(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
It is no news that the coverage of foreign news in the Norwegian media is very skewed, also in the channel we pay to stay informed. A search for "The Dominican Republic" on NRK radio yielded a single hit, while Google was most concerned with tempting beaches and coconut drinks (here it is in place with a little self-praise, for Ny Tid's website gave 13 hits). That a Norwegian publisher is now publishing a novel from the Caribbean island is therefore high time; the small publishing house Bokvennen should at all be honored for investing in the lesser-known literature. The maid of Omicunlé provides an insight into the sex tourism industry, slave-like working conditions and a far from hypothetical climate threat, all with dark echoes from a long colonial history. Far less comfortable than the turquoise sea against white sandy beaches – but the author's love for this very nature is an important driving force in the text.
Past, present, future. The maid of Omicunlé (La Mucama de Omicunlé Rita Indiana is at least as complex as a Caribbean dish, and the ingredients range from everything from Western pop music and literature theory to black magic and science fiction. If one is to point to one central point in this chaotic tale, it must become a magical sea anemone that can give people the ability to travel back in time. We are therefore at three different stages in the novel: one in the 17th century, in the midst of the ravages of the Spanish and French colonial powers, one in the early 2000s, when the Dominican Republic finally gained a parliamentary democracy, and one in 2027 , in something that cannot be described as anything other than a dystopian hell.
The Native American Ananí says she wants nothing to do with letters, "because it was nothing but rubbish and lies".
In the future scenario, all life in the sea is gone, and as a result of the many natural disasters that constantly hit the country, the inhabitants have given up showing care for each other – they all have more than enough with themselves. The novel begins with the protagonist Acilde, a transgender woman, washing in the house of the psychic Esther. She has been given a job as a domestic worker with the psychic, as a result of the new state religion Santería (akin to Haitian voodoo) has gained high status in the community. Although the new job involves a lot of effort and freedom, it has saved Acilde from life as a teenage prostitute,
The predatory operation against the arts. As she cleans Esther's house, she sees killing robots doing her "wash job" outside. As in good science fiction, the novel is subject to social criticism on many levels, but the most interesting is how technology has approached the currently widely mentioned singularity, while humanism has lost. Acilde has roaming integrated into the brain and can take a (admittedly very expensive) pill to change genders, but these advances feel meaningless to the reader as they build on a predatory drive on humans and nature that has gone completely crazy.
Such predatory behavior is not new in the Caribbean context. In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived Hispaniola, and in 1493 the island – today's Haiti and the Dominican Republic – was colonized by Spain. They tapped the island for sugar, coffee, tobacco and gold using African slaves. The indigenous people, the Taiwanese, received the same treatment as the Indians in the United States. In the 1600th century story of the novel, we meet Acilde as the lover of an artist who is eventually persecuted by Spanish colonists. Indiana draws elegant parallels to the Spanish War of Independence as portrayed by Goya, and as they excavated paintings on the island in the early 2000s, art connoisseurs are struck by the similarities. Art appears to be the humanistic alibi of the Western colonial powers, and the author shows that one of the most valuable things about art is that it cannot be colonized or used up, as the material resources can.
Art appears as the humanistic alibi to the colonial powers.
The end of marine life. At the beginning of the 21st century, art also appears as a possible salvation. In this part of the story we meet Argenis, a disillusioned art student who, like Acilde, has been in contact with the sea anemone and lives a parallel life as an artist with the lover / Acildes past hunter Giorgio Menicucci in the 1600s. In the 2001 story, Argenis has been invited to an art project at the idyllic Playa Bo beach, where the married couple Giorgio Menicucci (aka Acildes 2001 version) and Linda Goldmann will produce a work that can finance the latter's ocean project: Linda is obsessed with the situation the sea is facing in and desperately trying to get the authorities to wake up. It is clear that the author also wants the reader to wake up, because we are presented with a series of disturbing facts about the impending doom of marine life – and there is little reason to believe that any of this is fiction. Linda is concerned, among other things, with preserving the coral reefs (recently the Nature magazine announced that large parts of the world's largest coral reef – The Great Barrier Reef – were dead).
One of the most valuable things about art is that it can neither be colonized nor used up, as the material resources can.
The blind traces of civilization. The novel is unmistakably Latin American, with a blend of a direct language, heterogeneous environments and magical realism. The magical realism – with the sea anemone in the lead – can be interpreted in many ways. Besides being part of the Latin American writing style, on the one hand, it can be interpreted as an equivalent to the Western realistic novel, especially since it also contains elements from Native American mythology. On the other, a little gloomier side, the role of magical realism in this novel – and especially in the 2027 narrative – can attest to a lack of confidence in knowledge, which can be seen clearly in today's global climate debate. An illustrative example from the book is when the Native American Ananí says she does not want anything to do with letters, "because it was nothing but rubbish and lies".
The maid of Omicunlé is anything but rubbish and lies. It is also excellently translated by Signe Prøis, and gives voice to a country most of us only know through pretty Instagram photos and extremely occasional Urix on Saturdaybroadcasts.
