[David Dabydeen, Sweet Li Jie, Leeds, UK, Peepal Tree Press, 2024. £10.99; 166 pp.]
“The British and other foreigners came. There was a sudden collapse, all we built over centuries suddenly collapsed. We were all reduced to coolies, circus performers, concubines, customers, Christians.” – Tang Yu, 1860
“The Negroes have left, but my lands are now lush with coolies.” – Sir John Gladstone, 1838
“Was there a garden or was the garden a dream?” – Jorge Luis Borges
David Dabydeen, Guyanese, West Indian and British prize winning poet and novelist, placed these three inscriptions at the front of his latest fiction, Sweet Li Jie, published by Peepal Tree in 2024. The first is from a Chinese court official, in a dismal summary of the state of his country after the Second Opium War in 1860. The second is a self-congratulatory gloat by Sir John Gladstone, plantation and slave owner, on August 1, 1838, in a letter to his son, William, later prime minister of England. The third is a lyrical reach for inspiration by a Latin American writer.
Gladstone looks with satisfaction at his achievement after founding the disreputable institution of indentureship that brought Indian and Chinese labourers to Guyana, writing his letter, ironically, on Emancipation Day, 1838, when the equally infamous era of slavery was brought to an end. Tang Yu laments the conditions in China that drove many away to brave the wide ocean and journey to join the Gladstone experiment in a quest for precious stones and prosperity in British Guiana. Against that uninspiring backdrop, Luis Borges, much like the indentured servants, the coolies in the West Indies, hopes for a dream to become a reality, for the amelioration of a garden to ennoble the existence of the downtrodden.
