What do you think?
Rate this book
The Dispossessed
This novel grew from the world of indentured sugar plantation workers. Arriving from India in 1917, their labour and that of their descendants made their island rich but left them poor, far from home and despised by native islanders. This is the story of their lives, resilience and survival.
128 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1992
26 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 19, 2023
[Revised, pictures added 2/19/23]
A story of down-and-out sugar cane cutters in Trinidad. It’s not only that these folks are poor, but the novel is set in a time when sugar cane plantations were consolidating from international competition and people were losing their jobs. Even some of the white landowners were going bankrupt.
We learn a bit about the ethnic diversity on Trinidad because the characters are African, Asian Indian (as is the author and V. S Naipaul, also from Trinidad) and creole, or mixed.
In this hardscrabble life, it’s hard to know where the next meal is coming from. One man worries constantly about his mother, who probably has Alzheimer’s. He tries to keep her locked up at home because if she wanders out into the street, she sings and dances and people throw rocks at her.
White landowners, not happy enough to control all the wealth, force people into sex. In one case a landowner forces a man to become his sexual partner. In another insidious use of power, a rich white man forces a woman to have sex by threatening to fire, not her, but all the other women cane cutters. Their families will starve.
Folks survive – most of them -- although there is no joy in their lives such as you see among folks in a similar situation in Brazil in Jorge Amado’s book Shepherds of the Night. On the other hand, there is no joy because there is no joy in this Mudville.
I do have one bone to pick with the author: too much dialect. It’s nice to get a flavor of how folks talk but the numerous long passages of dialect like this can get annoying: “Boy, ah doh know what to do, de ooman come quite in de town to show up in front ah all dem people. Ah doh know if ah have de courage to show me face dey again.”
Still a decent read. Only 125 pages. It’s hard to know the time frame. I had the feeling of maybe 1940-ish? There is almost no information that I could find about the author on the web other than that he was of Asian Indian heritage, grew up in Trinidad, also wrote a play, and died in 1995. It’s a pretty obscure book. I’m the only reviewer on GR and one other person rated it.
Both images from wikiwand. The photo shows indentured Indian laborers arriving on Trinidad. They came as late as 1917 so this photo was perhaps taken in the early 1900s. The map shows Trinidad and Tobago off the northeast coast of South America (Venezuela)
A story of down-and-out sugar cane cutters in Trinidad. It’s not only that these folks are poor, but the novel is set in a time when sugar cane plantations were consolidating from international competition and people were losing their jobs. Even some of the white landowners were going bankrupt.
We learn a bit about the ethnic diversity on Trinidad because the characters are African, Asian Indian (as is the author and V. S Naipaul, also from Trinidad) and creole, or mixed.
In this hardscrabble life, it’s hard to know where the next meal is coming from. One man worries constantly about his mother, who probably has Alzheimer’s. He tries to keep her locked up at home because if she wanders out into the street, she sings and dances and people throw rocks at her.
White landowners, not happy enough to control all the wealth, force people into sex. In one case a landowner forces a man to become his sexual partner. In another insidious use of power, a rich white man forces a woman to have sex by threatening to fire, not her, but all the other women cane cutters. Their families will starve.
Folks survive – most of them -- although there is no joy in their lives such as you see among folks in a similar situation in Brazil in Jorge Amado’s book Shepherds of the Night. On the other hand, there is no joy because there is no joy in this Mudville.
I do have one bone to pick with the author: too much dialect. It’s nice to get a flavor of how folks talk but the numerous long passages of dialect like this can get annoying: “Boy, ah doh know what to do, de ooman come quite in de town to show up in front ah all dem people. Ah doh know if ah have de courage to show me face dey again.”
Still a decent read. Only 125 pages. It’s hard to know the time frame. I had the feeling of maybe 1940-ish? There is almost no information that I could find about the author on the web other than that he was of Asian Indian heritage, grew up in Trinidad, also wrote a play, and died in 1995. It’s a pretty obscure book. I’m the only reviewer on GR and one other person rated it.
Both images from wikiwand. The photo shows indentured Indian laborers arriving on Trinidad. They came as late as 1917 so this photo was perhaps taken in the early 1900s. The map shows Trinidad and Tobago off the northeast coast of South America (Venezuela)
January 21, 2024
Readind the World: Trinidad and Tobago
January 5, 2025
This was so boring I couldn't even finish it. The tone was so whiny and repetitive. There wasn't much of a story as far as I could make out, none of the characters really jumped out as interesting, too much local dialect in the dialogue... . Cool cover art though.
This is a pretty obscure book, but there's a tiny bit of info about the author here: https://hardcrackers.com/a-small-slic...
This is his first and only novel before he popped his clogs. It's also not very good. Perhaps if it was trimmed down to novella length and the dialect was not so excessive to the point of unreadability it could have been alright. As it is, it's just too unfocused and prioritizes background color over story far too much.
This is a pretty obscure book, but there's a tiny bit of info about the author here: https://hardcrackers.com/a-small-slic...
This is his first and only novel before he popped his clogs. It's also not very good. Perhaps if it was trimmed down to novella length and the dialect was not so excessive to the point of unreadability it could have been alright. As it is, it's just too unfocused and prioritizes background color over story far too much.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews