I hate this book

I don’t think its Marie Vieux Chauvet’s fault. However, reading Dance on the Volcano is revealing to me how much I hate an omniscient perspective. As I read about Jasmine and Lise and Minette I just feel unable to connect with them and their specific observations on race and slavery or how to even really navigate their own personal relationships to being free amongst enslaved folks because I only have access to a third person’s awareness of how they are interpreting the people around them! Most importantly, I don’t believe nor connect with this omniscient perspective, there are so many details left unsaid and not in a fun way for me to deduce but in a way that lacks colour and specificity and authenticity that I cannot connect with.

At least with Robert Bolano’s The Savage Detectives I truly felt compelled by the perspective of Juan Garcia Madero. I could see specifically how he was reckoning with Arturo, Quim, Lupe, Maria and Angelica. His detailed descriptions of each left a lasting impression that stuck with me for days after reading, because I was deeply intrigued by his flaws and integrity and the times his integrity became twisted with his circumstance.

However, I just don’t feel anything for any of the characters of Dance on the Volcano, their observations on race feel dull. Nothing of the setting nor circumstance is sticking with me and I just don’t enjoy reading this novel. The way this seems to be manifesting is I have consistently fallen asleep while reading every chapter of this novel.

As the story takes place in Port Au Prince we are made aware of the enslaved folks, freedmen who were once slaves and no longer, Creole folks and mulattos. Lise and Minette are mulattos as their mother was once a slave but is very careful to hide this fact from her daughters and those that know her as it is a shameful truth, not only societally but personally as physical and sexual violence were inextricably experienced by her at the time of being enslaved, a reality she chooses to hide from her daughters.

Marie Vieux Chauvet is clear on her stance when it comes to education and revolution as the book narrates that enslaved peoples were punished for learning to read and those who were able to endow literacy faced persecution. These ideas about education and revolution strike me as being spoonfed as they lack the description that would allow me to draw upon the withholding of education as a tool for immobilization. The account by Joseph, the man educating Lise and Minette, on how he had been sought out and forced into hiding for teaching an enslaved person to read simply stated that because education is what dissolves resignation and prompts one to fight for their freedom, literacy had to be stopped. The novel just spells it out rather than giving me the details to see and feel that for myself.

I just feel frustrated because I want to read about enslaved folks in contrast o freedmen who were once slaves and no longer and mulattos in a deeply hierarchical Creole culture but I am missing all of the personal insight that makes it feel worthwhile.