Louisiana: A Novel

by Erna Brodber

This is the first American publication of Brodber's eagerly awaited third novel. In A Novel she explores her continuing fascination with the power of the past to live in the present.

Here, Ella Townsend, a young African American anthropologist whose roots are Caribbean, researches Louisiana folklife and discovers not only the world of voodoo and carnival but also the mystical connection of the living and the dead. With her tape recorder she explores the rich heritage of Creole Louisiana, but Mammy, Ella's primary informant, dies during the project. Then from beyond the grave she continues to transmit messages. Although the academically minded Ella is dubious about the authenticity of the medium, gradually, as she confronts her prejudices, the tapes convey enriching mysteries about the past lives of Mammy and her friend Lowly. From this supernatural experience, Ella learns much about herself and her background. Louisiana celebrates the magico-religious culture of hoodoo, conjure, obeah, and myal.

Like Brodber's previous works, A Novel and Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home , Louisiana reveals the author's fascinating gift of myth-making. The Louisiana of her title represents two places sharing the same name―the American state and Brodber's native parish in Jamaica. Through this blending of localities, Brodber shows how elements from the African diaspora are kept alive in the Creole culture of the Americas.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Read For School, Novels

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Erna 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)

Reviews

[Gregory Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chapter One was indecipherable, and then it approved majorly, but then it entirely bored me. The concept is wonderful, reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston's actual life until the fabulism hits, but it wanes as it goes along, although it provides a fascinating abstract solution to the gaps left between members of the African diaspora. This is a conversation piece rather than an aesthetic work unto itself for me.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s honestly hard to put into words how I feel about this novel. Louisiana is at times (especially in the first section) extremely confusing, but I think the payoff is wealth worth the careful attention you need to pay while reading this work. In my academic studies, I largely work with the interplay of race and memory, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that I enjoyed Louisiana as much as I did, as those are exactly the themes this novel is investigating at its core. However, I didn’t simply enjoy Louisiana. The book affected me in ways I’m still trying to parse out. It is moving, both emotionally and sensorially, and I think it’s a work I’m going to be contemplating for a while.

[Sammy Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brodber is weaving this mysterious, interlocked lore that connects the mysterious and otherworldly to our earthly experience and human history. I started reading the novel with the belief that the Editor's note was true, and only later looked into it to find it was part of the narrative. Using the convention of a prologue/note from the editor to introduce an aspect of the story, Brodber makes this rather liminal space where the reader is unsure of what is fact and what is fiction; what is folklore and what is history. Thematically, very much a peek at what is to come for the rest of the story, with its elements of the supernatural and Ella's struggle in understanding Truth (big T) in her search to document Louisiana's black history through Mammy.

I tend to really enjoy this almost stream-of-consciousness style (I think it carries over from my love of poetry) but it definitely requires some more work to suss out what's going on within each scene, who is talking, and then the vernacular on top of that. I think each two page spread takes me a couple read-throughs, so it's slow going but so rewarding. The section on page 43 where she talks about certain words controlling large spaces, sitting over large holes, really struck me--these words, like manhole covers or sidewalk grates, obscure dreadful unknown spaces and followed her along her path. I thought this, particularly in the context of her hearing voices from unknown sources, was so eerie and such a cool way to use language as almost a character itself. A complex rabbit hole of understanding and tracking history when it has been denied to a people, and finding new ways of archiving that history.

[Ayesha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to restart this 5 times in 2 years. It was worth it. The book's description of its contents tells you what it is about: an anthropologist trying to collect oral history from an elder mother of the Black southern U.S. she’s interrupted by her subject's death, but oh so so much more. What it can’t tell you, is just how the writer inhabits the dense complex layers of history, 'high science' kinships, ways of knowing and love through language.

One of those times I finished, and flipped right back to the first page with eager anticipation.

Phew

[Seth Shimelfarb-Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Omfg. Jarvis Mccinnis was right. This is a manifesto on a discarded, beautiful, and invisible epistemic register that exists within the Blck RadicalTradition. I just cried hard af in Park Guell reading the last section of this book. There’s too much to say. Anyone thinking through memory, diaspora, and knowledge production needs to read this book. It’s such a beautiful book. Such a beautiful book. I’m truly and absolutely floored. It’s hard and confusing and your lost and that’s ok!!! Why would that not be ok?? Wow. Just wow.

[Lauryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Who has the power to name things? How do time and space function when it’s possible to communicate beyond the grave? Ella is an anthropologist sent from Columbia to collect histories; does it count if it’s collected psychically? NOTE: just keep reading! The first chapter is near incomprehensible but it gets explained, I swear.

[James G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Encouraged to read Erna Brodber following a scholarly symposium at MoAD on "Coffee, Rhum, Sugar & Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox." Somehow it's taken me months actually to finish this 166 page gem. I recommend it

[Maggie Trail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting read. I gleaned a lot from Brodber’s use of literary devices to convey mystical themes and experiences within the text. I appreciated the strength of the relationships between the characters.

[Anahita Khorsand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely difficult read, but it made it even more satisfying to understand its message.

[Lydia Hendricks · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am becoming
beautiful beautiful beautiful

[phie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The January 1954 entry was heartbreakingly stunning, but I could not wrap my head around this multi-stream of consciousness idea. ):

[Frank Romagosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel has a conversation about slavery and the world it created by animating Zora Neal Hurston's real character - a first anthropologist, someone who traveled from Eatonville, Florida to New York City and back home to that small town armed with a tape recorder to uncover the trace of tales of the dead who yet live. In Brodber's book, Ella Townsend likewise is armed with a reel-to-reel machine, which records voices of the living and the long-dead. We follow the trace of this young woman as she learns how to speak with the dead whose voices her recording machine has captured .. the machine does not merely record the past, but revives it. But such is the nature of history when it's about the Caribbean ... and about THAT past, by what device to remember the past.This book makes the book itself a machine for memory, its own construction from preface to narrative to afterward part of how fiction becomes historical. This book will amaze as a tangible object, every page is part of the book's craft, pages that seem to seep to the covers, and through the binding.

[Haley Direnzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes some effort to get into and truly understand but the way Brodber ties it all together is so beautiful. A story of a woman who discovers so much about herself, her history and culture as you learn with her. Not a conventional novel, a bit out of order and hard to follow in some places but if you take the effort you will enjoy.

[m. soria · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm not even sure how to explain how great this writing is. erna laced every sentence with magic.

[Suzie Q · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good concept but hard to stay interested in it because it was hard to tell what was going on at times.

[jewelthinks · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was kinda hard to follow in the beginning, but once you get into the groove it's actually quite genius how she pulls off the mingling of the various voices, etc.

i'd suggest reading it twice.