Lawrence Scott - Witchbroom

Witchbroom

A curious narrator called Lavren, both male and female, tells carnival tales of crime and passion. These tales evoke a visionary history of the Monagas family and their island.

Witchbroom is a brilliant first novel which reveals the history of a Caribbean island with an intensity and originality that is unrivalled.

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	Photograph - William Hearle

Critical Essays

See references to the most recent work on Witchbroom and related work on multidimensional queerness by Bastien Bomans, PhD student at the University of Liège, CEREP (Postcolonial Research Centre; https://www.cerep.uliege.be/cms/c_4435147/en/cerep-about-cerep).

Bomans, Bastien. 26/10/2018. "'Cric, Crac, Queer': "Re-membering Silenced Stories of Oppression in Lawrence Scott’s Witchbroom (1992), Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night (1996) and David Chariandy’s Brother (2017)". Paper presented at the Our (Queer) Caribbean Symposium, London (England). (Web: http://hdl.handle.net/2268/245086).

Bomans, Bastien. 08/12/2020. "‘Queerly postcolonial, postcolonially queer’: Aux croisements des oppressions dans l’œuvre littéraire. Cas de la littérature Trinidadienne". Paper presented at the Midis de la Recherche de Tradital, University of Brussels (Belgium). (Web: http://hdl.handle.net/2268/255586).

Writing Trinidad: Nation and Hybridity in The Dragon Can’t Dance and Witchbroom , Patricia Murray, Caribbean Literature After Independence, The Case of Earl Lovelace.

Edited by Bill Schwarz, Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2008

To Heal the Body: Patricia Murray (City & Metropolitan Unversity) 2002 -The Marvellous Real in Witchbroom and Aelred's Sin - paper presented to EACLALS Conference Copenhagen University.

Collier, Gordon. 1997. Literary Round Table Anglistentag 1997 Giessen Ed. Raimund Borgmeier

Dawes, Kwame. 1997. A Genuine Caribbean Text, Journal of Caribbean Literatures, 1,1,121-126

Dubois, Dominique. 1999. In Search of a New Beginning for the New World in Witchbroom, Commonwealth Essays and Studies, Vol 22 No.1 81-88

Forbes, Curdella. 1994. Review of Witchbroom, Journal of West Indian Literature, Vol. 6 No.2 97-111

Harris, Wilson. 1992, Review of Witchbroom, Wasafiri No 16, 65-66

Modecai Ramasay, Rachel. 1996 The Carnival Tales of Lavren Monagas: A Discussion of Religion, Sexuality and Community In the Fiction of Lawrence Scott, Department of Literatures in English University of the West Indies Mona, Jamaica

Maes-Jelinek, Hena 1997. Carnival fiction: Creative Masks of Recent Caribbean Writing, Anglstentag, Giessen Ed Raimund Borgmeir

Maes-Jelinek, Hena. 2000. Lawrence Scott’s Caribbeanness: A Personal Reading of Witchbroom and Aelred’s Sin Eds RP Corballis & Andre Viola Post-Colonial Knitting : The Art of Jacqueline Bardolph –Sophia Antepolis CRELA 54-70

Maes–Jelinek, Hena. 2005, Europe and Post-colonial creativity: a metaphysical cross-culturalism–European review Vol 13, No 1 91-102. © Academia Europaea

Pagnoulle, Christine. 2000 Figures de Style dans le roman de Lawrence Scott, Witchbroom Liege University

Pagnoulle,Christine, Sharing Territories:Fictional Explorations of Caribbean History in Lawrence Scott’s Witchbroom and six French creole novels. Liege university

Ramchand, Kenneth. 1992. Carnival Tales and The Caribbean Sensibility Trinidad & Tobago Review - Trinidad Guardian August 13 1992

Reviews

What a powerful writer he is- unfashionably leisured and completely self-confident. A Caribbean One Hundred Years of Solitude. It certainly wont just go away. Fay Weldon

The austere, the colonial timbre, the resonance of Africa,, the sounds of the ‘coolie drums’ from the edge of the sugar cane are as essential to his writing as the Latin extravagance of magic realism. Polly Patullo - The Guardian

Hypnotic tale of sugar, sex and magic. The Observer

An unusual voice, a web of narratives. The Independent

Genuinely erotic, slipping in and out of the mythic and historic to weave its peculiar cumulative spell. The Daily Telegraph.

A hypnotic series of tales. A gripping read. The Mail on Sunday

The writing here is rich in detail, a controlled suggestive style combining colonial history with myth and hypnotic description. San Francisco Review of Books

This novel has more of the tone and texture and taste of the Caribbean milieu than any novel I can think of. This is a wonderful novel: rich, sensuous, quirky, energetic, vividly memorable. Stewart Brown

Impressively written work by a very gifted writer. Subtle but compelling, strange and intriguing fiction with its layers of incurable pathos. Wilson Harris Wasafiri

Rare and magical. The first of its kind. Wonderful evocative language; complete emotional range; a loving, touching insight into human and family relationships. Sam Selvon

Compelling fiction by a new writer with a sensuous prose style, the gift of comedy and satire, and a warming capacity for lyrical utterance. Ken Ramchand - Trinidad Guardian

A vividly original work that brilliantly employs the metaphor of hermaphroditism to convey this culture’s dual experience of subjugation and liberty USA Today

Witchbroom is more ambitious than anything I’ve seen in West Indian fiction. Witchbroom is a superbly crafted first novel. Curdella Forbes - Journal of West Indian Literature

A concoction of memorabilia, combining his/her story, myth and fiction, Scott’s novel is without precedent. The West Indian Writer