Car­ol Quash

Af­ter guid­ing her stu­dents through nu­mer­ous Lit­er­a­ture class­es, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in Lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), Dr Car­ol An­drews-Red­head, de­cid­ed it was time to teach those she was man­dat­ed to ed­u­cate a les­son of her own. Ear­li­er this year Dr Red­head launched her nov­el, Rup­tures In­to Si­lence, a pub­li­ca­tion which she said was done with stu­dents in mind.

"When I was writ­ing, I was con­stant­ly think­ing of my stu­dents and the need to pro­voke crit­i­cal think­ing and an evo­lu­tion of the mind," she said, adding that the book con­tained a num­ber of per­ti­nent and re­al life is­sues that could be ad­dressed by teach­ers of Lit­er­a­ture. "There are the is­sues of HIV and Aids, re­li­gion, rape, mur­der, teenaged preg­nan­cy, and so many oth­er things raised by this book that a teacher could ad­dress in a class­room with­out be­ing judge­men­tal. I am hop­ing the book could be in­clud­ed on the syl­labus," she said.

As the sto­ry goes

The sto­ry re­volves around the life of the pro­tag­o­nist, Mar­garet Vi­vian, who was born and spent her ado­les­cent years in a small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty on the is­land of Taringa. The be­gin­ning and the end of the sto­ry is told as seen through the eyes of her niece, Olivia. The mid­dle are flash­backs of the way Mar­garet Vi­vian's life un­fold­ed. Re­bel­lious, pre­co­cious, and ex­treme­ly in­tel­li­gent, Mar­garet Vi­vian lived her life the way she want­ed to, in spite of how oth­er peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly her moth­er Vi­o­la, some­times viewed her ec­cen­tric de­ci­sions.

When she ac­ci­den­tal­ly dis­cov­ered a damn­ing se­cret about her con­cep­tion and pa­ter­ni­ty, at the same time as her moth­er does, the psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fect cat­a­pult­ed her love/hate re­la­tion­ship with her moth­er and her re­bel­lion to a new lev­el. Feared by those who did not un­der­stand her, Mar­garet Vi­vian be­came a leg­end in her own right among those with whom she in­ter­act­ed, and could on­ly be con­trolled by the na­ture she loved. As she made her trek through life, her en­coun­ters with friend­ship and love were few, but her dis­ap­point­ments and loss­es were many. And it was on­ly at the time of her death and her en­trance in­to the spir­i­tu­al realm, that she was able to grasp the roles that the love and sac­ri­fices of oth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly that of her moth­er, played in her life.

Pure­ly fic­tion­al

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Red­head, Mar­garet Vi­vian was some­one who no one seemed to un­der­stand. She made her own rules, and was in­tro­vert­ed and ego­cen­tric. "Try­ing to fig­ure out Mar­garet Vi­vian re­quires a psy­cho an­a­lyt­i­cal ap­proach," Dr Red­head said, and al­though she ad­mit­ted she could some­times iden­ti­fy with some of Mar­garet Vi­vian's traits, she in­sist­ed the piece of work was just fic­tion.

"I used to be a guid­ance of­fi­cer and I have coun­selled many chil­dren, so I guess I have used some of those ex­pe­ri­ences to build her char­ac­ter. But it was not as if I sat down and de­cid­ed to do that. When I start­ed to write the ideas just flowed." She said she gave the two main char­ac­ters two of the great­est weapons women pos­sessed. "Mar­garet Vi­vian had the pow­er of words. She al­ways ar­tic­u­lat­ed just what was on her mind, no mat­ter how much it hurt oth­ers. And Vi­o­la (her moth­er) had the pow­er of si­lence, some­thing she de­vel­oped af­ter she was raped," she ex­plained.

In an ap­pro­pri­ate lan­guage

Al­though the sto­ry is main­ly based in a rur­al vil­lage, Dr Red­head said she de­lib­er­ate­ly chose to use stan­dard Eng­lish as op­posed to di­alect. "I be­lieve in and love di­alect, but I want­ed to point out the im­por­tance of not stereo­typ­ing. Be­cause you are from the coun­try it doesn't mean you can't speak prop­er Eng­lish."

"Al­so, al­though stu­dents are al­ways con­front­ed with di­alect, when it comes to do­ing ex­ams they are re­quired to write in stan­dard Eng­lish. I just want­ed them to be com­fort­able with the lan­guage in which they have to do their ex­ams," she said. In ad­di­tion, she said she opt­ed not to base the sto­ry in an ac­tu­al lo­ca­tion be­cause she want­ed read­ers to get their cre­ative juices flow­ing. "I left it up to the read­ers to cre­ate their own en­vi­ron­ment and place the char­ac­ters there," she said. Rup­tures In­to Si­lence is easy and in­ter­est­ing read­ing, with an in­trigu­ing sto­ry­line and quite a few sur­pris­es.