‘For new readers with open minds, a treat is in store’: Review of David Dabydeen’s “Sweet Li Jie” – Part 2

By Dr Michael Mitchell

(Continued from Sunday March 16)

The Guianese stories are told through the persona of Jia Yun in the form of letters to Sweet Li Jie.
Though they pay tribute to the tradition of epistolatory novels, there are no replies — Li Jie is presumably illiterate — and the practice of dating the letters is later dropped, so they really represent an inner monologue by one of the only characters who displays decency and consistency, besides a certain business acumen.
As a result, the reader finds him more convincing as a narrator, and is more prepared to accept what he reports about his voyage to Demerara and his dealings in the colony. He inherits the textile business from his revered master, Yu Hao, who dies of cholera on the ship, and refers to himself several times as a ‘man of cloth’. The play on words is deliberate, as he is an almost saintly avatar of the author’s more serious purpose.

The doctor on board, who selflessly treats the patients and succumbs to the disease himself, is named Dr Richmond. He also makes ‘indelicate’ sketches of naked Chinese women, teaching Jia Yun the Latin words of Terence, that ‘nothing human is alien to me’ and that his sketches are to ‘forestall the cruel acts that fantasies hatch’ (p. 35). Both of these quotes might equally apply to the subjects of Dabydeen’s work. That Richmond can be seen in a positive light may also reflect on the real doctor on the first indentured ship to Guiana, Theophilus Richmond, whose diaries Dabydeen co-edited for publication.
Names are not entirely random in Dabydeen’s work, and often refract people who he has known well or admires (or occasionally dislikes). Thus Joseph Countryman makes a frequent appearance, as does Harris (in honour of the sometimes obscure Guyanese genius Wilson Harris). Here the Afro-Guianese Harris is Jia Yun’s loyal helper, who explains the country to him and tries to introduce him to the wonders of the rainforest, which terrify Jia Lun, reminding him of predation and death.
Harris has also developed his own philosophy about the creation and destiny of the universe, part of which features a worm which infects the woman who produces the first man.
One is reminded of Blake’s sick rose. Worms appear in similar contexts elsewhere in the book.
Jia Yun is also impressed by Indo-Guianese Gurr, who is also based on an acquaintance of Dabydeen’s in Berbice. The various heterogeneous populations in the colony are astutely observed by Jia Yun, who also personifies the reason Chinese traders were often respected as honest and reliable, and for their willingness to give credit.
Other Chinese, however, do not come across so positively. The first man he meets in Georgetown, Mr Fu, subsequently named ‘Glutton Fu’, is ruthlessly exploitative, and the pastor Reverend Choy, who founds a utopian community called Prospect Town, which fills Jia Yun with a sense of foreboding, recalls Jim Jones’ utopian nightmare of Jonestown.
As well as worms, ants often appear, and it is hard not to see here an allusion to the ants in Derek Walcott’s “Omeros”, which lead Ma Kilman to a cure for an unhealed wound. Walcott’s ants are connected to the figure of the mother, and it is striking how often the stories in “Sweet Li Jie” return to mothers, often absent or lost.
A previous title for the novel considered by the author was ‘Chinese Mothers’. This archetypal lack is one of the drivers of the stories, as is the archetypal yearning for the figure of the Muse, whether it be Ying Ying, Swallow Tail or the title figure here, Li Jie (whose name, I am led to believe, means ‘beautiful one’).
This in turn suggests connections that run throughout the disparate stories in the book, and indeed it is striking that though the book is neatly divided into different parts and chapters, each with a superscription giving its contents, they tend to leak into one another, so that a description of the visions Baoyu sees when he is drunk for the first time are echoed exactly by the hallucinations that plague Jia Yun during a bout of malaria; similarly, a woman in Swallow Tail’s fantasy whom she renames Pioneer and sends off to Demerara turns up in the Guianese section as a woman who tries to seduce Jia Yun.
The novel as a whole is a brilliant and truly West Indian stream of carnival calypso and deep seriousness, where all attempts to grasp at stable facts in the current, in the same way that Jia Yun tries to seek solace in numbers and calculation, will end in failure.
The caged birds that the Emperor wishes to make slave creatures that will never seek freedom can only be held in death.
And if we are to ask what all of this means, the novel offers a perfect illustration. Swallow Tail is trying to describe the glories of the night sky and Baoyu considers a ‘jumble of images and the physical presence of Swallow Tail herself. She asks him:
“Well, what have you to say? You are the only person who knows what I mean.”
“Mean? Mean?” he stuttered. “What do you mean by ‘mean’?”
She’d opened her eyes and beamed at him. “Oh my bright boy! So bright! You understand everything but you pretend to be dull.” (p. 70)

“Sweet Li Jie” by David Dabydeen (Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2024) 166pp
Dr Michael Mitchell is from Paderborn University, Germany