[In the following excerpt, Smilowitz outlines Cliff's approach to the question of a Caribbean identity in No Telephone to Heaven.]

Jamaican-born Michelle Cliff's latest novel, No Telephone to Heaven, touches on some of the themes of Summer Lightning. Cliff herself has lived outside of Jamaica for many years, and she writes knowingly about life in the "borrowed countries"—as she calls them—of American and England, about classism, and the clash of generations as it exists in Jamaica. This novel focuses, however, on what may be termed the pre-emptive concern of the entire region's literature: the question of a Caribbean identity.

The main character, Jamaican-born Clare Savage, is a divided person, as her name aptly signifies. ("Clare" or "clear" means light skin.) Her family has moved to Brooklyn, New York, where her father passes for white while her darker-skinned mother desperately grasps at tokens of the culture she has left behind. Eventually the mother returns home, taking one daughter with her and leaving Clare with her father. The duality is made overt: two sisters, the darker one in Jamaica and the lighter one in New York.

Clare is taken for white wherever she goes, but as a nonwhite Jamaican, proud of her homeland, her life becomes a tightrope, filled with perceived slights, self-imposed silences and an overriding sense of hypocrisy. As she travels in Europe and eventually enrolls at university in London, she is lonely and isolated: "I feel like a shadow … like a ghost …," she admits, "like I could float through my days without ever touching … anyone … Locked off."

Her divided self is artfully paralleled in her Jamaican friend Harry/Harriet, a man/woman. He/she understands the problem: "Cyaan live split," he/she tells Clare, "Not in this world." Clare isn't even sure, for example, with which character to identify in Jane Eyre. "Was she not heroic Jane? Betrayed, left to wander. Solitary. Motherless … No, she told herself. No, she could not be Jane … No, my girl, try Bertha. Wild-maned Bertha … Captive. Ragout. Mixture. Confused. Jamaican." Eventually, like Harry/Harriet, who becomes Harriet, Clare makes her choice and returns home to Jamaica, literally reclaiming her roots in the form of her grandmother's abandoned property.

The narrative passes back and forth in time as it details the experiences of two generations. The novel begins with a group of men and women, dressed in khaki, riding in a truck to an unknown destination, then moves to describe the violent machete murder of a wealthy Jamaican family by their yardboy. We learn of Clare's family, and the events that ultimately place Clare on that moving truck, and of the yardboy's poverty-stricken, inhuman existence. Finally the two narratives mesh into a unified whole. Even the narrative structure works towards Cliff's intended point: the need for wholeness.

While this highly literary novel focuses on Clare Savage's personal dilemma, it also confronts the political future of Jamaica. Colonial exploitation is symbolized by the rape of Harry/Harriet by an English officer, which also parallels the rape of Harry/Harriet's black mother by his/her white father. At another point Clare thinks she may be pregnant by Bobby, an American Vietnam deserter who, significantly, has a sore that refuses to heal. She has a possible miscarriage and later finds an infection has made her sterile. Images of sterility, barrenness, impotence—the inability to create and sustain life—are all here and all speak for the political situation Cliff vividly and terrifyingly describes.

The abundant symbolism and obvious erudition—quotations from European and Caribbean sources open each chapter—are impressive, but the novel's general appeal may suffer as a result. While there are evocative sections filled with strong rhythmic language and passages of insightful description ("Like his labour, his connections to other people were casual," is the description of the yardboy), dialogue is at times stilted. It is hard to think of the characters as flesh and blood. But Cliff's use of Jamaican patois is perfect. She deftly uses it to reveal the deep understanding between Clare and Harry/Harriet and moves in and out of the vernacular with unselfconscious ease. (She provides a glossary of Jamaican terms.)

As the title implies, No Telephone to Heaven provides no easy answers to the serious problems which confront Jamaica and its peoples, and other colonized peoples as well. What Cliff does offer is a provocative novel, rich in both story and substance.