racial stratification in Haiti. By using a variety of first-person narrators to tell the story of the rebellious Violaine, who flouts her money and privilege in favor of a poor black revolutionary, Lilas Desquiron exposes the intricacies of a mid-twentieth century society shaped by the intersections of colonial repression and Vodou-inspired rebellion. Unlike many other Caribbean writers who show Vodou as a positive force for the reclamation of an African ancestry, Desquiron shows how Vodou is employed for harm by the proud, austere mulatto society of Jeremie, Haiti. Loko Miwa is the Vodou god of marasa, twins. The use of the marasa both literally and figuratively in the novel conveys much about the history and underlying problems of Haitian society. Though not literally twins, the central characters of the novel, Violaine and Cocotte, see themselves as spiritual twins despite the differences in their skin color and class. Cocotte's displacement at the age of eight from her poor mountain home to the house of the rich, light-skinned Delavignes in Jeremie is meant to appease a god but also to acknowledge the link that even the whitest mulattoes of Jeremie have with the darker Haitians, what the older narrator-Cocotte refers to sarcastically as "the original sin of their negritude." Desquiron makes her most clearly articulated critique of Haitian society when she depicts the use of Vodou by the light-skinned elite to preserve the social order. When Violaine is punished for trespassing against Jeremian sexual taboos, the punishment is emblematic of the fate of many light-skinned women throughout Haitian literature: she is turned into a zonbi, that state of half-death reminiscent of the enslavement of African people. The zonbi is representative of "the dissociation between the Haitian people's body and their will that centuries of brutality have perpetuated," notes the introduction here. The theoretical and political impetus for the novel is abundantly clear. Unfortunately, the lack of concrete details and illustrative incidents in the characters' lives .detracts at times from the novel's sense of reality and truth. For example, we never actually get to see incidents in which Violaine's and Cocotte's relationship is developed. 'When Cocotte arrives at the Delavigne house, Violaine feels a "thirst finally quenched, of wholeness, of loneliness abolished." However, she never explains exactly how Cocotte does this: is it merely having a friend to talk to? Are they able to understand each other's thoughts without speaking? …