Book Review: A SKY THE COLOR OF CHAOS
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A Sky the Color of Chaos: Based on the True Story of My Haitian Childhood by M.J. Fièvre |
| Beating Windward Press, 2014 $20.00 |
“Memory is mutable,” M.J. Fièvre writes of her wealthy childhood outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during the President Duvalier’s regime. While Jessica (the name she goes by in the memoir) and her sister, Soeur, are somewhat shielded from the abject poverty in Haiti, they are not protected from the violence caused by the Macoutes, Duvalier’s private militia. At night, she can hear gunfire, bombings, and the screams of the Haitian people as the streets are stained with the blood and bodies of civilians who dare to speak out against the government.
Inside their home that is maintained by maids and gardeners, Jessica, her sister, and her mother confront a different kind of violence that they cannot escape: The unpredictable temper of and abuse from her father.
“I had grown skillful at reading the many browns of Papa’s eyes, and the slight changes of his voice. One moment, my father was normal, composed, in control, reliable; the next he was unglued—a wild-eyed stranger, screaming so loud that my ears stung,” Fièvre writes. As a child, Jessica teeters between unconditional love for her father and undying hatred of a man who brings as much fear to her home as the Macoutes bring to the streets. There is no escaping either regime of terror.
As Jessica grows up, the focus becomes less on the violence outside her walls and more on how she can escape her situation at home. She begins studying harder, reading more, and making plans to go to medical school in the Dominican Republic, and later decides to go to college in the United States.
She seeks comfort in others, first in her friend Junior, and later in the arms of dangerous man named Ben. Although firm in her convictions and plans for the future, Jessica is haunted by the inherent meanness in people, particularly herself: “I never knew that kind of meanness in me. Things inside me moved toward something I didn’t know, and couldn’t come back from,” Fièvre writes. It’s through the recognition of her own primordial tendencies toward anger that she understands the influence her father’s childhood had on him and how he turned his rage against his own family.
Written in lyrical prose that brings vivid beauty to the ugliest of situations, “A Sky the Color of Chaos” closely and flagrantly examines the complexities of the human condition, the thorny and dark side of love, and the power of forgiveness and redemption. More than just a coming-of-age memoir, the backdrop of the social and political unrest of Haiti’s corrupt leadership complicates Jessica’s patriotism to her homeland. It’s a book that shatters western images of Haitian life and leaves the reader with an unfettered empathy for the unabashed spirit of the oppressed.