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Traversée de la mangrove, Maryse Condé's fifth novel and her first set solely in Guadeloupe, is structured around intertwined quests that reflect the search for identity grounding much of Caribbean literature. The death of its main protagonist, Francis Sancher, and his subsequent wake, provide the villagers of Rivière au Sel with an opportunity to reflect on their past and current plights and to ponder their future. Neither Sancher, who sought to unearth the truth about his forbears' plantation, nor the villagers, who offer glimpses of their hopes and thwarted dreams, succeed, however, in unweaving the complex web of village life. Aware of the opacity that shrouds Caribbean origins, Condé purposely fails to provide any insight into Sancher's death or any clear path away from the ethno-social order and the prejudices pervading Rivière au Sel. As Priska Degras argues, "Traversée de la mangrove is as much an exploration of the painful opacity of individual and collective stories as a luminous demonstration of the multiple possibilities offered by novel writing."1 The purpose of this essay is to examine the strategies Condé employs to explore the difficult quest for Caribbean identity by challenging the past, revealing a complex present, and tracing a potential future through a reexamination of island topoi.
Throughout the novel, Condé only scatters clues to her characters' elusive past, complex present, and uncertain future. Drawing upon one of the salient geographical features of the island, one character argues that Sancher's quest for identity is as fruitless as any attempt to cross a mangrove. She explains "you'd spike yourself on the roots of the mangrove trees. You'd be sucked down and suffocated by the brackish mud."2 Though several aspects of the novel support Vilma's comment, the very success of Condé's own literary endeavor paradoxically negates this statement. In her novel, she not only explores the mangrove of order and prejudice prevailing in Rivière au Sel, but also introduces readers to strategies for crossing it. An analysis of geographic markers in the novel, both natural and man-made, reveals that while the layout of Rivière au Sel reflects the enduring heritage of slavery and indentured servitude, forest tracks no longer lead inhabitants to a permanent refuge in the mornes [hills] as they supposedly did for marooning slaves, nor...