'First Rain' is a spirit journey to pull together a 'necessary,
fractured past', a poetic record of a struggle towards wholeness.
In the first part, 'Bush Roots', Weir-Soley recovers her ancestral
past in a series of narratives and dramatic monologues that give a
living, breathing portrayal of a Jamaica that is gone, but whose
parable-speaking elders still offer a guide to survival. Whether
from actual memory, the fragments of family story, the clues from
photographs or from a dreaming imagination, Weir-Soley presents a
grandfather's 'dutty-tuff' vision, a grandmother's 'bush magic',
the practical, gruff goodness of Uncle Miguel, the car mechanic who
teaches generations of boys useful skills, who she sees as Ogun, a
'lesser god/for a greater good', and many others. These are people
she makes you regret not having known, but grateful that she shares
them. It is a world built up in careful detail, a complex, nuanced
world that contains both neighbourly solidarity, but also the
dividing gradations of class, skin-colour and occupation; a world
where women can be treated as beasts of burden, where 'outside'
children suffer emotional abuse, but where men like her uncle are
shown behaving with great tenderness towards children. Against the
solidity of this world, part two, 'Exiled Musings', contrasts the
nightmarish, temporariness of Caribbean migrant life in the USA, a
people 'orphaned from our homes'. Here, Weir-Soley brings the
realities of the travails of young black men with the law, black on
black violence, crack and HIV/Aids into sharp and often angry
focus. But in the final parts, 'Heartwars' and 'Incantations', we
see the struggles to rebuild family and respect, and the capacity
for joy and sensuality, the resilience and spirituality of a people
who never lose their sense of God's grace.
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