Beyond the Limbo Silence [Paperback]

Elizabeth Nunez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 1998

In the tradition of novelists Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, and Tsitsi Dangarembga, Elizabeth Nunez weaves a personal story into the broader tapestry of political history. Twenty-year-old Sara Edgehill has left her native Trinidad in 1963 to attend college in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where she joins two other girls -- Courtney from St. Lucia and Angela from British Guyana -- in the task of integrating the all-white school. For Sara, coming from a world in which she is connected to a vibrant community and culture, this cold, alien place in which she is neither loved nor understood is profoundly shocking and disorienting.

She longs to return to Trinidad, but knows she must finish college. Slowly, Sara finds support in her friendship with Courtney, who covertly practices voodoo rituals, and in a blossoming relationship with Sam, an African-American who draws her into the turbulent civil rights movement.

Set against vivid historical events and written with poignancy and insight, Beyond the Limbo Silence will surely take its place among the classics of its genre.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cultures collide, and reality and mysticism exist side by side in this highly charged, lyrical account of a young woman's political awakening by the Trinidad-born author of When Rocks Dance. When scholarship winner Sara Edgehill forsakes her native Trinidad for a Catholic women's college in Oshkosh, Wis., that has sought out "primitive people with raw talent," the civil rights struggle is at its peak. Haunted by the family legend of a great-grandmother who fell in love with a voodoo priest and went mad, emotionally frail Sara sees herself as vulnerable to mental illness. At school, the other two scholarship studentsAcheerful Angela Baboolalasingh, an Indian from British Guyana, and morose Courtney Adams from St. LuciaAbefriend her, but Sara soon feels isolated from the rest of the students, who are white and well-heeled. Sara's loneliness fades when she meets a handsome black law student named Sam Maxwell. He and Sara become lovers shortly before he decides to go to Mississippi as a disciple of Malcom X. History intrudes further when three of his co-workers disappear (the victims are the real-life Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney) and are feared murdered. Intrigued by Courtney's practice of obeah, her ancestral voodon tradition that uses sorcery and magic ritual, Sara agrees to enter a trance state in an attempt to find the bodies of the missing men. Nunez documents Sara's first year in the States with its heartbreaks and feelings of alienation, offering a convincing portrait of an earnest young woman struggling to reconcile her newly acquired political conscience with West Indies mysticism.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

A beautifully delineated novel, with elements of magic and fable, about a storied time. Sara, at age 20, leaves the succulent green of Trinidad to take a scholarship at a Catholic women's college in Oshkosh. The year is 1963. Sara is reserved and intelligent, sees her father's accepting humiliation as the price of polio vaccine for his family, and her mother's pain in trying to bear more children. In Oshkosh, she meets two other girls who are integrating the school: Angela from British Guiana, who has found her own ways of accepting her place among the white girls; and Courtney from St. Lucia, who still lives the Vodoun rituals of her ancestors. Through the prism of Sara's isolation, her growing understanding and horror of what happens to black people in America, and her relationship with Sam, a young black man who finds he must go to Mississippi, we see the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassination, Malcolm and Martin. The deaths of the civil rights workers take Sam from her, but not before the spirit of the child she aborts plays a magical role in the FBI search of the Mississippi mud. Nunez makes the cold of a Wisconsin winter a harsh, living presence to one used to the deep warmth of Trinidad. This powerful illumination of race and culture by the light of dreams, ritual, and Vodoun will remind many of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker. GraceAnne A. DeCandido --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (October 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580050131
• ISBN-13: 978-1580050135
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,965,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Fiction, October 26, 2003

By 

Alan Cambeira "author of Azucar's Trilogy" (Dominican Republic, author of Tattered Paradise...Azucar's Trilogy Ends) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond The Limbo Silence (Paperback)

The widely respected and extremely talented author of When Rocks Dance and Bruished Hibiscus, Elizabeth Nunez brings us another powerful, lyrically superb piece of writing in BEYOND THE LIMBO SILENCE. Among a growing list of gifted writers from Trinidad-Tobago, Nunez chronicles the agonizing personal struggles of Sara Edgehill as she leaves her native Trinidad for a Catholic women's college in radically different Wisconsin. But there's much more to this story than merely "making cultural adjustments in a new environment." The author skillfully and brilliantly interweaves and delicately balances socio-politics and artistry into a bold intellectual defiance of literary convention by inviting the reader into the sometimes unfathomable mysticism of Caribbean reality. And what better historical vehicle to employ than the explosive dynamics of the 60s? I have had the pleasure of hearing Ms Nunez speak before a live university forum and this story to me reads more like a stolen page from her own life that she has chosen to share with us than a fictional account of a young girl experiencing college life in a faraway land. this is vigorously commanding storytelling which I admire greatly. This is a MUST READ novel.

Alan Cambeira
Author of Azucar! The Story of Sugar (a novel)

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book., June 21, 2000

By 

B. Coleman - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Limbo Silence (Paperback)

Not being familiar with Elizbeth Nunez, I was pleasantly surprised at the beauty of her writing. It was poetic without being overwhelming. She excels at setting description and character development. The plot moved fluidly along. I was kept intrigued, and found the book difficult to put down.

There was a need for a more full description of the spiritual terms and rituals in the book, either in text or perhaps in footnotes or glossary form. Because of the lack of this, confusion marred an otherwise delightful read.

I look forward to reading Nunez's other offerings.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lesson for those too young to remember, December 25, 1999

By 

Rosario Charambura (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond the Limbo Silence (Paperback)

Reading this book took me back, vividly, to the era of my youth. Ms. Nunez does a superb job of telling it like it was without being preachy or condecending. I knew right away that I had to pass the book on to my children. My children are so innocent. They just don't seem to realize the hidden pitfalls and subtleties of prejudice. I think this book, with its surprisingly gentle manner of revealing a violent time, will help them understand.