Review of The Storyteller's Return

[Radhika Nair]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Storyteller's Return" by Opal Palmer Adisa.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaican-born author with several publications to her credit. Her book The Storyteller's Return is a collection of poems divided into five sections, each of which deals with a particular stage in, or aspect of, her return to her native country and the home she had there. The vivid pictures she paints of her childhood in Jamaica and of her return to her childhood home as a grown woman make that vibrant landscape breathe through the pages of this book, exhaling the fragrances and the colours of life that permeate the land that the author calls home.

This book dwells on several pertinent themes both personal and political. In a book whose main concern is the author's complicated relationship with her homeland, issues regarding the quality of life for women play a key role. Home is supposed to be a secure shelter, a place where you belong unquestionably. This book shows how the idea of home is not that simple for women due to patriarchal culture.

The author raises the issue of male violence and mourns misogyny in the forms of stigmatisation of female sexual pleasure, rape, and femicide. Male violence against women and women's resistance and healing are central themes of the book. People often brush these issues under the carpet because they believe things are better now, that these things don't happen now, or that at least the middle-class population in modern, urban, and perhaps especially Western spaces has nothing to do with these issues. The author's sensitive portrayal of the dark and universal reality of women's lives, along with her invitation to women to heal from it and rejoice in who they are and celebrate themselves, is one of the most striking aspects of this poetry collection.

This book is alive with the potency of the life and culture of Jamaica as distilled and delivered by the vision of the author. Her reflections on the dynamic nature of home as a multi-faceted phenomenon pay tribute to the challenges of navigating this charged yet cherished space for a woman who demands a voice and individual personhood. I loved the author's portrayal of her culture and personal history as well as her treatment of difficult yet pervasive themes of violence and social inequities. Her use of national language adds richness to the text and opens up within it a world that is unlike anything mere English can aspire to represent. The author's grandmother's advice to the author, a text that runs parallel to the author's own, is a marked voice of revelations about womanhood.

I disliked nothing about this book and found very few errors in it. But I must point out that its very excellence means that it will be incomprehensible to many. The formatting is unconventional, and the national language, though English in appearance, is evidently native to the Caribbean in every other aspect. This book is meant to be disruptive, and people who like their books to be docile and comforting can only be put off by it. I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars, and as per the author's dedication, recommend it to the postcolonial peoples, including women, for whom home and returning home are both journeys without destinations.

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The Storyteller's Return
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