Shani Mootoo’s novel Cereus Blooms at Night was beautiful and tragic. The author explored different formations of kinship (between Mala and Tyler, Otoh, Ambrose and Mala, etc) and expressions of sexuality, that have been repressed through forces of heteropatriarchy and shame. Each one having a moment of bravery or self acceptance- either it be Otah or Tyler, even Lavinia and Sarah. Near the end of the novel Tyler accepts who they may be and express themselves in a more public way, after experiencing acceptance from Mala and Otty. Sarah and Lavinia’s relationship is much more tormented, and after deciding to run away together, and being forced to leave both Mala and Asha- I wondered how they recovered/if they recovered? I also wondered if perhaps they had a relationship when they were younger, before Lavinia went to the Wetlands. I guess with them being fictional characters I can fill in the blanks as the reader.The author also explored upsetting topics of incest and sexual assault. Which was hard to read and lead to Mala’s mental break and subsequent dissociations. Love is ambivalent and tormenting.

I connect this novel with the second reading by Niranjana through the ways in which life on the island of Latanacamara is subtlety described and the parallels of what Niranjana describes of the West Indies. In both the novel and chapter it seems for indentured laborers the only access to a sense of modernity and/or progress was through an education grounded in Christianity and western assimilation. It is more subtle in the novel but in both readings there is a description of how a space is changed by the influx of indentured laborers. How racial, class, and gender dynamics begin to shift.

Niranjana also goes on to describe how indentured labor and the efforts to end it did circulate around the morality of the Indian woman. There was an increased anxiety over the ‘wrong type of Indian woman’ being sent to the West Indies for work and how their flippant nature lead to increased gender violence and wife killings. The westerners observing this rise in violence spoke on it as if gendered violence doesn’t occur in the West. As if this gendered violence is a result of culture and tradition of the East.