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Brand, Dionne. At the Full and Change of the Moon. Grove Press, 2000.
In the last decade, several Caribbean and African-American writers have written neo-slave narratives. Neo-slave narratives are novels based on the perspective of a fictional slave protagonist. Like its slave narrative literary ancestor, the neo-slave narrative uses the leitmotifs of resistance and freedom; however, unlike the sentimental and biblical prose of the slave narrative, the neo-slave narrative features post-modernist strategies of flashbacks, cyclical time, and fragmented prose. In the North American context, the most popular examples of this genre are Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979). Dionne Brand's novel, At the Full and Change of the Moon, is a Caribbean neo-slave narrative, which traces the lives of a Trinidadian slave, Marie Ursule, and her descendants. The novel spans the time and geography of the African Diaspora itself, from the early nineteenth century to late twentieth century, from the sugar cane plantations of Trinidad to the urban streets of Amsterdam.
The novel opens in Trinidad with the chapter ". . . But a Drink of Water," which describes the early nineteenth century mass suicide revolt led by the enslaved Marie Ursule. Brand's revolt is based on one which occurred in 1802, but which the actual slave Thisbe and her fellow slave conspirators did not survive. Brand masterfully blends fact and fiction to create the story of Marie Ursule and the Le Chagrin (French for grief) slave plantation. In the novel, Marie Ursule and her secret society, San Peur ("without fear"), plan a mass suicide in which each slave drinks a cup of poisoned water. They all commit suicide at the new moon because the complete darkness of the sky cloaks their deception and resistance to their slave owner, De Lambert. Although Marie Ursule leads the mass suicide by creating the fatal potion, she ensures that her only daughter, "her one curiosity and one vanity," the young Bola, is saved from death by Marie Ursule's lover, Kamena, a runaway slave. Kamena takes Bola away from the plantation and searches for a fabled maroon society called Terre Bouillante. Kamena obsessively yearns for the freedom of Terre Bouillante, and when he is unable to find it, he resorts to taking Bola to the abandoned...