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Maryse Condé's Mangroves
In Maryse Condé's Segu (1984), the dubale tree, while it stands, is a steadfast symbol of the tenacious roots of Bambara identity for generations of the Traore family. A different tree assumes primacy in her Crossing the Mangrove (1989), a tale set in the Caribbean. While both trees are linked to concepts of identity within the works, the mangrove's rhizomatic character is reflected in the themes and the structure of the later novel that confirm Condé's movement outside and beyond homogenization or essentializing, and beyond the widely accepted identification of culture and stable terrain to a position reflecting the "rhizomatic," a botanical concept brought to the attention of literary criticism by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Crossing the Mangrove may be read as a positive illustration of multiculturalism, where the rhizomatic overtakes the singular, essential root.
When the mysterious outsider Francis Sancher (Francisco Sanchez) meets his death in Riviére au Sel, in Guadeloupe, the community that gathers at his wake reflects on his impact on their various lives. To some, he was a hated intruder; to others, he was a lost soul who inspired sympathy; to others still, he held out the promise of breaking out of an isolated, lonely existence. Some think he was a foreigner who came to forget his past; others believe he had returned to the land of his heritage. Everyone, however, sensed that he carried the burden of past sin, and that for that reason he had withdrawn from another world to the universe of Riviére au Sel. This was a man of multiple identities -- or no identity. Citizens of all ages and all social strata -- that is, of various identities -- come together in one space for one night, bringing their memories of the past as well as their hopes for their own future lives, all of which devolve from their association with this one man. Like the mangrove of the novel's title, Francis Sancher's activities spread out in many directions, intersecting, crossing, setting roots in the lives of many others. An apparently rootless man himself, he became entangled in the lives of others and created an intricate web of relationships with and among the inhabitants of Riviére au Sel. Among his most unsettling...