Austin Clarke (1) (1934–2016)

it took me 2 tries to finish listening. A mother from Barbados reviews much of her life since moving to Canada: employment possibilities vs racism; her husband who left her; the different church groups she is involved with; her teenage son who is becoming involved w/unknown group. A lot of it feels repetitious, as an audiobook, but finally I got the sense of the climax it was building toward. Read by a woman with a strong accent, presumably Barbadian, which made an intriguing listen. However, unfortunately I could not understand the final sentence, which seems to have great import on the meaning of her life.… (more)

Praised as “masterful” by the New York Times and “uncommonly talented” by Publishers Weekly and winner of the 1999 Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, Austin Clarke has a distinguished reputation as one of the preeminent Caribbean writers of our time. In Pig Tails ’n Breadfruit, he has created a tantalizing “culinary memoir” of his childhood in Barbados. Clarke describes how he learned traditional Bajan cooking—food with origins in the days of slavery, hardship, and economic grief—by listening to this mother, aunts, and cousins talking in the kitchen as they prepared each meal.

Pig Tails ’n Breadfruit is not a recipe book; rather, each chapter is devoted to a detailed description of the ritual surrounding the preparation of a particular native dish—Oxtails with Mushrooms, Smoked Ham Hocks with Lima Beans, or Breadfruit Cou-Cou with Braising Beef. Cooking here, as in Clarke’s home, is based not on precise measurements, but on trial and error, taste and touch. As a result, the process becomes utterly sensual, and the author’s exquisite language artfully translates sense into words, creating a rich and intoxicating personal memoir.… (more)

i thought i would be able to settle into this after having trouble with the first pages, but i just never did. there was nothing in it for me to grab onto in the language or the story or the writing. i just didn't care about anything until finally it started to improve at page 350, but only for a few pages, and then again around page 390 for a few pages. the last couple of pages finally gave the story its climax, but since the point of the whole thing - not the crime itself, but the rape and the abuse and the sexism and racism and slavery and colonialism and and and - was everything outside these 10 total decent pages, and none of those pages to me were any good...for me the point was missed and the effort was wasted.… (more)

Clarke is a very well known Canadian writer who has won numerous literary prizes. The book that won the Giller Prize, the Polished Hoe, was a great story, but it was very hard to read as it was written is Bajun dialect (Clarke is from Barbados). This novel is written is plain English, but it reads as a somewhat delirious ramble. A Barbadian-Canadian woman is worried because her son is not home. As the story unravels we find out that she came to Canada as a domestic worker (popular means of immigration for those wanting to come to Canada). She eventually brings her husband and son to live with her. Clarke gives an insightful portrait of her live, her dreams and her loses. It is often hard to follow the time line, but well worth the effort.… (more)