READING Dara Wilkinson Bobb’s ‘Gods Of Bruising’ Through An EMANCIPATORY LENS

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Reading Time 3 mins

August 31, 2023
Gods of Bruising, the debut novel of Dara Wilkinson Bobb, is a family tragedy centered on nineteen-year-old fraternal twins Dominic and Diallo. It opens with the accidental death of their parents. It examines how this tragedy upends lives while painting a picture of a community of colorful characters living together in a neighborhood that Dominic describes as “gone from middle class to lower middle class to having some elements of a rough block” or as the middle-class policeman derisively calls it “rats teeth poor people.” 
This engaging and short but easy-to-read novel is ideal for all readers, especially young adults, as it addresses several issues, such as confronting depression, the sudden loss of a parent, growing up with a conscience, and trying to find oneself in the world.  Reminiscent of the desire to chart a new course, each of these characters, from Dominick to Grace, are creating their path to freedom and independence, whether it is, as in Dominic’s case, social and economic autonomy or, in Grace’s case, empowering the barrack residents to take matters into their own hands as she implores them to organize to combat threats to their community.  

Bruising falls within and updates and extends the tradition of the barrack yard novels in the Caribbean landscape, popularized by C.L.R James in Mintey Alley and the early Naipaul in Miguel Street. As such, Bruising reveals the unblemished life of the ‘working poor,’ people in need, and those whom the ‘elite’ dismisses as the so-called margins of society. The author confronts the dynamics of the communal living quarters and ways of self-affirmation in a hierarchical and paternally unfair society. In a revolutionary and emancipatory mold of resistance, Dara presents the close living quarters, the friction between neighbors over space, a string of burglaries in the neighborhood, and rising gang violence and shootings in a way that compels enlightenment and action.

The novel is set in their small village of Anaripo, in the community of Tamanal, whose boundaries we are told began opposite the cemetery of The Anglican Church and ended at Emmet’s Gambling Casino and Bar, or as one character describes, “Is between heaven and hell we living.” The action is centered around Dominic’s efforts to help his sister, Diallo, who, since the death of their parents, “had withdrawn into herself and refused to leave the house or do anything useful and thus had left him three times abandoned.” As a result, he had to move back home to take care of her and invited two women, Grace and Heidi, as roommates and caretakers to help watch and care for Diallo.
Brusin focuses on the increasing fear and alarm in the community at the string of burglaries that they view as an invasion. The police seem to have little interest in solving the problem, so Grace, the journalist and the super religious activist encourages the people to organize neighborhood watch and counsels them about giving back to their community. She is examining everyone’s life but not interrogating how she deals with her sister’s trauma of losing her only daughter. Then there is Heidi, the disqualified beauty contest queen, who turns to play undercover sleuth and cozies up to the local bad boys on the corner, thinking they know who is committing the robberies and are somehow involved. Dominic, the events planner, and promoter, has to navigate between two worlds: his former friends, who now spend most of their time as bad boys on the corner, and the middle-class life he yearns to achieve as he develops his promotion business.
This novel evokes some comparisons to Arundhati Roy’s classic, The God of Small Things, because it centers around fraternal twins who must deal with a particular family tragedy early in their lives. Like that novel, it gives voice to the marginalized and poor people of the community. The book’s title symbolizes the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Dominic reflects on what they have all been through:  “Heidi and Diallo plagued by all these God-like rules that did nothing but give them a good bruising… Keidi was so trapped and defined by her beauty. Grace by her religious rules [yet] they had started to turn that cut-arse around.” 
It is only through their collective working together, recognizing each other’s humanity, and accepting each other that they are made whole at the novel’s end. As the narrator commenting on Diallo’s recovery says, “Nothing is perfect when you have been scrapped up by fate… Pain dilutes with living.” Indeed, life is about living and transformation.

Click here for the Introduction.

Lennel George, a Field Consultant for Brooklyn College Teaching Fellows & Partner Teacher Program and a retired NYC High School Principal, is a Kittitian with a deep interest in Caribbean Society and Culture. He has traveled extensively throughout the region, including Cuba.

 

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