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Nothing's Mat
Nothing’s Mat is told by a black British teenager – “every black girl” – for she has no name until the very last chapters when she is teasingly called “Princess” by her husband. Somewhere in the 1950s London-based Princess is allowed to complete her sixth-form final exams by writing a long paper on the West Indian family instead of sitting an exam. She thinks this a godsend and that all she has to do is to interview her parents. Her father tries to help her with his side but they both find that their kin will not fit into the standard anthropological template. Her father thinks it a good time for her to go to Jamaica and meet her grandparents, who can better help her with her study. In Jamaica, much as her middle-class black Jamaican grandparents and her parents in England might not have liked it, Princess meets and spends time with her obscure cousin Nothing, called Conut. Conut introduces Princess to a plant that obeys certain divine principles and is available to humans to make artefacts for their comfort. Accordingly, they begin to make a mat and as they twist straw and bend it into intricate shapes, Conut tells her the family history so that their creation becomes for her a mat of anthropological template. The resulting shape presented to her teacher earns her an A and the comment that she has managed to project the West Indian family as a fractal rather than fractured as the published literature sees it. Her studies and subsequent academic career take her to London University and then back to Jamaica, but under-stimulated by the academy, she chooses to continue the family study from high school and to do so by crafting the information into the mat, which becomes for her a shield against spiritual and physical evil. Making the mat of ancestors takes her into myriad histories of young Englishmen in Jamaica, of Jamaican women in Panama, and of African Americans in Virginia, among others. This work is at once a fictional family history and a comment on anthropological methodology and African systems of thought.
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2014
6 people are currently reading
121 people want to read
About the author
Erna Brodber
21 books40 followersErna Brodber (born 20 April 1940) is a Jamaican writer, sociologist and social activist.
Born in Woodside, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica, she gained a B.A. from the University College of the West Indies, followed by an M.Sc and Ph.D. She subsequently worked as a civil servant, teacher, sociology lecturer, and at the Institute for Social and Economic Research in Mona, Jamaica.
She is the author of four novels: Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (1980), Myal (1988), Louisiana (1994) and The Rainmaker's Mistake (2007). She won the Caribbean and Canadian regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for Myal. In 1999 she received the Jamaican Musgrave Gold Award for Literature and Orature. Brodber currently works as a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer in Jamaica. She is currently Writer in Residence at the University of the West Indies.
(from Wikipedia)
Born in Woodside, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica, she gained a B.A. from the University College of the West Indies, followed by an M.Sc and Ph.D. She subsequently worked as a civil servant, teacher, sociology lecturer, and at the Institute for Social and Economic Research in Mona, Jamaica.
She is the author of four novels: Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home (1980), Myal (1988), Louisiana (1994) and The Rainmaker's Mistake (2007). She won the Caribbean and Canadian regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for Myal. In 1999 she received the Jamaican Musgrave Gold Award for Literature and Orature. Brodber currently works as a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer in Jamaica. She is currently Writer in Residence at the University of the West Indies.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 15, 2024
What a beautiful story of stories. A whole heritage weaved within this mat, carefully crafted and preserved, personal histories as a monument. Amazing. And what a beautiful quote at the very last page:
"The abandonment and adoption are part of the pattern, part of our truth and as such need to be known. The children will find a way of expressing this, I know, even if it means finding another heaven-blessed plant, making it into strings, shaping these strings into circles with their own recursions and iterations. The experience will certainly connect them to another set of kin and another set of happy energy. They won't know the nothingness that set me to completing Nothing's mat, because they understand more about ancestral spirits and energy than I knew at thirty. I do feel that I have accomplished something: I have set them off on the right path".
The next generation will create their own mat, their own monument of memories and personal histories. And wow, this is truly beautiful.
"The abandonment and adoption are part of the pattern, part of our truth and as such need to be known. The children will find a way of expressing this, I know, even if it means finding another heaven-blessed plant, making it into strings, shaping these strings into circles with their own recursions and iterations. The experience will certainly connect them to another set of kin and another set of happy energy. They won't know the nothingness that set me to completing Nothing's mat, because they understand more about ancestral spirits and energy than I knew at thirty. I do feel that I have accomplished something: I have set them off on the right path".
The next generation will create their own mat, their own monument of memories and personal histories. And wow, this is truly beautiful.
December 17, 2017
I found this book accidentally while browsing in Kingston Bookshop at the Post Office Mall in Liguanea. I was drawn to the picture on the cover which on closer inspection I realised to be a photograph of a woven mat which used to be a common sight in Jamaican homes when I was a child. I opened the book and read a few pages and was intrigued:
The story is essentially about a girl who was born to jamaican parents, grew up in England, and came to Jamaica in the summer of her sixth form year to work on a project for school credit on her family tree. She is researching her father's side of the family, and comes to stay with her paternal grandparents, and through a serendipitous turn of events, finds herself spending time with a relative named Cousin Nothing (Conut) who it turns out is the best person to trace for the protagonist her family history...which does not fit into the neat stepwise standard family tree. So Conut teaches her to weave a mat...of the sort seen on the cover which consists of circles of different sizes connected to each other. Each circle represents a family member, and is connected to other circles to form the complete mat. The protagonist gets top grades for her assignment, and later continues her search into her family's history. The hills and valleys that journey leads her through is the rest of the story which I will not recount because it is well worth reading.
The story includes a first person account of the Morant Bay Rebellion which made that dry fact we learned in history class come a live in a way I would never have imagined in. The story is set in Jamaica and most of it in the rural parts of Jamaica, and again for me I revel in being able to read a book where I can actually identify settings and character types because they are places and people I have encountered having spent most of my life in Jamaica. Her female characters exemplify in Shaggy's words, "the strength of a woman" whether it be in farming, setting up a business, protecting a child, or simply surviving in a world where men seem to be born with advantages that are not afforded to women.
At the end of the book, the protagonist is explaining to her son how it is that people who are not "blood relatives" are still part of their family and included in the mat. This is the answer she gives him:
"Modibe, when our people came to this part of the world from Africa, we didn't come as blood relations. We didn't come as brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers already knowing and loving each other. We came as individuals without family and friends, strangers in a strange place, and like all human beings, needing to love and be loved. In the absence of family, we loved anyone we could find, and were grateful for the love that anyone gave to us. So we have a history of loving and being loved not because we are blood relations but because God has put us in each other's way and we find something in each other to preserve, admire and to care for....We feel for each other and carry each other's pain and blessing so much so that if the designated one cannot or will not perform, we take on the task. Just so we must have cried and screamed when one of us fell beneath the lash, too weak to cry out for herself"
I think those words speak for themselves. This is an excellent book to read, not just for entertainment, but for better understanding of what "family" means in jamaica. In fact it worth tow or three reads to fully absorb the beauty of the writing.
The story is essentially about a girl who was born to jamaican parents, grew up in England, and came to Jamaica in the summer of her sixth form year to work on a project for school credit on her family tree. She is researching her father's side of the family, and comes to stay with her paternal grandparents, and through a serendipitous turn of events, finds herself spending time with a relative named Cousin Nothing (Conut) who it turns out is the best person to trace for the protagonist her family history...which does not fit into the neat stepwise standard family tree. So Conut teaches her to weave a mat...of the sort seen on the cover which consists of circles of different sizes connected to each other. Each circle represents a family member, and is connected to other circles to form the complete mat. The protagonist gets top grades for her assignment, and later continues her search into her family's history. The hills and valleys that journey leads her through is the rest of the story which I will not recount because it is well worth reading.
The story includes a first person account of the Morant Bay Rebellion which made that dry fact we learned in history class come a live in a way I would never have imagined in. The story is set in Jamaica and most of it in the rural parts of Jamaica, and again for me I revel in being able to read a book where I can actually identify settings and character types because they are places and people I have encountered having spent most of my life in Jamaica. Her female characters exemplify in Shaggy's words, "the strength of a woman" whether it be in farming, setting up a business, protecting a child, or simply surviving in a world where men seem to be born with advantages that are not afforded to women.
At the end of the book, the protagonist is explaining to her son how it is that people who are not "blood relatives" are still part of their family and included in the mat. This is the answer she gives him:
"Modibe, when our people came to this part of the world from Africa, we didn't come as blood relations. We didn't come as brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers already knowing and loving each other. We came as individuals without family and friends, strangers in a strange place, and like all human beings, needing to love and be loved. In the absence of family, we loved anyone we could find, and were grateful for the love that anyone gave to us. So we have a history of loving and being loved not because we are blood relations but because God has put us in each other's way and we find something in each other to preserve, admire and to care for....We feel for each other and carry each other's pain and blessing so much so that if the designated one cannot or will not perform, we take on the task. Just so we must have cried and screamed when one of us fell beneath the lash, too weak to cry out for herself"
I think those words speak for themselves. This is an excellent book to read, not just for entertainment, but for better understanding of what "family" means in jamaica. In fact it worth tow or three reads to fully absorb the beauty of the writing.
January 24, 2016
Not just any family, Erna has woven together magic
"“But isn’t that how science goes! My presentation did not use the straight lines and arrows that one normally sees in family trees. I used the circles as in Conut’s mat. My parents were a bit worried but they saw that it made sense and they felt that my teachers were flexible enough to give credit to innovation where it was useful. I got an A for my paper and learnt two new words – “iteration” and “recursion”. I was not sure I knew what they meant then, but Miss had said that these were the principles we used in making the mat. “Your end is your beginning,” she quoted from Conut and smiled. “In what odd places does wisdom reside,” she added. “The literature speaks of the West Indian family as ‘fractured’; you might be able to prove that it is a fractal” was the comment she made at the bottom of my paper. I knew this was a positive one and did not let the fact that it didn’t make sense to me detain me. I was just happy to get my A, to have passed my exams and to be out of sixth form and on my way to university. It was a really unforeseen thing that caused me to be back in Jamaica.”
"“But isn’t that how science goes! My presentation did not use the straight lines and arrows that one normally sees in family trees. I used the circles as in Conut’s mat. My parents were a bit worried but they saw that it made sense and they felt that my teachers were flexible enough to give credit to innovation where it was useful. I got an A for my paper and learnt two new words – “iteration” and “recursion”. I was not sure I knew what they meant then, but Miss had said that these were the principles we used in making the mat. “Your end is your beginning,” she quoted from Conut and smiled. “In what odd places does wisdom reside,” she added. “The literature speaks of the West Indian family as ‘fractured’; you might be able to prove that it is a fractal” was the comment she made at the bottom of my paper. I knew this was a positive one and did not let the fact that it didn’t make sense to me detain me. I was just happy to get my A, to have passed my exams and to be out of sixth form and on my way to university. It was a really unforeseen thing that caused me to be back in Jamaica.”
February 13, 2021
"...when our people came to this part of the world from Africa we didn't come as blood relations. We didn't come as brothers and sisters and mothers and father already knowing and loving each other. We came as individuals without family and without friends, strangers in a strange place, and like all human beings, needing to love and be loved. In the absence of family, we loved anyone we could find and were grateful for the love that anybody gave to us. So we have a history of loving and being loved not because we are blood relations but because God has put us in each other's way and we find something in each other to preserve, admire and to care for."
This book is beautiful.
This book is beautiful.
August 31, 2017
I bit complicated to read and has a great concept. I appreciated reading it, but I can't say I liked it. It's very rich in narrative but slow in plot.
August 20, 2022
I found this really difficult to get into and even though it’s so short, it took me over a month to finish (although it’s a great deal bigger than the average book, so maybe it would actually be around the 300 page mark if it was of average book size.)
Whilst the way in which the story was delivered was perhaps not to my tastes, the story itself was really something. I enjoyed seeing how each character tied into the next and feel like the character development was done really well. I’m glad I read it.
Whilst the way in which the story was delivered was perhaps not to my tastes, the story itself was really something. I enjoyed seeing how each character tied into the next and feel like the character development was done really well. I’m glad I read it.
January 10, 2024
this did something to my brain that i don't fully comprehend to this day
July 29, 2024
Beautiful
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews