No Telephone To Heaven, By Michelle Cliff
In her novel, No Telephone to Heaven, Michelle Cliff employs a writing style that makes the readers stop and take notice of what she is conveying. There are many nuances and themes that she alludes to, in exceptional ways, repeatedly throughout the book to express the nature of her characters and the complicated issues that they go through in their life. One specific passage from her book that shows her unique, poignant writing is in the chapter “Magnanimous Warrior” (161). Within this short chapter she uses a description of this “warrior” to evince and symbolize the complexity of the identity crises that her characters are going through and also the importance of motherhood throughout the novel. The complexity of this brief chapter starts immediately within the title. The two dissimilar connotations of the words “magnanimous” and “warrior” convey a contradicting nature that is also noticeable in many of Cliff’s characters’ identities. The intricacy of the passage continues to be expressed through the two contrasting tones used in the
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beginning and the end. From the start, the reader receives the image of this powerful, intelligent, “warrior” “mother” who has close ties to her culture and the land in which she is living (163). The passage reads, “Hunting mother. She who forages. Who knows the ground…center of the world,” (163). This reading invokes the feeling of awe for the ingenuity of this self-assured woman. Then the vision that the reader creates from reading these words is reversed near the ending of this chapter as this resilient warrior rapidly changes into a weak victim. The passage continues, “She has starved to death. She wanders the roads of the country with swollen feet… She is not respected,” (164). The woman has lost her cultural command and her connection to the land. This antipode of the woman that we once knew is striking, just like the differences within the other characters Cliff fashioned in her story.
Two examples of Cliff’s characters that share a similar fission within themselves are, but not limited to, Clare and Harry/Harriet. Clare’s schism within her identity is connected to her race, being both black and white, and her trouble finding which one she identifies with, since both of the cultures exclude her in different ways. While Harry/Harriet’s split is a result of her gender identity and the differing sex of her body. These personas are able to relate to the story of this woman and her complexities within this chapter because it is a comparable struggle that they all are going through. Through these parallels contained within this passage and its title, Cliff makes the readers reflect on this important theme of identity contradictions in the novel.
The chapter, in addition, contains a plethora of fragmented sentences riddled with repetitions, one of the most common being “mother” and other words with nurturing connotations.
Motherhood plays a large role within this novel, from Christopher’s grandmother who embodies a completely nurturing character and is inadvertently the relationship that motivates him to murder, to Kitty who left her daughter Clare behind in America with her father and through this action caused her daughter to question why she was left behind and who that made her. Motherhood also intertwines in Clare’s life again because of her desire to be a mother herself, and then her discovery that she could no longer conceive after a miscarriage. But the passage does not specifically speak about a mother that the reader has read about in depth, and in its ambiguity it prompts the readers to think of another mother read about in passing with similar
struggles.
Cliff draws many comparisons between the mother who lives in the Dungle, “the dung-heap jungle where people squirmed across mountains of garbage,” and the mother warrior in the short chapter (32). They share an allied, anonymous struggle, as the woman in the Dungle labors and forages as well: “the [woman] walked the city looking for food or begging work. Hunting through the trash… she fought the street dogs” (33). Through this Dungle mother and the symbolic mother read about in “Magnanimous Warrior,” along with the connections made through the other characters’ experiences with motherhood, the reader is shown the importance of this theme in the development of the storyline and the overall feeling and nature of the story.
Michelle Cliff’s original writing style really draws in the reader, and makes them contemplate the different objectives that her writing is conveying, and even in a chapter that consists of only two pages, she is able to express nuances that are found throughout the book.
beginning and the end. From the start, the reader receives the image of this powerful, intelligent, “warrior” “mother” who has close ties to her culture and the land in which she is living (163). The passage reads, “Hunting mother. She who forages. Who knows the ground…center of the world,” (163). This reading invokes the feeling of awe for the ingenuity of this self-assured woman. Then the vision that the reader creates from reading these words is reversed near the ending of this chapter as this resilient warrior rapidly changes into a weak victim. The passage continues, “She has starved to death. She wanders the roads of the country with swollen feet… She is not respected,” (164). The woman has lost her cultural command and her connection to the land. This antipode of the woman that we once knew is striking, just like the differences within the other characters Cliff fashioned in her story.
Two examples of Cliff’s characters that share a similar fission within themselves are, but not limited to, Clare and Harry/Harriet. Clare’s schism within her identity is connected to her race, being both black and white, and her trouble finding which one she identifies with, since both of the cultures exclude her in different ways. While Harry/Harriet’s split is a result of her gender identity and the differing sex of her body. These personas are able to relate to the story of this woman and her complexities within this chapter because it is a comparable struggle that they all are going through. Through these parallels contained within this passage and its title, Cliff makes the readers reflect on this important theme of identity contradictions in the novel.
The chapter, in addition, contains a plethora of fragmented sentences riddled with repetitions, one of the most common being “mother” and other words with nurturing connotations.
Motherhood plays a large role within this novel, from Christopher’s grandmother who embodies a completely nurturing character and is inadvertently the relationship that motivates him to murder, to Kitty who left her daughter Clare behind in America with her father and through this action caused her daughter to question why she was left behind and who that made her. Motherhood also intertwines in Clare’s life again because of her desire to be a mother herself, and then her discovery that she could no longer conceive after a miscarriage. But the passage does not specifically speak about a mother that the reader has read about in depth, and in its ambiguity it prompts the readers to think of another mother read about in passing with similar
struggles.
Cliff draws many comparisons between the mother who lives in the Dungle, “the dung-heap jungle where people squirmed across mountains of garbage,” and the mother warrior in the short chapter (32). They share an allied, anonymous struggle, as the woman in the Dungle labors and forages as well: “the [woman] walked the city looking for food or begging work. Hunting through the trash… she fought the street dogs” (33). Through this Dungle mother and the symbolic mother read about in “Magnanimous Warrior,” along with the connections made through the other characters’ experiences with motherhood, the reader is shown the importance of this theme in the development of the storyline and the overall feeling and nature of the story.
Michelle Cliff’s original writing style really draws in the reader, and makes them contemplate the different objectives that her writing is conveying, and even in a chapter that consists of only two pages, she is able to express nuances that are found throughout the book.