What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (most important books to read txt) 📗

up the special tree and took it home. Soon he became a doctor, a miracle healer, and he raised the daughter of a rich man from the dead and the rich man took him for his son-in-law. He lived happily ever after with his wife, the rich man’s daughter, until one day his wife grew jealous of the tree he had in the backyard, which he paid more attention to than her. She went outside and pissed on the tree, and the tree was vexed because it hated nastiness, so it uprooted itself and started flying to heaven. At that moment, the man came home and saw the tree taking off. He couldn’t catch it, so he threw his axe at it, but the tree kept flying, taking the man holding on to the axe along with it. And that is why there is a man in the moon to this day.

When the monk told me this story, I began following him around. That boy’s name was Cuoi. There and then I knew the monk could look right into my soul and see who I was.

No one was in charge of Pulau Bidong. The people in charge only wanted us out of Terengganu, out of Malaysia. Don’t ask me. I knew nothing about big politics, who ran what wasn’t my business. I only knew small things. The way things look to a child. Everything about this island was large, everything was bright, everything was brown or yellow. When you are a child, you concentrate on small pebbles, small looks, you look at the ground, you get shoved and pushed. You get shoved and pushed so much you look for something smaller to push back. You wait, you plot, and you savour it when it comes. That’s how that boy fell in the rotten boat. I saw the wood lice; the wood was soft, but he didn’t know. He was stupid. I told him to go first. He was stupid, and those who don’t hear will feel. That’s what the woman with a cleft palate said to me. Those who don’t hear will feel. And anyway, better to be taken away by a clouded leopard than to live on Pulau Bidong. But I think it’s the rats that got him, piece by piece. The rats were vicious and they respected no one. They didn’t run when you came near. They would stand up and show their teeth. And me, I was little, so I had to protect myself. I always carried stones. Troi co mat. Troi phat. Heaven has eyes. Heaven punishes.

SEVEN

Quadraphonic, Jo Jo Flores, Paul E. Lopez, Boris Kid Conga, Divine Earth Essence, Live percussion by Tribalismos, Saturday 18. Oz/Off Centre PJ Patric Forge, Movement, Lond., U.K., Da lata, computer of rebirth of Cool., Aku John Kong, OJ palma at Roxy Blu, Konfusion, Design/vice, Soul Power, DJ spinna, with resident DJs Semois & Kila, Una mas! Ziolay 21st disco, hip-hop house, soul-funked/Brazilian/OJ John Laumahara, Fiction Design Co.’s men’s and women’s summer collection. Exclusive up roc/FDCO 416 Fashion, Juice/solid Garage featuring Jephte Guillarme—New York—born in Haiti, uprooted to Brooklyn with his family, turning vodun spirituality into something understood. Hit single “The Prayer.”Voyage Dreams “Mad Behind the Tet Kale Sound” — Friday 5th — Una mas/Funk d’void—Techno meets funky jazzy house meets Glasgow Funk d’void/Grand Master Flash “immortalized by Blondie, feted by the hip-hop cognoscenti, Grand Master Flash turned the humble record deck into an instrument as potent as the piano or guitar”/Afrika Bambaata. B. Boy and Dance classics Saturday 29th (Mancccc Wabanakkk) …

Looking for her cigarettes, Jackie had pulled these advertisements out of her bag yesterday morning. She’d handed them to Oku during her thesis on innocence and hadn’t taken them back. What did she mean, innocence? He hadn’t done anyone any harm, ever. He had only noticed that he was still holding the cards and bits of paper she’d chucked at him as he walked down Augusta Avenue trying to recover from what she’d said.

He’d been looking over them as he sat at the Rose Café. He really should be in a class, but that was over for him. He liked Jo Jo Flores and Paul E. Lopez. He’d danced to them at Tuyen’s place. The fashion show trip he just couldn’t take, though. Who the hell was Fiction Design? Foolish as he must have sounded earlier, had she seemed the slightest interested? Had she in fact stepped closer to him, deliberately put out that vibe, or was it just he? But he had said the lamest line, the most insipid words in the black vernacular, the most washed out, most overused. Oh shit! Man, he wished he could snatch them back—was he elegant and gorgeous enough to use those words—“Jackie, hook a brother up” and get away with them? Well, they had seemed not to have the right effect, so clearly not. She just took off on him. Would she show up at Tuyen’s this evening? Right now he wouldn’t know what to say to her if she did. But flimsy as it was, he had something belonging to her and therefore an excuse, if he needed one, to get in touch with her. Not that this junk was important to her, he was sure—just ephemera—but he had looked at them through the day, the cards and posters, hoping that in them was a map to her, to Jackie.

This morning his father’s cough had awakened him as usual. He rolled over, feeling the advertisements near his left hand. His father was in the bathroom upstairs now. Oku heard him blowing his nose in that disgusting way he had, and hawking into the sink. Oku got up, put the ads carefully into his knapsack, and prepared himself for the morning ritual with his father and mother. He showered quickly, trying to beat Fitz to the kitchen. His mother was already there. This morning ritual made him feel like a child. For a moment he understood why Jackie would call