Augustown, by Kei Miller
Augustown, the author acknowledges, is based on the actual district just west of Kingston, Jamaica, called August Town. The author provides this putative story regarding its origins: “August Town...is thought to have been named from the fact that freedom came to the enslaved people of this country on ‘Augus Mawnin’—the 1st August, 1838.” According to local legend, freed slaves abandoned plantations, carried what they could, and settled in this area. A troll through real-life headlines reveals that the area has always been distinguished by its social problems and gang violence.
It is Miller’s fictional recreation of this district that provides the title and the setting for the novel. The main events take place in 1982, but subplots lead us back into the distant past. We are introduced to the wise and aged Rastafarian matriarch Ma Taffy (originally Irene Mckenzie, then Irie Tafari [‘pleasant one who inspires awe’?] then finally Ma Taffy). She is the memory and in some ways the conscience of Augustown. She has witnessed first-hand the hardships, the terrors, the plight of the oppressed at the hands of the lighterskinned upper classes. She has lost her sight and makes up for this deficiency by being very acute in her other senses.
She provides the focal point for the introduction of other characters—notably her niece Gina, who has an affair with the son of the white school teacher, Mrs G. Gina gives birth to Kaia, and consciously rears him in the Rastafarian tradition.
One day, an overzealous and somewhat feckless teacher at the elementary school lops off little Kaia’s dreadlocks, and this precipitates a chain of events with dire consequences. In the unfolding of these events we are made witness to the history of oppression and resistance in Jamaica. For example, as Ma Taffy attempts to console her shorn great-nephew, she relates the tale of the “flying preacherman”. The original for the story is a real historical figure, Alexander Bedward, who founded a religious movement of “Bedwardites”, who were allied to the emergent Rastafarian movement. According to Bedward, August Town was to be a new Jerusalem, and he himself was the reincarnation of Moses, Jonah, and St John the Baptist. He distinguished himself particularly by insisting that his followers sell their property and prepare with him to ascend into heaven (in 1921). The promised ascent did not take place and Bedward was confined to a mental institution. In any case, this historical event is transformed in Miller’s story into a transformative movement which promised all the poor and downtrodden inhabitants of Jamaica liberation from oppression. According to Ma Taffy, the only reason that the promised ascent did not take place was because the authorities literally hooked Bedward and prevented the realization of the prophecy.
We are introduced to other characters, all related in some way to this basic family unit of Ma Taffy, Gina, and Kaia, and they all occupy a continuum extending between privilege and oppression, hope and despair, lightness of being and deadweight soul destruction.
The Rastafarian movement really took root in the 1920’s and reached its peak in the 1960’s and 1970’s with the convergence of the reign of Emperor Haile Salassi in Ethiopia and Bob Marley’s accession to popularity. This story is very effective in elucidating the movement’s effects on the lives of its adherents. Miller is adept at weaving the theme of lightness into his story. Characters are either buoyed up by faith, love, hope or they are constrained by the stone on their heads “The stone that poor people like us born with, Irene. Is a stone that sit right on top of our heads. The one that always stop we from rising.”
Augustown impresses on many levels. The characters are compelling and all play a role in the larger polemic against the evils of absolute authority, colonialism and slavery. However, the story seems at times to be written to a kind of formula common in modern fiction. Pick a time, pick a cause, pick an oppressed minority, break up the chronology, add some magic realisms and presto! This could be the result of the proliferation of creative writing programs at universities worldwide. What begins as fresh and innovative soon turns into a worn-out formula...
Kei Miller seems vaguely aware of this, offering this caveat: “Look, this isn't magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don't get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you are, and as real as I once was before I became a bodiless thing floating up here in the sky. You may as well stop to consider a more urgent question; not whether you believe in this story or not, but whether this story is about the kinds of people you have never taken the time to believe in.”
Ultimately, the story does intrigue. What weapons are there when one is powerless and possessed of few options? Religion? Stories? Pride?