Spirits in the Dark

by H. Nigel Thomas

Jerome Quashee undergoes a religious ritual, blocking all sensual links to the outside world, in order to see clearly into his past and find the sources of the pain and guilt that torment his soul. H. Nigel Thomas writes with compelling honesty about the confusing maze of pressures that paralyse Jerome. His intelligence at first promises him a gateway out of the poverty his parents have known, but he must compete with privileged White boys for scholarships in a racist, class-ridden culture. He wrestles both with the guilt of knowing so little about his African heritage and the simultaneous pressure to think, speak and act as a White person. And he will bring disgrace on his family if he does not repress his emerging homosexuality.

Genres: LGBT, Queer, 20th Century, Fiction

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

H Nigel Thomas was born in St Vincent. He attended university in Montreal and for ten years was a teacher with the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. He is now professor of literature at Laval University. His published works include the novel Spirits in the Dark, which was short-listed for the 1994 Quebec Writers’ Federation Hugh MacLennan Fiction Award; How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow, short fiction; and Moving through Darkness, poetry.

Reviews

[Ren]

"He resented whiteness as a reference point: sometimes he tried to replace it with greed, the drive to control others, and tribalism, but those terms always gave way to whiteness and blackness, and he wondered when he would stop being a shadow of England and a person in his own right."p.159

I buddy read 'Spirits in the Dark' with a friend from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and one of the first things she said about the novel in our discussion was that there is no Isabella Island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It made me wonder why author H. Nigel Thomas chose to fictionalize the setting of the plot, but not any other location referenced in the text (e.g. 'America', 'England,' etc. are all written about by name). I can only assume it's to create the opportunity for generalization, which would only make if the assumed/intended audience was a non-Vincentian one.

Unlike Barbadian author George Lamming's 'In the Castle of My Skin' (referenced by name in 'Spirits in the Dark' as a contentious book read by a primarily white class in St. Vincent that causes trouble among the students when the Black minority of the class support Lamming's representation of a white plantation owner), 'Spirits in the Dark' comes across as having been written for a white audience.

Much of the focus of the protagonist, Jerome's, inner turmoil centers around his identity as an educated Black man struggling to thrive in a recently independent former British colony. Through this lens we see how he is forced to be twice as good as his white classmates only to get half as much (or less). Unlike his white classmates, he isn't able to cut up because while they would risk (at worst) a slap on the wrist if caught, he risks expulsion.

The existence of this sort of caste system is something his white friend and classmate, Peter, tries to empathize with, but cannot. And despite his earnest attempts to express how (what we would now call) 'woke' he is, how much he understands the situation -- perhaps even better than Jerome does himself-- Jerome never rewards him by letting him off the hook as 'one of the good ones' and in fact grows increasingly irritated with him, especially after an exchange during which Peter accuses Jerome of giving him and the other white students 'the cold shoulder.'

"Why don't you play soccer with us after school sometimes? The other Black boys play with us. We do all sorts of things together. You don't even listen when we talk to you. [...] It's not my fault that I'm White. And it isn't myfault that I'm British." (p.74)

It was this exchange that made me suspect the intended audience of 'Spirits in the Dark' was white people. As someone who has been this white person, I can say with my full chest that it is deeply cringe to whine like this, as though anyone owes you their friendship just because you want it and just because you think not being racist entitles you to it. Stop that.

Moving on.

As the novel progresses, Jerome's exasperation and irritation with well-meaning white people begins to metamorphose into flat mistrust and hatred, culminating in him blacking out while having sex with a white-passing colleague. Later, she reveals to him that he tried to choke her. "I can' help how I look Jerome," she says. "and now that yo' tell me yo' choke me that night cause yo' think I White, I think I woulda prefer not to know. I woulda prefer to think of you as a weirdo."(p.159)

What's interesting about this plotline is how it illustrates the complexity of racialized generational trauma. Of course it's not acceptable for Jerome to go around choking out random women he perceives to be white, nor is it fair to instantly mistrust a someone just because they're white (especially when the white people we see him interact with are in large part not bad people), but it is understandable why growing up under a cultural legacy of racialized oppression would result in a hatred of 'whiteness'. And, I mean, yeah. 'Whiteness', conceptually, is something most people should be leery of--white people included.

'Spirits in the Dark' masterfully demonstrates how high a task it is to ask a person to interpersonally compartmentalize very raw feelings of resentment while at the same time not condoning or rationalizing generalized prejudice. 'In the Castle of My Skin' grapples with this push and pull as well, but not as a main plot thread.

Racial tension between white and Black people isn't the only thing 'Spirits in the Dark' is about, though. While we do spend a lot of time on it, we spend just as much, if not more, on the racial tension between Black residents of the island, where in many ways, the racial hierarchy imposed by whiteness is upheld; the closer a person is to 'passing' as white, the better off the are socially. This is most thoroughly explored when a group of Ghanian students arrive on the island for a few weeks of cultural exchange.

We see through their interactions with the islanders how, over the course of many years of colonisation, 'African' has become synonymous with 'backwards' and 'barbaric.' He writes of how the islanders would tell stories of African cannibalism and how 'African' was used as an insult. Whereas, on the other hand, British culture is a bar of civilization to be met: "While he walked the half mile home he thought about bad English and good English and he decided he would speak good
English, the English the librarian spoke. Not the English his mother spoke." (p.6)

And yet, even if he "is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of [Britain's] cultural standards" (Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks), he will always be Black.

It is while showing one of the Ghanian boys around that Jerome (and the reader) is first directly confronted with the simultaneous truths that Black people are not a monolith, and yet there are many shared experiences between Black people even when they are from countries with vastly different cultures. And the experience that binds Black people together and forms the backbone of the Black identity is: subjugation under whiteness; a bond through shared historical trauma.

And then, as though these two themes weren't enough for so small a novel, Thomas adds one more layer of complexity: Jerome is gay.

Being rejected by the academic world he loves is one thing; in some ways it's something that doesn't surprise him. But his investment in literature and academia more broadly isolates him from his family (his father often pooh-poohing his son's 'obsession' with reading). He finds it hard to fit in with his 'own people.' Then he begins having sexual thoughts about other boys, something he knows, were he to act upon those thoughts, would at best get him ostracized and at worst...

Jerome can't stifle or hide being Black, but he can stifle and hide the fact that he's gay. And he does. For thirty years.

He tries to find community in the Christian church, but ultimately rejects it when he realizes Christianity is just another tool of subjugation--something pointed out by one of the Ghanaian students at the beginning:

"Every British boy knows about King Arthur and St. George. Every Jew knows about Abraham. The first thing missionaries do is spread propaganda about their heroes and force others to give up theirs. You know why? Because when we adopt their heroes, we begin to think like them, we become destabilized, we begin to want to be like them, and then they can do whatever they like to us."(p.64)

After giving up on faith in a white Christian god, he succumbs to the mental pressure of trying and failing to fit in somewhere and has a nervous breakdown. Then another one. And another one.

In the end, in a last-ditch effort to find peace within himself and to feel a sense of belonging he's been missing his entire life, he decides to join the Esosusu (Spiritualist Baptists), a religious sect that is a fusion of Christianity and West African spiritualism. In order to join, he must first undergo a spiritual cleansing in the form of spending three days more or less isolated in a pitch-black room.

Whether or not his attempt at psychic healing is ultimately a success, I leave for you to discover when you read the novel yourself.

[Mia]

It is a testament to Spirits in the Dark that, up until more than halfway through the book, I didn’t know that its setting—Isabella Island—was fictional. I learned this when I tried to find it on a map and couldn’t; confused, I thought maybe it was the older name of an island that was recently renamed. It was only when I found somebody’s college thesis that mentioned “Thomas’s fictional Isabella” in passing that I realized how thoroughly the environment of this novel had been considered.

It’s inspired, no doubt, by St. Vincent, where H. Nigel Thomas was born and raised. The two share the same size, colonial history, and geographical position (though Isabella seems to be shifted slightly southward, closer to Trinidad). We get an incredibly deep picture of Isabella’s history, economy, culture, religion, and racial makeup, conveyed so naturally through our protagonist Jerome.

He’s a challenging, complicated figure. Haughty, cold, intelligent, and—more than anything—terrified. Terrified to connect with people, terrified to have sex, terrified to embrace his culture and heritage, terrified to love. In light of Jerome’s homosexuality, the phrase “coming out” is interesting, because this is ultimately a story about “coming in”—moving from self-exile into community. More relevant than ever, in our increasingly atomized society, where so many of us are lonely and distant and crave community. I also think a lot of us crave transformative experiences or rites like the journey Jerome goes on, sealed in total darkness in a cave and forced to confront his own worldview, failings, fears.

You gotta walk that lonesome valley
You gotta walk it by yourself
Nobody else can walk it for you
You gotta walk it by yourself

Jerome’s vision of heaven was genuinely moving. And looking back, I’m not surprised I found that college paper—you could easily write several dissertations on this book: the mythology of Africa in colonial nations; neurosis and sexuality in literature; Caribbean masculinities. I won’t be writing any of those, but I appreciated the glimpses into them.

Hugely underrated gem.
____________________

Global Challenge: St. Vincent and the Grenadines

[Elton Johnson]

"No light going to be in the cave. No vision must come from outside. All your sight must turn inward, on your soul."

― H. Nigel Thomas, Spirits in the Dark

It started strong but then it started to meander into territories, some I loved exploring but some were heavy and made me feel lost. An overall good book. Definitely deserves to exist and does a great justice to the complexities of Caribbean life. Where it loses me is because I like a leaner reading experience and this one meandered. Still, I recommend you read this book.

[Rhoda]

This was my read the world selection for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

This is the story of Jerome Quashee growing up on a small (fictional) Caribbean island in relative poverty. As he is a clever boy, he is given a chance to get a better education than his parents, but must compete against privileged white boys in the island’s class-ridden culture.

Jerome suffers from a lot of guilt; he feels he doesn’t know enough about his African heritage, feels pressured to speak and behave like a white person and feels that he will disgrace his family if he acknowledges his homosexuality. When his mental health hits rock bottom, he turns to the Esosusu (Spiritualist Baptists) to undergo a spiritual cleansing.

I found three-quarters of this book quite interesting and the author writes well, apart from his overuse of “he” - half the time, I had no idea which “he” was being referred to. Otherwise, it was interesting to have a perspective of growing up as a person of Caribbean/African descent under British rule and the associated racism and whitewashing of history.

The last quarter of the story involved a lot of religious talk which I did not find remotely interesting and as it formed the conclusion of the story, I have to say it changed my overall perspective of the book. ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5.

[K's Bognoter]

A coming-of-age novel reflecting on the protagonist's experience of growing up on a small Caribbean island and gradually coming to terms with his own identity as homosexual, black and Carribean. The novel is worthwhile the read for H. Nigel Thomas' elaborations on a lot of issues of identity concerning race, sexuality, language, religion, and social and economical status - as they are struggled with by the protagonst in a specific Carribean context (the novel is set on a fictive carribbean Island, which however seems very much inspired by the authors native island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines).

Read the full book review at bognoter.dk (in Danish): https://bognoter.dk/2019/01/10/h-nige...

[Hannah]

Global Read 156: St. Vincent & The Grenadines

There is a ton packed into this 200 page novel- meditations on spirituality, race, colonialism, coming of age, religion, sexuality. It means that each thing gets a very shallow treatment. It is rare that I think a book should be longer, but H. Nigel Thomas is such a good writer, and he addresses each of these topics in such an interesting and innovative way that I would have liked to read a deeper treatment on each of them.

[Cheryl]

3.5 stars

[hariririririri 8000]

for english class. not sure how i feel

[Zionijah Melobleu]

A landmark of Vincentian literature.

[Michael Belcher]

3.5/5–With the feverish, overstuffed wisdom of another first novel—James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”—H. Nigel Thomas gives us the singular Jerome who, like the saint who shares his name, lives like a hermit among his fellow islanders and is confronted with a spiritual crisis. Jerome is fascinated by the private lives behind the public facades of those around him, from whom he feels distanced. His repressed homosexuality and superior erudition separates him from them, and this results in a mix of scorn and emptiness in his heart, though he’s capable of great fatherly generosity to his younger brother. To feel whole, his intellect and soul must meet in an epic battle in the pitch black bowels of his island, which proceeds like a surreal scene out of “Beau is Afraid” and holds the reader in its relentless sway.

Thomas’ prose is efficient, workmanlike—what he himself calls “as banal a style as possible”—but he has a recorder’s ear for dialogue. If one has the fortitude to push through the first 100 pages, which are as muddled, perhaps purposefully, as the protagonist himself, eliding past and present through the use of italics, the novel rewards its reader with both emotional and educational force. Infused with incisive class and race consciousness, the novel has much to say about the colonized Caribbean mind and how oppressors come in all shades, and reflects many of the bad faith tactics currently roiling North American school systems.