Cereus Blooms at Night
Shani Mootoo represents an individual who is a second-generation immigrant and in
constant struggle with Canadian society, and finds it alienating. Her writings symbolize
all that multiculturalism stands in opposition to—racism, stereotyping and
ethnocentrism etc. Cereus Blooms at Night is the beautifully written, sensational first
novel by Shani Mootoo, one of Canada’s most exciting literary voices. It explores themes
of utmost disgust—incest, extra-marital affair, child abuse, sexual violence among
others. At the core of this haunting multi-generational novel are the shifting faces of
Mala—adventurer and protector, recluse, and madwoman. Told by the engaging voice
of Tyler, Mala’s vivacious male caretaker at the Paradise Alms House, Cereus Blooms at
Night is layered with unforgettable scenes of a world where love and treachery collide.
At the heart of this bold and seductive novel is an alleged crime committed many years
before the story opens. Mala is the reclusive old woman suspected of murder who is
delivered to the Paradise Alms House after a judge finds her unfit to stand trial. When
she arrives at her new home, frail and mute, she is placed in the tender care of Tyler,
who becomes her unlikely confidante and the storyteller of Mala's extraordinary life. In
luminous, sensual prose, Shani Mootoo combines diverse storytelling traditions to
explore identity, gender, and violence in a celebration of our capacity to love. The
‘cereus’ of the title both refer to the cactus that grows in Mala's yard and to Mala's brief
moment of true happiness before her life utterly falls apart.
Plot/Summary: It’s themes include gender and sexual relationships, sexual violence,
identity formation, and resilience despite cruel social structures. The novel is set in
Paradise, a fictional town in the Caribbean. Mala (aka Pohpoh) Ramchandin, a seemingly
mad woman, is accused of killing her father, Chandin Ramchandin. She has spent her
entire life on the island of Lantanacamara (a fictional island in the Caribbean). After a
judge declares that she is a mental imbecile and likely murdered her father, Mala is sent
to the Paradise Alms House. Tyler, a male nurse, takes care of her. “I hardly had opened
my mouth to explain that Miss Ramchandin was too frail to inflict even a bad thought
when Sister screamed at me for being insolent and blatantly disregarding her
authority.” All the other social workers are afraid of her because of her reputation as a
father-killer. Where Mala is mute, Tyler is garrulous. Because of his voluble disposition,
Tyler is the main narrator of Cereus Blooms at Night. As a gay man, Tyler is frequently
ostracized on the island. Though he is a skilled nurse, the administrator doesn’t let him
work with most patients unless they’re “freaks” like Mala. The social exclusion he has
felt for most of his life makes him sympathetic toward Mala’s suffering.
As Mala begins to see that Tyler holds no ill-intent, she opens up. Her first noises imitate
the sounds of birds and insects and then speak softly and in short sentences. Tyler
learns that there are tragic reasons behind Mala’s “uncultured” behavior. For starters,
she had terrible parents. Her mother abandoned her at a young age and her father
repeatedly raped her. Her younger sister, understandably wishing to remove herself
from this environment, left the country. Mala is crushed after this departure; she felt
that her younger sister, Asha, was one of the people who reciprocated her love. Despite
the harrowing nature of Mala’s experiences, the luminous storytelling and unique
characters bring light to otherwise dark places, and show that perseverance and
allowing space for love, can overcome all manner of tragedy.
Analysis
Gender-bending and migrating sexual desires in Mootoo also can be considered
examples of unconventional modes of exile and escape. For instance, Mala’s suitor,
Ambrose retreats into a pragmatic marriage with Elsie and subsequently withdraws into
a lifetime of deep sleep and inaction after discovering Mala’s abuse by her father, all the
while living a life of what Elsie calls his “mental infidelity”. Ambrose and Elsie’s
daughter, Ambrosia, escapes into masculinity and grows up as a boy, Ambrose; then, in
young adulthood she migrates into gender ambiguity as “Ambrosia’s obviously vivid
imagination gave him both the ability to imagine many sides of a dilemma … and the
vexing inability to make up his mind”. There is also our narrator, Nurse Tyler, a
homosexual who leaves the harm he faces on Lantanacamara by choosing an education
abroad, where his island “foreignness” will distract from his “perversion”. When he is
older and more confident, he returns to try and make a life in Lantanacamara. Tyler
temporarily migrates into the identity of the “exotic” other to save himself from
surveillance of and punishment for his unusual sexual nature.
LOVE: Cereus Blooms at Night asks readers to disentangle coercive benevolence from
love, for benevolence is a problematic rhetoric both of “compassionate” forms of
empire and of family “care.” Mootoo connects the violence hidden within ideologies of
the loving, happy family with the violence of heteronormative, racist, “humanizing”
colonial institutions (including the Christian mission, colonial education, and slave and
indentured labor) created to serve the needs and ideals of the “productive” family of
capitalist empire. Of course, “telling” on “the family” is generally taboo because it
threatens to disrupt the cycles of violence hidden under rhetorics of love, care, and
benevolent protection. In drawing these lines of connection between the public family
of empire and the private family unit, Mootoo pushes her readers to ask, “What
atrocities have been done in the name of ‘love’?” Cereus Blooms at Night emphasizes
how “love’s discourse must be examined for the history it shares with colonialism in
the context of the civilizing-Christianizing mission and enlightenment ethics
conditioned by [Enlightenment] reason”.
Diasporic Otherness of Tyler & Mala : Among the characters of Shani Mootoo's Cereus
Blooms at Night, Tyler exhibits a clear sense of diasporic Otherness. As a native
Lantanacamaran and a newcomer to the town of Paradise, Tyler states that he was, is, and
may always be an "outsider". This sense of alienation is especially apparent during his
first few weeks at the Paradise Alms House. Not only is he the only man in the
profession of nursing, but the staff makes an effort to keep him in the periphery of
Paradise Alms House affairs. For example, despite all his formal training abroad, the
matron is reluctant to assign him any task besides errands and menial chores. In
addition, the other nurses often mock him in a "condescending tone," conveying the
"malice in their words". Although the Alms House is his residence, he is treated as an
unwelcome stranger. This sense of Otherness can also be perceived through the
alienation he feels from his own body and identity. Not quite fitting the hegemonic
gender role of heterosexual male, Tyler "pondered the gender and sex roles that
seemed available to people, and the rules that went with them" . For years, he was
preoccupied with understanding "what was natural and what perverse, and who said
so and who" . After much reflection, he leaves the shores of Lantanacamara in hopes of
being somewhere where his "perversion" which he "tried diligently to shake might be
either invisible or of no consequence to people". This is not surprising, given his
admittance of loathing his "unusual femininity". Clearly, Tyler feels lost even when it
comes to understanding himself.
The character of Mala, however, reduces Tyler's sense of estrangement and Otherness.
Fancying that they share "a common reception from the rest of the world," the nurse
straightforwardly states that "[s]he knows [his] nature" . The aged but powerful woman
prods Tyler in ways that give him the courage to feel more at ease with himself. This is
best demonstrated by the diasporic moment in which Tyler changes into the dress that
Mala steals for him. Instantly, he imagines himself as being in a female body, excited by
the metamorphosis. Yet, Mala's lack of response and attention eventually makes him
feel "flat-footed and clumsy," like someone who is "[n]ot a man and not ever able to
be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and
nonexistence". However, he soon realizes that rather than trying to make a spectacle of
him, Mala was simply "permitting [his nature] its freedom". After this experience, Tyler
declares that he "had never felt so extremely ordinary, and [he] quite loved it" . In this
manner, Mala helps Tyler discover who he really is.
A close reading of Tyler's "transformation" reveals that the passage employs a
particular narrative gaze.
“ body felt as if it were metamorphosing. It was as though I had suddenly become
plump and less rigid. My behind felt fleshy and rounded. I had thighs, a small mound
of belly, rounded full breasts and a cavernous tunnel singing between my legs.”
In other words, there seems to be a sexualized heterosexual gaze of womanhood
implicit in this passage. Tyler continually justifies slipping his own stories into Mala's
narrative. From the very beginning of the novel, Tyler asks readers to "forgive the lapse"
. He states, "I must be strict with myself and stay with my intention to relate Mala
Ramchandin's story". However, it seems as though he is not strict enough. For example,
even though he purports that the significance of including the story about himself and
Mr. Hector is not to "dwell on issues about [himself]," this is highly questionable
because he elaborates on it at length. Furthermore, despite the fact that he begins part
II with an avowal to "exercise restraint" in terms of including his own narrative, he
ultimately ends the book with the triumphant love story between himself and Otoh.
Conclusion:
The novel packs a blizzard of sensitive themes such as gender, identity, sexual as well as
physical violence, incest, etc. which makes the reader contort with abhorrence and
repulsion. Combining stories of family incest and rape, interracial love, same-sex love,
imperial economies, missionary theology, colonial science, and histories of indentured
and slave labor, for example, allows Mootoo to demonstrate connections across
multiple legacies of imperialism and simultaneously to critique them. The novel is full of
contrasts, moments of delight and anticipation alongside the growing recognition of
impending horrors, abuse and neglect. It taunts the reader into a state of hope, as the
potential for things to have been otherwise is so close at times, only for the illusion of
escape to become shattered by the reality of a situation that holds tight to those who
are caught in its web. Tyler’s narration asks us to think collectively, to recognize the
possibility for change if we keep each other in mind, if we gain resistant consciousness
through our knowledge of each other’s (unknowable) stories. . It engages readers in the
act of “symbolic insurgency,” inviting us to resist while also demanding that we imagine
liberation from oppression.