Chinese Woman - Guyana 🇬🇾

This book caught my attention because its narrative shows the racial and cultural diversity of Guyana and the Caribbean that differs from other South American countries. Chinese Woman, by Jan Lowe Shinebourne, tells the story of Albert Aziz, an Indo-Guyanese Muslim.

Aziz recounts his childhood, marked by an accident when he fell from a tree, and his teen years in a region where there were sugar cane plantations in Guyana. In his adult life, he tells of his search for unrequited love, Alice Wong, a young woman of Chinese origin.

It is interesting (and revolting) to see the intricate power play between races depicted in the first part of the book. People are judged worthy of respect according to their origin and skin color, in a hierarchy of power. And this affects what Aziz becomes as an adult: both his view on other nationalities, as well as his own family and people.

SPOILER ALERT

The accident suffered by Aziz in his childhood is a life-changing moment, both for the result of limiting his body and for the reason he fell. He becomes a teenager physically limited to overcoming white people and immersed in a dense racial tension.

At all times, he shows disdain and anger for everything and everyone in Guyana, from the nurses at the hospital to the white people, even his family. Only people of one race appear as an oasis: the Chinese.

His passion/obsession with Alice Wong came from the neutrality of Chinese people to Aziz. She is white, but not of English origin. She is not of Hindu Indian or African descent. She is neither an enemy nor looked down on as the Muslims in his family. She is the neutral and the peace in the midst of this tension.

And I think that's why years later, Aziz, already rich and divorced from his wife, insistently looks for Alice. He still harbors these resentments about the way he was treated as a child, how his life turned out and she remains the point of peace for him, even if he wasn't the same for her.

When we go to the second part of the text, we see an attempt to paint an Islamic extremist, misogynist character (who appears in several parts of the text) and an Alice who feels persecuted and afraid to deal with him. But this attempt evolves into a forced theme of religious extremism.

Of course, it is possible for a person growing up in the midst of so much racial and religious prejudice, with issues related to the women in his life, to become an extremist. However, the text is shallow and unconvincing. It sounded more like a prejudice than a trigger or how it ties to his upbringing.

When I finished reading the book, I had the impression that this "racial neutrality" of the Chinese characters and the inclusion of religious extremism is from the author's pre-conception and her own background.

The text maintains a flat tone until the end. And it is a weird end if you think about a stalker who is a fanatic religious also.

It starts well. Bringing up a man resentful of his position, and lack of power, in Guyanese society. However, the text gets lost when trying to address religious extremism or making a connection between the two parts of the book in such a short book.

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About the Writer

Jan Lowe Shinebourne (1947) is a Guyanese novelist, reporter, and civil rights activist. Shinebourne's voice provides insight into the multicultural Caribbean culture. She grew up on a colonial sugar plantation and was deeply affected by the dramatic changes her country went through in its transition from a colony to independence. She wrote her first novels based on these experiences.

Other Books: Timepiece (1986), The Last English Plantation (1988), The Godmother and Other Stories (2004)