This Sunday’s bookshelf spotlights acclaimed writer and artist Shani Mootoo, who was born in Ireland, raised in T&T, and relocated to Canada in her early twenties.
Mootoo’s first novel, “Cereus Blooms at Night” (1996), was longlisted for the Booker Prize shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award. This novel has since been reissued as a Penguin Modern Classic and a Vintage Classic.
Mootoo’s literary career began with the short story collection “Out on Main Street” in 1993. Her poetic voice emerged with “The Predicament of Or” in 2002, followed by other notable novels, including “He Drown She in the Sea,” “Valmiki’s Daughter,” and “Moving Forward Sideways like a Crab,” all longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her recent novel “Polar Vortex” (Book*hug Press 2020) also earned a Giller Prize nomination. Her poetry collections, “Cane | Fire” (2022) and “Oh Witness Dey!” (2024), demonstrate her considerable lyrical prowess.
Mootoo writes from a deeply personal place: “Although I live in Canada, my imagination continues to be fuelled by memories of old Trinidad and constant introductions of the ever-changing present Trinidad. Decades later, I still hear in my head the local and racialised dialects and accents of Trinidad. My work is inevitably a hybrid.”
Mootoo finds solace and clarity in the written word: “I can only sort out the mess in my head, in my thinking, through writing—by creating a story, or a poem, I work to find the absolute perfect grouping of words to attempt to get to the very heart of meaning and motive. Writing is, for me, necessary excavation followed by creating.”
Mootoo has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from Western University and the Lambda Literary James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize.
Her novel “Polar Vortex”, a gripping tale of Priya and Alex, a lesbian couple who move to the countryside to solidify their relationship exemplifies her writing journey, uncovering and confronting deeper truths.
Excerpt from “Polar Vortex” (Book*hug Press 2020) by Shani Mootoo with all permissions granted exclusively to the Sunday Guardian.
“I pulled the car to the side and turned off the engine, and we sat there, terrified and full of chutzpah at the same time. I can still see it all clearly in my mind. The wave-rocks glistening like sharpened steel. Stabs of light glancing off them, an indication that the boulders were not stable. I ask brightly, “When did we go for that drive through the park to the lake? I think we were mad to have done that.”
The cigarette has dropped from between Alex’s fingers, scattering ashes on her clothing and the couch before it hit the rug. Although she mutters, “Damn,” she gets up and dusts off around her as if nothing much has happened. I stare at the lit cigarette on the rug that was made somewhere in Africa of recycled plastics. A thin curl of dark smoke floats upward. She picks up the cigarette and flicks its head toward the ashtray on the side table next to the couch. I stare at the spot on the rug, expecting to see a pursed black lip of burnt plastic. I can’t see it from where I am, but I think better of stooping to inspect it at this stage of interactions between us. The glass on the table next to the couch is already covered in ash, as if she had been flicking the cigarette on the table rather than in the ashtray. She doesn’t use the opportunity to clean off the tabletop. After years of being together, I still can’t tell if this, and many of her other idiosyncrasies, like that habit of leaving the milk out or the cutlery drawer and cupboard doors open, are the marks of a forgetful genius or of a person who can’t be bothered. I am determined not to say a word.
“Oh, I don’t know. It was sometime after the ice had stopped coming down. Nothing happened. We were safe enough,” Alex suddenly responds, and for a moment I’ve forgotten I’d asked when it was we’d gone for the drive.
Were we really safe enough, though? I still wonder about that sometimes. Sitting in the car, the only people on that road, facing an expanse of frozen water as far as one could see. Metres from us, massive iceberg-like formations, frozen waves piled one atop the other. Knife-edged cliffs jutted out of the ice boulders into the sky and then dropped off into gemlike blue-and-green canyons. I had brought my window down a fraction, and we listened. A heaving, thumping rebellion came from beneath the surface. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine water undulating, restless, captive, wanting an escape from all that ice. It felt as if the force of the moving water beneath might actually, any second, wrench the boulders above from whatever anchored them and send them skidding toward the road, shoving us into trees or, more mercifully, simply crushing us flat. What seemed like a choreographed row of geysers, seven powerful spouts, one after the other in quick succession, rose every few minutes into the air.
“I’ll never forget the tinkling, one minute, like a crystal chandelier in an earthquake, and that insistent thumping,” I say, then laugh. “And you told me then that Lake Ontario was the smallest of the Great Lakes, and the thirteenth largest in the world.”
She nods. “It sounded alive. As if it were breathing. The music from the blowholes—it was like a strange tune played on an oboe,” she says, and although she remains glum, I feel grateful.
“And do you remember, you quoted Hardy?” I ask.
She takes a puff and nods. After her long exhalation she says, “‘The sun was white, as though chidden of God.’”
I was not surprised that she knew Hardy’s poem, but I was impressed that out of her brain she was able to pick an appropriate literary phrase to describe the scene in front of us. Impressed, but not surprised. On the way home, in another more sheltered section of the lake, where swans are known to gather for the winter, I brought the car to a crawl so we could see how they were faring. On the glass surface we counted thirteen swans, frozen stiff, some as if in full swim, some off-kilter, some sprawled on the surface, their wings unnaturally bent, stuck in parts to the ice while tips of feathers flapped in the wind. That was this same year, just eleven months ago. The feeders in our yard had remained empty until the middle of what was supposedly spring but still felt like winter. The moment I was able to, I went out and filled them up. But for weeks on end, no birds came. The seeds in the feeders stayed untouched and mosses flared up the sides of the clear plastic tubes. The songbird population—particularly the little chickadees, juncos, and finches—had suffered because ice had encased their food supplies, and we humans hadn’t been able to provide for them. I would not have experienced any of this had we not moved from the city. It has felt like some kind of privilege, albeit at that time, a sad one.
End of excerpt.
Mootoo earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Ontario in 1980 and a Master of Arts in English and Theatre from the University of Guelph in 2010. Mootoo’s art has been showcased internationally, including at prestigious venues like the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Venice Biennale.
Ira Mathur is a Guardian journalist and the winner of the 2023 Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction for her memoir, Love The Dark Days.
Website:www.irasroom.org
Author inquiries can be sent to irasroom@gmail.com
