When Banana Stains Fade: A Jamaican Family Saga of Adversity and Redemption by Frances-Marie Coke
Spoilers: When Banana Stains Fade: A Jamaican Family Saga of Adversity and Redemption by Frances-Marie Coke is the second book in a row dealing with intergenerational conflicts concerning mother and daughters after Red Gifts in The Garden of Stones by P.A. Swanborough. While the latter trod a thin line between the reality of the family in question’s situation and the fantasy of their pagan past, the former has no such detours into the fantastic. It is firmly set in the reality of racism, poverty, classicism, gender inequality, domestic violence, and generational conflicts. All of this is in a setting that is quite familiar with this blog. In fact, it was a setting that was quite common in the books that I read and reviewed last year: Jamaica.
In 2002, Zarah left New York for her childhood home of Jamaica. Her parents, Esther and Bradley and grandmother, Naomi are worried and anxious about their daughter's sorrowful return and her memories of an unhappy abusive marriage left behind in New York. Esther’s concern is also joined by loving but strident remainders that she told Zarah that her marriage wouldn't end well. Her kind anxious demeanor often features acidic attacks on Zarah’s choices and personality. This behavior causes their already volatile relationship to become even more strained and leads to threats of estrangement between mother and daughter. Naomi views the conflict with empathy and understanding. After all she had been through something similar with Esther, just as her mother, Pearlie and Aunt Eudora had been through with her, and their mother, Agatha had been through with them. So the Reader is treated to over 100 years of Jamaican history seen through the eyes of five generations of six fascinating women.
What is particularly fascinating and compelling about this book is that it ignores the touristy side of Jamaica. Oh, some of it’s there: the beautiful landscape, the friendly hospitable locals, the Rastafarian religion and its beliefs. There is even a shout out to author Sir Ian Fleming, who made Jamaica his home as he wrote his James Bond novels. But they are largely left in the background. Instead, we are shown what life was and is like for the locals and all is definitely not paradise for the people who live there.
The forefront of the book features many of the truths that lie within Jamaica’s sandy beaches and reggae music. It is a history of colonization and racism. It is a present of poverty, economic disparity, and domestic violence. These issues are not treated with bold overlines and dramatic emphasis. Instead they are seen and experienced by the people, specifically the family that encounter them.
We are first told of Zarah’s return and her fractured relationship with her parents. We are then treated to a flashback of an affair that Esther had which ended in her divorce and Zarah’s anger at her mother. The majority of the book consists of flashbacks that begin in 1900 with Agatha, Zarah’s great great grandmother and Esther’s great grandmother. Through this family, we see the conflicts that mark one generation and cause friction with the next.
Agatha works in a sleepy town and is dominated by her religious family, particularly her father. She is told by women around her to just accept whatever treatment that she gets from men. With only that advice in hand, she enters into a relationship with Mas’ Watson, a well-off farmer. Watson gives Agatha two daughters: Eudora and Pearlie. Agatha works to gather and tag bananas to help support her family but can’t avoid the stares and innuendo that people have about her daughters.
People gossip about Pearlie’s darker skin compared to Eudora who is much lighter. They marvel at the latter’s perceived beauty and predict that she will go far in life. They shake their heads in dread at Pearlie and believe that she will have a future of hardship. Even Agatha’s attempts to straighten Pearlie’s hair or give her lemon juice to lighten her complexion do not hide her real appearance.
Many degrade the young girl and Mas’ Watson shows preferential treatment towards Eudora. This shows that even when many people are from the same race, there is unfortunately still division within that race. Sometimes there are stereotypical racist beliefs about the difference between people who are from the same basic skin color but whose shades are darker or lighter and hair is straight or curly.
The scrutiny of Agatha’s daughter’s different skin tones and accusations of whether they had different fathers fill the sisters’ lives up to when they attend school. The outrage becomes so bad that after she is raped, Pearlie runs away. She resides in another village where she gives birth to her daughter, Naomi and enters into a relationship with Bertie, a man whose family helps the single mother get back on her feet. Unfortunately, Pearlie’s happiness is cut short and Naomi finds herself alone and friendless like her mother.
Naomi ends up living with her cold religious Aunt Eudora. Eudora at first doesn’t even want to take in the girl but she is convinced to do so because of her commitment to Christian duty and how it would look within her community to reject her own flesh and blood. Out of rebellion, Naomi attends the local Catholic church and rejects many of the spiritual teachings from her aunt.
Naomi falls in love with Miles, a musician who spins fantasies within her about moving to America and starting a new life. That isn’t all that he spins within her. No sooner is she pregnant with her daughter, Esther, than she too is left behind like her mother and grandmother before her.
In the most harrowing section, Naomi enters an unhappy second marriage to Pastor Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s abusive and controlling nature is present as he micromanages her schedule down to prayer times and how long she can meet her friends. He won’t allow her to find a career outside of caring for his home and church. In a very classicist gesture, he forces her to stop using the Jamaican patois and speak the standard British English.
Because of her limited relationship with her biological family and limited resources, Naomi is trapped in an abusive marriage with someone who she thought was a man of God but turned out to be someone who thought that he was God and had a private church of two worshippers: his wife and stepdaughter.
A very terrifying encounter breaks Bloomfield’s hold on Naomi and Esther and the two rebuild their lives elsewhere. Naomi reverts to the spiritual beliefs that had always provided her comfort and in an act of defiance against her ex, reverts back to the Jamaican patois that he ridiculed.
With the generations of Agatha, Pearlie, Eudora, and Naomi we see mothers struggling with problems of racism, poverty, religious dogma, and domestic violence. Each one works and hopes that the younger generation will succeed where they failed. With Esther and Zarah, we see the results of those dashed dreams, the desire to escape, and how that unhappiness and disappointment played into their relationships as mother and daughter and the men in their lives.
Even though Esther had a comparatively happy marriage to Bradley as compared to her mother’s with Brookfield and great-grandmother’s with Mas’ Watson, even she had troubles. In 1988, Esther reunited with her former boyfriend, Patrick who lived an affluent life in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She had been living a meager existence with Bradley scraping for every dollar and was growing tired of the struggle. She dreamed not only of a different wealthy life in Florida but of the dashing man who could have given it to her.
Thoughts become actions during a hurricane and Esther ends up with a miscarriage, a divorce, and a resentful daughter. What was truly heartbreaking in hindsight was that Bradley is an easygoing, steady, kind hearted man. His laid back nature could have provided a contrast to Esther’s more rigid strident domineering control over Zarah’s life. Zarah could have had an ally when arguing with her mother. Instead she reacted to strictness with rebellion and ran away. Esther only realizes when Zarah returns that Bradley has a peculiar strength in his blundering kindness that she overlooked.
Zarah is considered the great hope of the family. Her mother puts enormous pressure on her to succeed well in school and have the right friends. She becomes something of an overachiever with dreams of escaping Jamaica. However, she also falls in love with Damien, considering him a reprieve from her mother’s tight control and secrets which caused her family to implode.
Unlike her antecedents, who only dreamt of a life away from the island, Zarah managed to get away and form a life for herself. But her independence came with a price tag: that of being married to the abusive Damien.
The freedom that Zarah thought that she would experience being away from Jamaica becomes even more of a trap in New York. She is beaten, insulted, and criticized. Worse, she is isolated in a new country where she is an immigrant and has very few friends.
However, Zarah continues to work and study, raising money in secret. She befriends a woman who takes a maternal interest into her life and helps steer her into a good direction. Zarah’s drive to get out of the abusive situation shows her to be someone who learned enough from the earlier generation to plan an escape and make a new life for herself even if it means retreating to the homes of Mom and Dad for a while.
Agatha, Pearlie, Eudora, Naomi, Esther, and Zarah all lived very difficult traumatic troubled lives but they found strength in other places. Sometimes it was through close friendships, surrogate family members, their religious faith, future goals, or aspirations. Most importantly they learned from each other. Even when they didn’t always get along and fought endlessly, their inner strength and love for each other is always shown as are their hopes that the daughters will have better lives than the mother’s.
Sometimes those dreams didn’t always come true and depended on the next generation to make it happen. Most importantly they had each other to find comfort, sanctuary, and guides to see them through the tough times and learn from them.
