Althea Romeo Mark, Book Review, Breaking the Silence, Anthology of Liberian Poetry, ed. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, The Caribbean Writer, Vol 38, 2024
https://www.thecaribbeanwriter.org/2024/12/06/volume-38/
Book Review, Breaking the Silence, Anthology of Liberian Poetry,
ed. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, African Poetry Book Series, University of Nebraska
Press, 2023, 273 pages.
One might ask why
a collection of Liberian poetry is being reviewed for The Caribbean writer? However,
there is a connection between Liberia and the Caribbean that many might not
know. Our histories are tied by way of the Virgin Islander, Wilmot Blyden, who immigrated
to Liberia in 1850 and became a Liberian educator and writer. And before Marcus
Garvey’s Back to Africa Movement in the 1920s, Caribbean Islanders, the
majority from Barbados, returned to
African soil in the 1860s, selecting Liberia and Sierra Leone as their home.
The book is divided into four
sections. Part I, “Early Liberian Poetry-1800-1959. The dominant poet of this
period was Edwin James Barclay, Liberia’s eighteenth president, and a member of the
Barclay family who immigrated to Liberia from Barbados. The poets of this
period wrote in the traditional Western form of that period. Part II focuses on
the dominant poets of the 1960s, “a period that saw its first indigenous
poets and a change in Liberian poetics (xx)”3 Poets began to focus on their
culture and to feature aspects of their environment in themes and symbolism.
Part III, 1990 to the present saw a burgeoning of writers who had witnessed,
survived, and escaped the destructive Liberian Civil Wars (1989-1997 and
1999-2003), the most prominent among them featured in the anthology are
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Moses Nagbe, and American-Caribbean expatriate, Althea
Romeo Mark, also the author of this review. Part IV features “Emerging and
Aspiring Liberian Poets” who “are eager to develop their craft in a now more
global world of Africans without a country, the new world of the global writer
(xxi)”4.
Liberian poets of the the1800s were deeply
religious and were focused on nation-building, and defending their newly,
founded nation. Pierre, only identified by his last name, wrote in his ”The Immigrants Hymn,” “I come
from the West; from/ the land of the slave/ To freedom’s blest land/ to the
land of the brave/Where base tyranny’s yoke/hath never been wore/Nor the
color’d man’s race/ pointed at with scorn (p.18)”5. Settlers simultaneously
fought off indigenous attackers and encroaching European nations. Their fears
were expressed by Hilary Teague who wrote in his poem “Hymn” “ The Savage
yell, the dreadful cry/ fell on our frighted ears…”(p.6)”6 “Why do the foolish
heathen rage.” (p.7),”7. Edwin J Barclay, like Hilary Teague, equally
committed to the defense of his new homeland, states in the refrain of his
poem, “The Lone Star” (A National Song) “Desert it! Never/Uphold it, ay,
ever! (p.20).”8. But Barclay, Liberia’s prolific poet in this era, was also a romantic who wrote about Liberia’s
landscape and failed love affairs in his poems. In “To Jealous Lygia,” he writes:
Tell me no more that thy love has no dross,
for I knew, dear sweetheart,
thou art jealous.
Knowledge of gain and the dull
fear of loss
to
maelstrom of doubt e’er compel us. (p. 23) 9
Part II, Liberian Poetry, 1960-1989, is dominated by Rev. Father James David Kwee Baker, Roland Tombekai Dempster, Liberia’s most prolific poet after
Barclay, H. Carey Thomas, Bai T. Moore, and Kona Kasu. Patriotic themes continue in Dempsters’ “The
Lone Star Shines” which addresses Pan-Africanism and Liberia’s significance to
the African diaspora before decolonization in Africa, says:
The
Lone Star is shining
brightly
in the dimmest nights
It’s shedding its radiant light
spreading
rays like lighting
clearing
the way for others
now held in
alien fetters (p.49) 10
But the country’s beautiful landscape and natural wealth are focused upon by Baker. “Thy coastline broad and hinterland/stand rich in oil-palm fields/Thy mounts and dales/thy lakes, and sounds/ great wealth each does command (p.39) 11. Bai T. Moore and Kona Kasu were the first noted Indigenous poets to speak proudly of their African heritage and address social inequality. In his poem, “Africa in Retrospect” Moore attacks Europe’s perception of Africa:
Africa
but the place
is the white man’s
grave full of
snakes and pagan
savages, the jungle
inaccessible—
to hell with all that
light is all
Africa needs—
they dump in
rum and Bibles
and light up
the god damn place (p.77)12
And Kasu in his
poem “Their Words—Deception” addresses political and social hypocrisy. “Tubman
will spend 1,000,000 a year/on his health/and that will make us the healthiest
nation on earth. (p.100)” 13.
Part III (1990- to the present) represents Contemporary Liberian Poetry that reflects “the turbulent, militarized 1980s…and the1990 war years into the 21st century (xxi)” 14. The dominant poet of part III is Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, the editor of this anthology. In her poem, “November 12, 2015” Wesley reflects on home, the place she is rooted despite her physical displacement and the horrors of the war:
November 12, and my mind takes me way back home.
Home, the humid sun, bright, hot, like fire,
and the town,
divided by the ocean
and the river,
the past of bloodshed
the burning
anger and pain, when years
ago, a hero
came, or shall
we call him
coward? Thomas Quiwonkpa,
coup planner or
shall we call him messenger
of death, sent
by alien people
to rob us of
home? Liberia, fire, death,
the massacre of our people, the beginning
of the rest of our lives in exile…..
November 12, no matter how ugly they say home looks
there’s never a day when you do not want to go
back home. (p.119-120)15.
Part IV (Emerging and Aspiring
Poets) represents contemporary Liberian poets from home and abroad whose topics
and writing styles are more diverse. For the first time, male and female poets
are equally represented. In addition to themes reflecting social criticism,
coping in the aftermath of war, Ebola, the coronavirus, home, and its place and
meaning in their lives, one finds poems on the role of a woman or motherhood,
and poems sharing the message of hope.
Edward K. Boateng in his poem, “Memories of home” says:
“we smell of corpses” or ”our eyes hold the images of bloodshed”
& “our skins are
fossils of the very war they fear”
I want to peel off
these scars 1990 left me/ &
rename them after the bodies of my siblings
But peeling them hurts
as much as leaving them. And
talking about them just reminds me of the same war songs
they sang over the city they turned into a cemetery (p. 163), 16.
The everyday struggle in the aftermath of
war is addressed by Patrice Juah in her poem, “The Ebola Ride.” It tells us that
“On the Ebola ride/paranoia is the driver,…fear is its deputy/and panic, the
conductor…..But as death news comes in/you’re reminded/this isn’t a normal
ride/You get a sudden kick,/a silent voice asking,/why you’re still here.(p.
211)”17.
Jee-won Mawein Eaika Arkoi argues in her poem, “A Woman,” that:
If a woman should collect the debt she is owed
all humanity will become
extinct,
trying to refill her bod
with all the bodies she has pushed into the world.
You see, a woman is the belly
she carries,
life,
water, blood, bones, wars, stories, history, fire! (p.151)18.
And
Ayouba Toure writes in his poem “Earth’s Battlefield:”
…That after
the tsunami, you’ll remain
unmoved,
grandma says, we crawl
into the
world with clenched fists
because
earth is a boxing ring,
we must busy
ourselves, dodging punches
life throws at us (p. 242) 19.
In addition to Edwin James Barclay,
a former Liberian president and writer of Caribbean origin, I am the other
Caribbean writer featured in Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian
Poetry. I am honored that Dr. Patricia
Jabbeh Wesley felt I deserved a place in this ground-breaking book. I worked as an English lecturer at the University of Liberia
for over a decade and helped to found the Liberian Association of Writers which
became a springboard for the next generation of poets “crawling into the world
with clenched fists (p,242)”
Liberia is truly “breaking the silence”
in this anthology, firstly, for its collective voice (Indigenous-Liberian,
Americo-Liberian, Caribbean-Liberian) now reflecting its unique history and
speaking the country’s truth; secondly, it is setting a firm footing in African
Literature, and finally, it is asserting its place in world literature. All
these achievements were long overdue. Congratulations to Dr. Patricia Jabbeh
Wesley for carrying this literary torch to the finish line. As she states in
the introduction, “…our enduring African talking drum…has too long been mute
(xxi)” 20. Let the world hear and see its voice.
©Althea Romeo-Mark
Endnotes
[1] Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, ed., Breaking the
Silence: An Anthology of Liberian Literature, University of Nebraska Press,
2023, Introduction, xvii.
2. Ibid, Introduction, xx
3. Ibid, Introduction, xx
4. Ibid, Introduction, xxi,
5. Ibid, page 18,
6 Ibid, page 6
7. Ibid, p. 7
8. Ibid, p. 20
9. Ibid, p. 23
10. Ibid, p.49
11. Ibid, p.39
12. Ibid, p.77
13. Ibid, p.100
14. Ibid, Introduction .xxi
15. Ibid, pp. 119-120
16. Ibid, p. 163
17. Ibid, p. 211
18. Ibid, p. 151
19. Ibid, p. 242
20, Introduction p. xxi
Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and
writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught
in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England
(1990-1991), and Switzerland since 1991.
She earned a B.A. in English and Secondary Education from the University
of the Virgin Islands and an M.A. in Modern American Literature from Kent State
University, U.S.A. She also has a Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English as
a Foreign Language (CETEFLA).
Althea Romeo Mark is the
author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New
and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), four chapbooks, On
the Borders of Belonging, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Two Faces, Two
Phases, and Palaver, Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi. The Silent Dancing Spirit.
Last award, the Arts and Science Poetry Prize, POEZY
21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges,
Romania.
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