Crossing the Mangrove

Content Warning: The text depicts racism (including colorism, slurs, and outdated terminology), ableism, anti-gay bias, abortion attempts without the mother’s consent, misogyny, and incest, and discusses sati (a form of suicide), sexual assault (including a case involving an underage character), death by childbirth, child death, enslavement, torture, and murder.

Despite the Creolization or cultural blending in Guadeloupe (specifically, Rivière au Sel), rigid hierarchies exist—sometimes with no regard for intersectionality. This is apparent in the actions and words of characters, who, despite their own mixed backgrounds, have a clear sense of where they stand in relation to others. Colonial legacy and patriarchy partly explain this tendency, especially in the Caribbean: After the Indigenous population was decimated by disease and warfare, white settlers repopulated the land with enslaved African people, as well as indentured Indian and Chinese people. Despite the subregion’s mixing of languages, religions, and cultural products (such as music), as well as marriages, racial separation remained. White settlers depended on Eurocentric theories to maintain their privilege and to perpetuate internalized racism. For example, Social Darwinism claims some races are more “evolved,” and thus deserving to rule others. This mentality can be seen in the casta paintings of Spain and Portugal, which identified racial and social status based on racial make-up. While light skin is not unanimous with privilege, Crossing the Mangrove correlates it with privilege. For example, Loulou tries to reason with Sancher on daughter Mira’s behalf by arguing they are all on the same side: “[…] they soiled their blood with Negro women; in your case it must have been with an Indian” (100). He comes from a family known and respected by the village “because they were almost white, because they lived in a house with ‘Private’ written on the gate” (144). In other words, the family’s mix of light skin and wealth grants them privilege—which Loulou assumes Sancher is equally willing to weaponize.

While there are many examples of racial mixing in the novel, it rarely comes without a price: As Loulou alludes to, “Gabriel the first of the Lameaulnes, a white Creole from Martinique,” was “hounded out by his family because he married a Negress” (7). Despite his racism and marriage to a white woman, Loulou follows suit by taking Mira’s Black mother as a mistress. The bodies of Black women, whether light or dark-skinned, are eroticized and exoticized throughout the novel, as they were throughout colonial history. For example, real-life figure Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman, known colloquially as the “Hottentot Venus,” was exhibited naked in freak shows for European men. The men of Rivière au Sel treat Mira in a similar way, dehumanizing yet desiring her. Rumors of her sexual assault by Sancher suggest other men’s desire to do the same; yet, they judge her for being “fallen,” as they do sex workers simply trying to support themselves.

Fear of racial mixing is not limited to light-skinned people not wanting to “soil” their blood, as Mama Sonson is horrified by her second son’s marriage to a white woman. To her, white people will always be enslavers. Half-Chinese postman Moïse is bullied for his looks, leading to self-victimization, and when Carmélien presents Mira with a gift, she responds with an Indian slur out of internalized racism. With this fear of racial mixing comes the danger of sibling incest, of one sibling unknowingly loving the product of a father’s affair. Incest does occur in the novel, but the siblings in question pursue it knowingly: Aristide is unable to resist his light-skinned half-sister, and as much as Mira claims their relationship was consensual, he pressured her. In this, the novel deconstructs the idea of a perfect victim, presenting its characters as beholden to classism, racism, and misogyny, but no less susceptible to harming and judging others for similar intersectionality.