Donna Bailey Nurse thinks fans of Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward will love this Canadian novel
This interview originally aired on March 19, 2022.
Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist and professor. Her second novel, Salvage the Bones, won the National Book Award for fiction in 2011. It follows Esch, a pregnant teenager, and her family in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. The novel reflects on rural poverty, motherhood and violence.
The Next Chapter columnist Donna Bailey Nurse has read Salvage the Bones and says readers who enjoyed that novel should pick up What Storm, What Thunder by Haitian Canadian author Myriam J. A. Chancy.
What Storm, What Thunder is about the earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 2010 and it tells the story of the people living in its aftermath.
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
"I think a lot of people believe, because of the title and because it's always described with the hurricane up front, that the hurricane is central to the entire story — but it's really not. It's really about the life that the Batiste family leads up to the hurricane.
"The narrator, narrating in the first person, is a 15-year-old girl named Esch. She has three brothers and a kind of a no-count father. He's mean, he's lazy and he's an alcoholic. Sadly, their mother died several years before, during the birth of their littlest brother. Their father, who no one really listens to, is the one who believes that there's going to be a major hurricane. But the rest of the family just goes about their business.
"One of the most important things about the novel is that while Esch does not have a mother, she has found, at 15, that she's pregnant, and she's basically trying to keep that from her family while this is all happening.
"The hurricane is the climax of the novel, but it's really about how the hurricane is a large culminating catastrophe. It's how people who live so close to the margins — like this poor Southern family, a poor Black family — it's really due to the racism that they face. They have limited opportunities. They have limited access to health care. The whole community suffers from civic neglect. And, of course, there are a lot of untimely deaths on this account.
As we go through this story, we see how they manage these smaller day-to-day catastrophes or difficulties that people in this condition must live with and overcome.
"As we go through this story, we see how they manage these smaller day-to-day catastrophes or difficulties that people in this condition must live with and overcome. Then when the hurricane comes, we see this really large catastrophe and how their skills in dealing with their day-to-day challenges really help them."
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J. A. Chancy
"Whereas Salvage the Bones is famously about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, What Storm, What Thunder is about the massive earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010. And of course, I have to now stipulate 2010, because they were hit by an equally horrific earthquake in August 2021.
What it really does is build this world and give us a really powerful sense of community, rather than just victims of this earthquake.
"In the previous book, the climax comes near the end with the hurricane. And again, in this novel, the earthquake is not front and centre at all times.
"What we have is almost a collection of linked stories about the impact of the earthquake, and the lives of the various narrators leading up to that moment. You hear about their dreams, their struggles and especially you hear about their loved ones. You hear about this against a backdrop of class struggle, political corruption, foreign interference and greed.
"[Chancy] writes with this Creole accent and it's so beautiful. It's so musical. But because it's so beautiful, just the sound of everything kind of highlights all the horror and agony of the earthquake experience. She really breaks that experience down for us.
"It's so excruciating. What's it like to see your house fall down on your little girls? What's it like to hear your little girls crying for you under the rubble until it turns to whines and then it stops? This particular character goes quite mad.
"What holds it together is really this one character. Her name is Ma Lou and she's a market woman. She knows all the people and has listened to and absorbed their stories — kind of like Miriam Chancy herself, I think. But each story has familiar characters from the previous or upcoming stories. When we run into somebody, we know who they are. What it really does is build this world and give us a really powerful sense of community, rather than just victims of this earthquake."
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
