Augustown A Book Review

What is fiction? What is literature? Class. English Lit.

started as books written by the king's men, women and horses.  

 Augustown: A Book Review

Author: Kei Miller

 “Is the teacher, Grandma. Is Mr. Saint-Josephs who cut off my dreadlocks.” Page 27.

The little boy is Kaia. His grandmother is known as Ma Taffy in Augustown, a homestead in Jamaica. Most of the time, it is not steady because of police brutality and the school system bent on imposing a tea and cucumber sandwiches way of life.

This novel Augustown is a work of fiction, but not to the reader because of hypnosis. It’s like gathering flowers, fruits, firewood and herbs in the forest. Dead leaves on their way back to the soil have a certain sound, so do twigs.

The author alerts the reader to forest sounds. Some are audible, others are shy, like the sound of air. Ma Taffy knows the Augustown forest like the back of her hand.

‘Soft Paw’ the rude boy fighting the police thinks he does, typical youth arrogance, if you may. Ma Taffy reminds him he’s not there yet by telling him to remove the guns he hides under her house. He’s shocked. How does she know? She’s blind.

The reader feels or anticipates forest sounds through language. That is why Augustown the novel has many English languages, not one. I appreciate it more because I was forced to read A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. It has one language, one which millions of students in the British empire like me, did not understand.

Language is political. That’s why some unfortunate readers did not finish Augustown. They probably stopped because the author also uses what they call unconventional English. Their loss.

Confession. I stopped reading it for a few months, because I don’t trust religion. The story about who, what, where, when and why the teacher cut the little boy’s dreadlocks, the tug-of-war between Ma Taffy and “Soft Paw" was interrupted by religion.

“It had been believed - in an unsaid sort of way - that a story would never be written about Augustown, but this all changed with the advent of the flying preacherman.” Page 91.

I finally cooled down and returned to the book. I’m glad I did. It is one of those rare books still loyal to story telling. The flying preacherman made me mad but he’s not the only hero. I would have missed other stories, sounds in the forest called Augustown.

“But always there was this divide between the stories that were written and stories that were spoken.” Page 91.

Nonqaba waka Msimang is a blogger and author of Sweetness, a South African novel.