Kunapipi XXVI:1

DOROTHY JONES
Writing the Silence: Fiction and Poetry of Marlene Nourbese Philip

Like many writers, Marlene Nourbese Philip is preoccupied with the limitations of language: how to make words convey the inexpressible, that which is beyond language. In her book Looking For Livingstone she writes of silence

Single
Solitary
Unitary
is it?
this absence
of speech
Or legion—
wedged
In the between of words
A presence
absent the touch
the tarnish
in power
in conquest
Silence
Trappist
Celibate
seeking
The absolute
in Virgin
Whole (56)

T.S. Eliot describes the difficulties words pose for a writer.

Words stain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. (1963a V, ll. 13–17)

Despite their unsatisfactoriness, however, writers depend on words to communicate. As Eliot’s character, Sweeny, declares: ‘I gotta use words when I talk to you’ (1963c 135). But, for Philip, a black woman raised in the Caribbean and currently living in Canada, the problem is greatly compounded. Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, has chosen to abandon English and write in his own tongue, Gikuyu, but Philip has no such option. As part of the African diaspora, which violently displaced her ancestors into New World slavery, she has no language or culture to truly call her own. In her essay ‘A Long-Memoried Woman’ she writes:

The policy of all slave-holding nations was to wipe clean the mind of the African slave; how else prevent rebellion, ensure passive workers and guarantee good Christians? The effect of this policy was the separation, wherever possible, of African slaves from others of the same linguistic groups. Slave-owners prohibited and punished the expression of African culture, language, music, religion, or dress, thereby denying any validity to the African world view. (56)