“The Dragon Can’t Dance” by Earl Lovelace (Trinidad & Tobago)

Synopsis

Trinidad, 1970s. Calvary Hill – poverty stricken and rubbish-strewn ­­– is home to a community of people who come together during the joyful yearly town Carnival, becoming larger-than-life versions of themselves. But when it ends, and the strains of day-to-day life grow large, what happens to the peoples’ hopes, and the feeling that ‘all o’ we is one’?

With an unforgettable cast of characters, The Dragon Can’t Dance is a stunning, classic novel of the desire for identity and belonging, alongside the legacies of a colonial past.

Favourite Quote

We is people. I, you, you, for we own self. For you and for you and for your own self. We is people with the responsibility for we own self. And as long as we appeal to others, to the authorities, they will do what they want. We have to act for we.

Nicola’s Creative Reading Group reading list

Year 2 – “Africa and the Caribbean” (Oct 2007 – Jun 2008)

“This Blinding Absence of Light” by Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco)
“Woman at Point Zero” by Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt)
“Bitter Fruit” by Achmat Dangor (South Africa)
“Sleepwalking Land” by Mia Couto (Mozambique)
“Matigari” by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)
“In-Between World of Vikram Lall” by M.G. Vassanji (Tanzania)
“Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
“Ancestor Stones” by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
“The Dragon Can’t Dance” by Earl Lovelace (Trinidad & Tobago)