Kunapipi XXVII:1

JOYCE JOHNSON
‘Is Not Story, Is the Gospel Truth’: Fact and Fiction in Ian Strachan’s God’s Angry Babies

‘We all live within the stories we tell, for these tales fashion a coherent direction and identity out of the discontinuities of our past, present, and future.’ (Drew Gilpin Faust, 2)

Have faith to face, Caonoba
the tree-green seas rolled down
one doubt will smash the garden
shatter the convex lawn
drown the three nuns of fear.
(Edward Braithwaite ‘The Cracked Mother’ 180)

In God’s Angry Babies, Ian Strachan interweaves different types and styles of discourse as he examines the extent to which stories circulating at a popular level within a community colour people’s vision of reality and influence behaviour. Stories, as used in this discussion, include narratives describing events, and fictional stories as well as ‘ideologies, rationalizations and explanations’ (Faust 2). Type of discourse refers to the distinctions which are made, for example, between myth, legend, folktale, autobiographical writing, news report and letter. Differences in style are created by the mixture of language varieties, the use of figurative language, shifts between direct and indirect speech, and the patterns of rhythm and tonal qualities resulting from these. Much of Strachan’s material is derived from the performance culture of Bahamian oral tradition, but he also specifically relates his stories to the language of ‘classrooms and offices, lawyers and library books’ (Strachan 13) stemming from British scribal tradition. The interaction between the two traditions which resulted in the Bahamian Creole, the local vernacular language, reflects both the nature of the society which Strachan describes and processes taking places within it. The heterogeneous sources which he brings together in the novel reflect the geographical fragmentation and cultural diversity of the Bahamas, which is situated on an archipelago and is inhabited by people of mixed African and European heritage. Strachan’s integration of different formal and stylistic elements suggests the process of creolisation by which native born Bahamians attempt to unite their society and reconcile divergent elements. Events described in the novel highlight stories which are used by politicians, social agencies like churches and schools, peer groups and family members to influence each other during this process of acculturation. Strachan depicts a central character who comes to disbelieve many of the stories which shaped his outlook. Like his prototype in Brathwaite’s poem cited above, he is ‘cracked’ by fear as his mind is inundated by doubt.