In the Caribbean, secret lives come at a cost

H. Nigel Thomas' latest novel, A Different Hurricane, is set on the lush Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It's about two young men, Gordon and Allen, who become secret lovers until society forces them apart.

After returning home from studying in Canada, Gordon's wife's journal threatens to expose his affair — putting his and Allen's lives in danger — and they must do everything in their power to keep it under wraps.

"Gordon had no illusions about what he was going back to," said Thomas on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "He had already seen the persecution that openly gay men endured, but for Gordon it was more important to be a parent, to father his daughter than his own sexuality."

The story in A Different Hurricane is partly drawn from Thomas' own experiences as a gay man who left Saint Vincent for Montreal when he was just 21.

Now, Thomas is the author of 13 books that span the genres of fiction, poetry and literary criticism. He has won many awards, including the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize in 2022, the Jackie Robinson Professional of the Year Award, the l'Université Laval's Hommage aux créateurs Award and the Black Theatre Workshop's Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.

He joined Mattea Roach to reflect on the type of story he wanted to tell with A Different Hurricane and how his life experiences shape his fiction.

Mattea Roach: What sort of a queer story were you trying to tell in A Different Hurricane?

H. Nigel Thomas: This story comes out of issues that have been roiling in my conscious and subconscious for many, many years. Certainly since AIDS struck us back in the 1980s, for example, you're dealing with queers who were masquerading as heterosexuals.

I can think of two particular cases in which these men infected their wives with AIDS and it was only when their wives were infected that they actually discovered that their husbands were gay. That situation actually is replicated in A Different Hurricane. 

I almost went down that route.- H. Nigel Thomas

There's also a personal dimension. I almost went down that route. Just before coming to Canada, I was engaged to be married to a woman and I certainly was in the closet, had no intentions of coming out of it.

It leaves me wondering, had I gone down that path, what would my life have been? So there are many, many issues that my imagination engaged with to create A Different Hurricane.

MR: You've been in Montreal science 1968. What was it that tipped the scales for you that you were going to move here and make your life in Montreal? 

HNT: Homosexuality was certainly not on the list, really. I wanted a university education and I come from a very relatively poor background, financially speaking, so there was no possibility of my coming here as a paid student.

I emigrated from Saint Vincent primarily to go to university, and when I came I did think I would return to the Caribbean. In fact, at one point I did apply for a job in Jamaica. I laugh today as I think about that. 

But I came here and discovered that I wasn't obliged to wear the mask of heterosexuality, and it gave me an opportunity, of course, to get out of my engagement and to have somewhat of a gay life, even though I did not make it a public issue until later.

In fact, the publication of my first novel sort of set the way or laid the foundation for me to come out of the closet. That novel was published in 93 and I made a public declaration in 94 in, of all places, the press in my home islands Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. 

MR: What was it about releasing a novel that set the stage for you to feel like you wanted to make some sort of public acknowledgement or declaration in that way?

HNT: My novel was the very first Caribbean novel with an identifiable queer character. The Caribbean readership, however small it was, wasn't prepared for that. Not even the Black community here was prepared for that and so the question came up quite often.

What am I going to say if I'm confronted with this question: "Nigel Thomas, you've created a character who is very much up in arms about his sexuality. Are you yourself gay?" Could I possibly then say no? So I had to just simply state the truth.

I had to just simply state the truth.- H. Nigel Thomas

I had been advised by friends who had read the novel to remove the gay content, but I felt it should be there and probably, subconsciously, I was telling myself it's time to come out of the closet. 

MR: Nigel, A Different Hurricane plays with timelines and takes advantage of this framing device where we're actually reading journal notes at one point that come from this character Maureen, who's Gordon's recently deceased wife. Can you tell me a bit about Maureen and what sort of a situation she was in writing this journal that we get to read?

HNT: Well, she has just retired. An early retirement, premature, because she was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. It's also the occasion that she discovers that her husband is gay. She needs to make sense of what has happened to her.

Initially, she thought she was writing a memoir, but it turns out in the end to be a journal. She was an English teacher for high school, so she possesses the skills to explore via language what has indeed happened to her. That journal is very important insofar as it is responsible for much of the novel's content. Let me put it that way. 

MR: There's a real moral complexity I feel at play with a lot of your characters. I'm wondering if you can talk maybe a bit about how you sort of crafted that complexity? 

HNT: It's holding up the mirror to nature. To seek perfection in human beings is to set out on a fool's path. Even so, some of the characters are better than others, let me put it that way. 

I suppose you can take a character like Maureen's mother, who is admirable in terms of how she manages to raise Maureen on her own and so on and so forth. Her own journey is quite a difficult one.

To seek perfection in human beings is to set out on a fool's path.- H. Nigel Thomas

On the other hand, she's virulently homophobic, and Gordon's sister, with whom he's very, very close, she too is homophobic. I think the reason for it is that if you live in an environment where homophobia is a vital or an important part of the matrix, it's impossible to escape it.

These are people who are conditioned to interpret reality in terms of biblical texts. And so, for example, they would simply say, "I don't agree with homosexuality because it's written in the Bible. And I'd be damned if I believe anything else." That's the environment that shapes these people and I'm not sure you can do very much about it, even in those islands where gay sex is no longer criminalized. That's just on paper. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Ryan B. Patrick with thanks to Ailey Yamamoto.