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Abeng
a novel
First published 1983 · 267 pages
A lush, politically charged coming-of-age story that excavates the buried histories of a colonized island through the awakening of a young girl.
What it feels like
Reading this novel feels like standing at the crossroads of personal memory and brutal history. The prose is lush and deeply textured, wrapping you in the sensory richness of the Caribbean while refusing to look away from the scars of colonialism. It moves at a steady, deliberate pace, weaving the intimate coming-of-age of a young girl with the sweeping, often violent legacy of her ancestors. The mood is both sun-drenched and shadowed by grief, creating an atmosphere that is as haunting as it is beautiful. It is a deeply reflective experience, perfect for readers who love postcolonial literature and lyrical narratives that explore the painful, necessary awakening to one's own fractured heritage and the enduring power of buried truths.
- Mood
- lush
- haunting
- sun-drenched
- shadowed
- Tone
- lyrical
- reflective
- critical
- earnest
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- colonial legacy · intersectional identity · colorism and class · female awakening · historical memory
- The writing
- Lyrical and densely textured, weaving mythic history with intimate, sensory details.
- The arc
- Moves from the fragmented confusion of childhood to a painful, profound awakening to the weight of a complex heritage.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave postcolonial literature that marries lush, poetic language with fierce political and historical excavation.
Content notes
- racism
- colorism
- legacy of slavery
- violence
- animal death
About the book
Her novels evoke both the clearly delineated hierarchies of colonial Jamaica and the subtleties of present-day island life. Nowhere is her power felt more than in Clare Savage, her Jamaican heroine, who appeared, already grown, in No Telephone to Heaven. Abeng is a kind of prequel to that highly-acclaimed novel and is a small masterpiece in its own right. Here Clare is twelve years old, the light-skinned daughter of a middle-class family, growing up among the complex contradictions of class versus color, blood versus history, harsh reality versus delusion, in a colonized country. In language that surrounds us with a richness of meaning and voices, the several strands of young Clare's heritage are explored: the Maroons, who used the conch shell—the abeng—to pass messages as they fought a guerilla struggle against their English enslavers; and the legacy of Clare's white great-great-grandfather, Judge Savage, who burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. A lyrical, explosive coming-of-age story combined with a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica, this novel is a triumph.
Description from Open Library.
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