Roemer, "The Inheritance of my Father: A Story for Listening"

     Roemer's story follows thematics of stories we have been studying over the last several weeks. "The Inheritance of my Father" gives an inside look at family dynamics that involve someone who has come from the Caribbean. Similar to other stories we have read, the narrator takes a trip to where her grandmother lives, the place where her father originated from. This story also takes a look at issues of race and some of the stereotyping that takes place based only on the color of one's skin. We have seen in previous literature examples where a man form the Caribbean leaves and finds a light skinned woman that does not look like him. That situation is the same here, our narrator saying of her mother, "And after that night I am ashamed to be the child of a woman with blond hair and grey eyes and a voice that sounds just like that of people who are not black. Believe me, I longed for a mother with a scarf on her head and skin so dark that I never would have to be afraid at night again that the sun would ever burn me." This quote made me wonder if our narrator struggles with the idea of unhomelines and stuck between the worlds of her father's heritage and where she currently lives. This might be what leads to her wanting so badly to go visit her grandmother.

    I think the father may also be experiencing a little unhomeliness or possibly some fear in facing his history and roots. We have seen in other stories the feeling of almost 'escaping' the islands and once leaving them, not wanting to return. We find out a good reason that her father would have wanted to avoid this trip and seeing his mother when the story says, "At that moment I heard from the mouth of my father that he had to hand over his right to his inheritance because he had turned his back on his mother for almost thirty years, because he was married to a woman of another race." It does not get much more explicit than that in saying there were certainly racial tensions and thoughts against those who were not native to the islands. I think of the postcolonial idea of otherness when I think of this father and people like him who come to find a different world than that to what they grew up in. When they have left home and returned years later like this, it seems they are the outcasts in society, showing just how much heritage and family loyalty is valued by the Caribbean people. 

-cs

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