Gender betrayal and resilience in Brenda Chester DoHarris's Calabash Parkway

Male and Female Relationships in 'Calabash Parkway'

The objective of this research study is to examine the male and female relationships in the work entitled 'Calabash Parkway' written by Brenda Chester DoHarris published by Tantaria Press in 2005. Towards this end, this study will conduct a review of literature and specifically reviews of other writers on the work of DoHarris.

Calabash Parkway -- A Novel

The work of DoHarris (2005) entitled Calabash Parkway is written for "her undocumented sisters and brothers, many of whom, have taken great risks and made great sacrifices to enter and live in the U.S., and who prefer to languish in an 'undocumented twilight zone and die rather than remain in an economic and political ferment at home." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.2) The novel's setting is New York City and Guyana in the 1950s. It is reported that DoHarris "pours her heart in the story, assuming as she did in her first novel, a stereoscopic role in some ubiquitous individual overlooking the unraveling of events form the sixties to present." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.2) DoHarris narrates in the first-person and is reported to become personal "as she skillfully weaves herself into the lives of her characters, who are indeed real persons with whom the author actually lived in a very nostalgic distant past." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.2) Calabash Parkway is the second novel of DoHarris reported to be "a professor of English at Bowie State University, Maryland, and a graduate of Columbia and Howard universities, receiving a PhD in English." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.2) Calabash Parkway is reported to be a novel that is "labor-intense…with a serious purpose and a studied appeal for feminist appreciation." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.1)

II. The Women in Calabash Parkway

The objective of Calabash Parkway is to "pay tribute to Guyanese women; hardworking, still young, husband-looking women; with low wage-earning skills; "for whom love and romance were luxuries poor women could not afford." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.1) These women, living in Guyana had dreams of running away to America with plans to later send for their children. The women while in New York City meet men who, while understanding the dreams of these women, "make promises, but eventually betray them." (Book Shelf, 2008, p.1) The men in DoHarris' novel are portrayed as "shifty-hearted philanderers with few redeeming features…" (Book Shelf, 2008, p.1)

The women, who have been raised in the 1950's decade are reported to have been "taught the propriety interest of self-restraints" and therefore instead of responding in outrage instead "experience 'nausea' and retreat to the bathroom to retch…" (Book Shelf, 2008, p.1) However, these women are reported to "carrying inside them like a DNA code a quality that author DoHarris admires…" (Book Shelf, 2008, p.1) That quality is a "dogged insistent" as stated in the work of DoHarris and reported in the 'Book Shelf' review (2008, p.1)

III. Birgalsingh Review of Calabash Parkway

In a book review of Calabash Parkway conducted by Ermeritus Professor Frank Birbalsingh it is stated that DoHarris "…appears largely as observer, listener, and narrator." (2010, p. 1) Calabash Parkway is reported to unite "both the naturalness of a lowly fruit (the calabash) representing the Caribbean with the artificial affluence of a highway (Parkway) representing the U.S. As a way of focusing on Guyanese immigrants living mainly in New York, during the 1970s and 80s. Thus the novel's appeal stems mainly from a central tension in its main characters between their desperate efforts to escape from scandalous conditions in post-colonial Guyana, and their equally desperate struggles to cash in on the ever elusive affluence of the American Promised Land." (Birgalsingh, 2010, p.1)

Evadne and Compton, Jennifer and Joy

The struggles of another character in this novel Evadne who came to New York married to a Guyanese American named Compton Thornhill. Evaden's relationship becomes complicated when Thornhill's former lover gives birth to his daughter all of which ultimately results in Jennifer shooting Compton who dies. Unlike Gatha, Evadne does not die although DoHarris writes that she has become undone and needs not only a period of recovery but a chain to reclaim her "psychic wholeness." (DoHarris, 2005, p.131) Birgalsingh states a belief that the most striking of all features of Calabash Parkway is the "documentary fidelity with which DoHarris evokes Guyanese culture and society, predominantly its African variety, both at home and abroad. Nothing proclaims the Guyanese identity of her narrative more than the idiomatic Creole expressions or colloquialisms which, in addition to the speech of her characters, crowd almost every other page of Calabash Parkway…" (Birgalsingh,2010, p.1, p.1)

IV. Subsidiary Plots

Sukhdeo (2005) reports in a review of the work of DoHarris in Calabash Parkway that several subsidiary plots exist in the work of DoHarris and that the one that is the "most touching…is that about Samantha, the product child of a tragic (interracial love affair between Drupattie and Steven Osbourne at a time when racism was threatening an implosion of the Guyanese society." (Sukhdeo, 2005, p.1)

It is reported by Sukhdeo (2005) that DoHarris treats this story with a "delicateness" that illustrates "how close she must have been to both parties, how distraught she must have been by the deliberate destruction of this affair and the lives of both parties, and how close she must have been to both parties, how distraught she must have been by the deliberate destruction of this affair and the lives of both parties and how thrilled she was to learn that the pretty and successful 'dougla' attorney was the one good thing to come out of all the racism and sexism of the time." (p.1)

The work of DoHarris is successful in its descriptions of the struggles of Guyanese immigrants in New York and how they are considered to be "beggars at the gate by such people as Miss Haggerty Responsible for the issuance of Visas." (Sukhdeo, 2005, p. 1) Sukhdeo (2005) additionally notes the creation of family tensions and how that characters are "always suffocated by their feeling, the ambivalence between wanting to escape the narrowness of Caribbean life, and the regret for the relationships they scar and damage after they have left. Even the relationship between 'Gatha's and her own daughters became so coldly strained that the girls referred to her as, 'de lady'." (p.1)

The infidelities of spouses are reported to be such that "lead to treachery and even murder as in the case of Compton who so heartlessly used his mistress's wedding dress to marry his wife, and in his sexist masochism continued in his illicit affair which finally led to his murder." (Sukhdeo, 2005, p.1) DoHarris fully develops her characters and since they are drawn from actual people the characters are full of life and experience natural changes both for the better and the worse as they are witnessed experientially growing and learning.

According to Sukhdeo (2005) the most admirable characterizations in DoHarris' work are those of: "Gatha's cultured and altruistic paramour, Jack Feeling, her very helpful friend in Canada, Gwennie, who smuggled her across the Canadian/U.S. border, and her second husband, Leon, who like a rock, or like Charles Dickens' Joseph in Great Expectations, is not very bright, but solid, dependable and always there with support, even though he, himself is hurt in process of helping." (p.1) Sukhdeo states that there must be admiration of DoHarris in her "prolific command and use of the unique Guyanese dialect, idioms, and proverbs which proliferate the 158 pages of the book, and are further paraphrased in a glossary for the benefit of non-Guyanese readers. She has also shown that the calabash, a most versatile gourd in Guyana, has multifarious symbolic connotations, the most significant one being, "woman alone like calabash: ev'rybaddy wan pass an' dip deh han'," speaking about the vulnerability of women in distant, lonely places, and how easy it is for them to be exploited." (p.1) DoHarris makes use of a "feminist empathy and rich intersperse of Creole and Standard English to explicitly bring out the apathy and hardships experienced by 'Gatha, herself a symbol for the Guyanese undocumented immigrant in the cold metropole." (Sukhdeo, 2005, p.1)

Summary and Conclusion

The work of DoHarris in Calabash Parkway is a social tragedy and one characteristic of so many immigrants whose lives are invested in attempting to gain a better life but who ultimately do not realize their dreams. The illicit affairs and infidelity witnessed among the men and women in the story are a portent for the ultimate failure of dream realization of the characters in the work of DoHarris.