timarie by valerie belgrave

A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Valerie Belgrave is a Caribbean Woman Writer, as well as a visual artist. She lives and works on the island of Trinidad. The covers of her novels feature paintings by the author. For information and availability of Belgrave’s books or art email < valeriebelgrave@yahoo.com>

As a writer of Caribbean Fiction she has produced four Romance Novels: Ti Marie, Sunvalley Romance*, Tigress* and Dance The Water. She has also written the play Night of the Wolf which was successfully performed in Port of Spain and Kingston, Jamaica. INFORMATION ON TI MARIE & DANCE THE WATER can be found in this website. Tigress* and Sun Valley Romance *are currently out of print.

Belgrave’s novels might be described as romances of substance in that they combine fairy tale romance with discussions of serious humanist ideas. These ideas usually center on consciousness, race or social issues. She is said to write “undercover” books or entertainment with hidden depths i.e. novels which are meant to appeal to both the escapist and the intellectual needs of the reader. These novels, therefore lend
themselves to examination by the serious scholar and have been called “literary romances”.

Her first novel, TI MARIE ( Historical Fiction). Set in the eighteenth Century (18th Century) it is a very accessible and engrossing fictional discourse of the exciting early History of Trinidad & Tobago told through the story of African/Amerindian Yei and her beautiful mixed race daughters Carmen and Eléna.

SUMMERY of TI MARIE
Into Yei, Carmen and Eléna’s idyllic world of untouched landscape and harmonious race relations comes a beleaguered Spanish Governor, refugees from the French revolution/French colonial revolts, (who bring racism and terror with them), the ruthless, conquering British and Barry Wingate, a young British aristocrat, destined to find love and consciousness in the midst of the tumult that is Trinidad at the close of the 18th Century.

PUBLISHING DETAILS
First published by Heinemann International (Oxford, UK) in their Caribbean Writer’s Series, in 1988, Ti Marie is now AVAILABLE in a new Edition. This new Edition published by Jouvay Press of Trinidad & Tobago, features an introduction by the foremost West Indian critic, Prof. Kenneth Ramchand as well as a detailed explanatory Afterword by the author herself in which she uncovers the rationale behind the plot. The Afterword has been said to be fascinating to the causal reader and is known to be very valuable to students of this novel.

There has been growing respect for Ti Marie in recent years. It is now used by several universities in the States, Canada, and the West Indies in either their Literature or History courses. Viz:- Post Colonial romance: (UIC (Chicago) Post Grad. Lit)
Culture, Politics & Post Colonialism: Michigan State U.(History)
Culture & Civilization:- University of the West Indies (UWI) Trinidad

A Black Writer
As a Black Writer and specifically, a Black Woman Writer, Belgrave’s fiction usually incorporates a focus on race relations and often features mixed race characters and Multiracial relationships in which the societal or familial pressures are the obstacles in the relationship.
A Feminist writer
With her strong female characters, Belgrave may be described as a Feminist Writer or a feminist romance writer whose interest is in creating “game free” relationships between men and women, relationships in which her female characters can be fully self-actualized.


REVIEWS of TI MARIE

Jeremy Taylor, Guardian newspaper
I particularly liked three things about Ti Marie: The first is its imaginative range, the way Belgrave has brought vividly to life the people and the realities of Trinidad 200 years ago, a Trinidad going through a trauma far more profound than anything we know about now.

The world she has conjured up is not only historically accurate, but real and a convincing and vivid in its details and it gives the reader a feel and grasp of those turbulent times which you could not get from a dozen conventional histories.

Secondly, it is a very accessible book, written for the general reader, not for the literary elite. It’s odd that a resort to historical romance can be seen as a radical move; but what sort of literature are we going to have if it disdains a mass audience?

Thirdly, Ti Marie is a deeply humanist book. It would have been fatally easy to write a tract illustrating specific views about 18th century race, class and slavery; Belgrave has not done that. She does not flinch from any of these things – the ugliness and violence of slave society are inescapable.


Prof. Nancy Cirillo, English Dept. UIC Chicago says…
It was such a great pleasure to teach that novel, both in the joy it gives the reader and the joy that a teacher can experience seeing the responses of students I think reading Ti Marie did a great deal to help my students escape the provincialisms, which take so many forms. The novel really facilitated their ability to read history, to talk about slavery in widening contexts and to see the Caribbean outside the closed frames of their culture.

Dr. Stephanie Shonekan, Colombia College, Chicago
Ti Marie offers readers a remarkably fresh way of accessing the unique history of Trinidad and Tobago. Through the lens of a beautiful love story, issues of race, power and gender in 18th Century Trinidad are explored. As a professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies, I intend to use Ti Marie in a class I am designing on Literature and Music by women in the African Diaspora.

Dr. Ramabai Espinet, Seneca College, Toronto
We discussed Ti Marie in class this past week.(Feb ’05) It was a great success. The comments were overwhelmingly that it brought the period (one of the most significant and defining in Caribbean history) alive, and really made them imagine what life was like then. Many commented on the visual aspects and a few suggested that it would make a wonderful film.

DANCE THE WATER
Published by Jouvay Press of Trinidad & Tobago, Dance The Water is Valerie Belgrave’s latest novel. It is now in its 2nd Edition. A contemporary Romance, it is set principally on the island of Barbados of the 1990’s. In addition to the romance, the serious aspect of this novel surrounds questions of “being” i.e. consciousness, the self quest and the quest for personal authenticity. An author’s Afterword is also featured in this novel. Once again this is an easy, fun read for anyone over the age of twelve.

SUMMARY
When Ayana Robinson rushes off at her father’s request to “rescue” her teenage sister who has gone missing in the Caribbean, the jaded New York yuppie finds more to her mission than she bargained for; her lost roots, and a surfing bum called “Matey” who mixes a potent brew of hypnotic music and penetrating insights.

Caught in this compelling romance that seems doomed from the start, Ayana moves closer and closer to self discovery and an authenticity more challenging than her New Yorker’s existence.

THE MUSIC of Dance the Water
Belgrave wrote the music for the six (6) songs which appear in the novel. A CD of this music was produced with the first edition. On special request it can be made available.

REVIEWS
Dr. William B. Allen: Michigan State U.
I for one, find it amazing that romance in our time can still reflect a power to focus the intellect on the concrete and the valued at once. As I read through Dance the Water I was forcefully struck by the manner of Belgrave’s contribution, for the social and political urgency is kept far enough in the background there for the meaning of personal decisions (and opportunities) to come fully to light as an expression of human yearnings and capabilities…I can recall the last time I read an obvious check-out counter romance. Well, I now use that experience as a reliable index of just how far this work does NOT fit the model even while it can certainly satisfy that longing. That is, to say the least, an extraordinary accomplishment.

Dr. Ibbit Mosaheb, Toronto, Canada
I read Dance The Water and once started it was difficult to put down. Belgrave has an excellent command of the English language, and her portrayal of the main characters is such that the reader can actually see them in action. I was also impressed with how she handled the mores of the three societies, Barbados, NY city and Trinidad, especially the race-relations in Barbados, which was the centerpiece of her dissertation. The manner in which she treated race and color is to be commended, as there is a tolerance in Barbados different to Trinidad.

Dr. Ramabai Espinet : Seneca college, Toronto
Dance The Water continues the vein of romantic fiction in a decidedly contemporary setting. The novel moves between the Caribbean (Barbados, to be exact) and its New York diasporic commumity, and is teasingly engaged with some of the issues and concerns which bedevil the lives of many of us who have made that journey or are contemplating it.

The book is well-written, vivid in its evocation of landscape, deft in characterization and as for plot, well! This is a love story which keeps the reader on the edge of his/her seat hoping that all’s well that ends well. The pace is a crackling one and this is no surprise because Belgrave is a great spinner of yarns.

PROF. KENNETH RAMCHAND: Prof Emeritus, UWI. St. Augustine
It is one of my own ruling critical principles that a book can be read in different ways at different times by the same person and is capable of being read at different levels though, of course, the greatest of these is the first one, the one that depends on story, characters and feelings. Dance The Water is an unusual book in that it recognizes the interconnection between the word, the dance, song and music in our cultural practice. It is a book that appeals to eye, (Belgrave’s own art work forming the cover) to ear and our sense of rhythm…

Dance the Water is also a sexy story about a woman from America and a surfing boy she meets on the beach and a story about an exasperated Caribbean father and his two Caribbean /American daughters. It is also a love story that shows how two people in flight from different ghosts find themselves through each other. It is a book about the realities in the lives of women whether they move powerfully in the corporate world or in the banal and glittering culture of the beauty contests.

So, Dance The Water is a book about the modern Caribbean reality of belonging to more than one world and about the constant struggle to hold on to the true self while responding to and enjoying the exhilarating flux of external social and cultural realities. But Belgrave is more than just a chronicler of modern realities, she is also an author with a message who set out to examine human possibilities for growth.