The Arrival
The narrator constructs the significance of the family’s move from North America to Africa within the imagery of a reversal of the slave trade. Rather than leaving from the west coast of the continent, the scene presents them arriving there. And with the imagery, centuries of romance regarding the cruel displacement of generations of Africans come precariously close to almost being undercut:
“Arriving on West African soil for the first time is unlike any other arrival in the world. The first thing that hits you is the smell: a combination of coal fires, dried fish, humid air, and the sea. After smell comes the feel of the air. It is heavy, even when the sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky… Finally, after air you can taste and smell and feel, the sights before you are almost anticlimactic: dense rain forest that ends just before the sea. Red earth. Palm trees that gleam, almost roasting, in the sun.”
The House at Sugar Beach: 1973
One of the first notable uses of imagery in the text is when the narrator describes the home into which the family moves upon landing on that humid western coast of Africa. Those expecting the ignorant and ill-informed idea that countries in Africa are a collective vision of life as Tarzan may be shocked, but the language is precise and effective as it introduces readers—perhaps for the first time for many—to a reality that the 20th century was not just limited to the First World:
“This was our house at Sugar Beach: a futuristic, three-level verandahed 1970s- era behemoth with a mammoth glass dome on top, visible as soon as you turned onto the dirt road junction a mile away. The house revealed itself slowly, like a coquettish Parisian dancer from the 1920s. Emerging from the road’s first major pot- hole—big enough to swallow a small European car—your reward was a glimpse of the house’s sloping roof and glass dome, shining in the equatorial sun.”
Abundance
After a 1980 coup in Liberia forces the family to flee back to America, the overabundance of choice and richness of consumer opportunities is engaged as imagery to reveal how the distance between the west coast of Africa and an ordinary city like Knoxville is much wider than geographical. Here the motive is to create imagery out of utter volume and familiarity, hoping to subtly worm into the reader’s mind the realization of the bounty which is daily overlooked and unappreciated:
“The sheer number of fast-food restaurants was mind-boggling. In Liberia, we had heard of McDonald’s and Burger King, which seemed far more exotic than the single joint in Monrovia that served burgers, Diana’s Restaurant on Broad Street. In Knoxville there was Biscuitville, Bojangles, Sizzlin Steakhouse; there was Cracker Barrel and Shoney’s. There was International House of Pancakes and Arby’s and Hardee’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. There was Wendy’s, PoFolks, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s, Dairy Queen, Arthur Treacher’s, Chick-fil-A, Pizza Hut, Godfa- ther’s, and Piccadilly.”
The House at Sugar Beach: 2003
Thirty years later later—about 350 pages in book time—imagery is once again engaged to describe the house on Sugar Beach. Much has changed over those decades and the power of the imagery lies not in the divergence of description, but in the events which have no become memories of the hope impossible to sever or forget:
“Looters had taken the windows, roof, marble flooring, bathroom fixtures, furniture, and the kitchen sink. I scanned the front yard, wondering where Doe’s executions had taken place…There were no doors. We climbed up the back stairs. My heart was thumping with trepidation, as a feeling of familiarity swept through me. I had climbed these steps a thousand times before, tripping over the dogs that had slept on the porch outside. We crept into the kitchen—it was dank and dark…a woman was cooking a pot of rice over coals in the middle of Mommee and Daddy’s bedroom—the very spot where Eunice, Marlene, and I had huddled on the night of my mother’s rape.”
