Beyond the Limbo Silence.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Beyond the Limbo Silence by Elizabeth Nunez. Seattle: Seal, 1998.

Sara Edgehill is a romantic. When her cousin Alan drowns on a fishing trip, her grandmother says he was seduced by the Orehu, a mermaid who lures unsuspecting divers into her arms. The boy's father, though, says he was pulled down by a sea cow. Ten-year-old Sara opts for the mermaid story. Her cousin had caught sight of the mermaid's tail fin and shot her with his spear gun before seeing her face, thinks Sara. When at last he saw her beauty, he fell hopelessly in love with her and followed her into the depths of the sea until her jealous lover severed the rope that connected the spear embedded in her flesh to his hand.

In this lyrical, yet politically charged novel, Trinidadian writer Elizabeth Nunez weaves together Afro-Caribbean myths and social realities, whimsical or bizarre characters and hard-hitting issues involving race and identity. When Sara receives a scholarship to pursue a degree in the United States in the early 1960s, her grandmother, known as a mannish, tough woman, begins to cry. She is sure that she will lose a second grandchild; Alan had studied in England, and when he returned to Trinidad, he was carried off by the Orehu, who knew how he had been spoiled in a big, white, evil country. And now, Sara was following in his footsteps.

Sara's grandmother harbors fears of prejudice and lynchings, words whose meanings Sara doesn't even know. But she learns soon enough. As soon as she arrives in New York, the tales she hears of abuse and injustice give her reason to reflect on her grandmother's anxiety. When she arrives in Wisconsin, where she will attend the College of the Sacred Heart, Sara makes friends with two other West Indian students, Courtney from Saint Lucia and Angela from British Guiana [present-day Guyana], who fill her in on the plight of blacks in America. The three girls are the only non-whites in the college, and Courtney tells her, "You can feel like a flea in a bowl of milk." Two black Americans...