The Evolution of Seth's Family
It is obvious that the most important character in Joanne Hyppolite's novel Seth and Samona is Seth, the book's narrator. The second most important character is his friend Samona, although, if her name had not been in the title, this would not be so obvious. If her name were left out of the title, readers might be inclined to miss her importance, interpreting her as a strong comic relief and a character who shows Seth something about himself in the end, but not completely crucial if one reads this book as the tale of an immigrant family's period of adjustment to contemporary American society. Even though Samona is close to Seth, his immediate family is closer—at least, in the beginning of the story.
Seth's family is a typical immigrant family in the way that they have a closer understanding of each other than of the people in the world around them. Little is said of their parents' social relations outside of their immediate family, but through Seth's eyes readers come to know Seth's relationships with Samona and her family, with his male friend Skid and with Samona and Bessie Armstrong. His brother Jean-Claude has social relations outside of the family with Reggie, a street tough. And his sister Chantal has an American boyfriend, Jerome. It is only natural that all of these relationships would act to bring the close-knit Michelin family apart, not in any tragic way, but in a way that is necessary in order to integrate their Haitian family into their new society. Various Haitian customs are mentioned, from foods to folktales, but the strongest element of Haitian culture affecting this family is its attitude toward women and their place in society. For Boston in the 1990s, the Michelins' attitude toward women is quite noticeably narrow. The character that does the most to change it, and consequently to change Seth' s family from Haitians living in America to actual Haitian-Americans is not Samona but Jerome, the one character who never appears in the book.
Unlike Samona, Jerome is taken by members of Seth's family as a threat. Jean-Claude and his parents feel the need to protect Chantal from Jerome's corruptive influence. To some extent, this is not a reaction based in Haitian culture or any other culture, it is just the age-old struggle of parents and siblings looking out for their own. On the other hand—from the perspective which Chantal sees it—their rule against her dating anyone is excessive in American culture and too steeped in the Haitian tradition of keeping girls at home, where they could train to be good housekeepers or to work menial jobs until they are ready to marry. At the end of the book, when Seth's parents have learned that Jerome's intentions are probably honorable and that Chantal is probably sensible in her ambitions, they still keep a close reign on her social life, prohibiting her from dating in a way that few modern American families would.
For Jean-Claude, Jerome represents more than the general threat of what might happen when Chantal starts to date. He dislikes Jerome for who he is, not just as a potential suitor to Chantal—at least, so he says. His hatred is so intense that his family and friends believe Jean-Claude, who ordinarily stops violence in the neighborhood, could do something out of character, may even commit murder. Though he is from the younger generation, Jean-Claude's view of Jerome is colored by the old Haitian prejudices.
Early in the novel, Seth explains that Jean-Claude sees Jerome as ‘‘a lost brother with no future.'' Jerome has dropped out of...
(This entire section contains 1973 words.)
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high school and he works full-time at the 7-Eleven. Since he obviously isn't lazy—he works full-time at his job—Jean-Claude's anger would appear to stem from the fact that Jerome is not pursuing an education. There is little about him that marks him as lost, though. There is no sign that he dislikes learning, and he in fact seems intelligent, if intelligence is to be measured by curiosity. Seth, who is as uneasy about Jerome as his brother, is most disturbed by his eyes, which he says ‘‘always seemed to be looking at everything like he was trying to take it apart and understand it.’’ Jerome is not lazy, he is not unintelligent, and he is not selfish—Samona finds out that the reason he is working is to support his mother. There is no clear reason for Jean-Claude to dislike Jerome except for the fact that he is dating his sister—if that is all, then his anger is a bit intense.
It is ironic that Jean-Claude should think so badly about Jerome, considering that he does not hold anything against Reggie, who seems a truly "lost brother.'' Reggie has been in jail twice, he has no real address and he carries a gun, but Jean-Claude accepts him, offering him help and hope. Jean-Claude can cope with gangster and criminals on a social basis, but he cannot cope with someone who he feels is a threat to his sister, and so he ends up imagining Jerome to be the real criminal. It is ironic that Seth explains that ‘‘Jean-Claude did not have a good reason not to like Jerome'' just before explaining his brother's religious mission toward society's toughest elements: ‘‘They call Jean-Claude 'the savior' out on the streets 'cause he's always the one to step in and stop a fight or of he hears about something going down, he'll go and try to talk people out of making trouble. Everybody trusts Jean-Claude.’’ In dealing with Jerome, 'the savior' (or, as he's later called, J.C., the initials he shares with Jesus Christ) is not only incapable of preventing trouble, but he starts it himself.
Late in the book, when tension between Chantal and her family is at its height, Jean-Claude offers the closest thing he is to give for a reason for hating Jerome: ‘‘Chantal doesn't know what's good for her. I could kill Jerome for all the trouble he's making for her.’’ He is redirecting his anger toward Chantal, assuming that she is not responsible for her actions, seeking, in a sexist way, the nearest man around to bear the brunt of the anger he feels for her. From an earlier scene in which she explained herself to Seth, readers know that Chantal in fact does know what is good for her. What Jean-Claude interprets as "trouble" is her wish to break away from the role assigned to females in the traditional Haitian household, and the reason he assumes that Jerome is making it for her is that he cannot, in keeping with the tradition of sexism, believe that she is capable of making her own trouble. His parents may be too cautious in refusing to let their daughter date, but Jean-Claude, as a member of the generation that is growing up in America, should be able to tell his sister's thoughts from those her boyfriend has planted in her mind. His worldview is centered around the ideas of males, though, from the Haitian ways of previous generations, so that Jean-Claude, who can see that beauty contests treat blacks as inferiors, does not see that he is treating women as incapable of making intelligent choices independently. When he finally does realize the truth about Chantal, how she feels suppressed by her family and how she aspires to greatness in the service of humanity, Jean-Claude learns from Jerome that the whole problem has been caused by underestimating his sister. ‘‘He was telling me stuff I should have already known about Chantal,’’ he explains.
Jerome is not the cause of Chantal's desire for independence, but he is linked to it, and this makes him a very important element to the story. The violations that Seth and Jean-Claude link to him, such as her lying to her parents, her staying out late, and her dissatisfaction with her role in the household, are nobody's responsibility but her own. "He listens to me,’’ Chantal explains, when Seth wants to know why she is attracted to Jerome: there is no dizzy talk of love, no spiteful glee about teaching her parents a lesson, just relief that someone, finally, is taking the time to understand her and to take her ideas seriously.
Samona's family is anything but typical, but it is a good model in this story for a family setting where males and females are treated equally. While Seth's sister Chantal is expected to clean and cook, Samona's sister Leticia, who is Chantal's age, has her own business, a horoscope phone line. She runs it poorly, leaving her customers to the mercy of an eleven-year-old, but at least the business is hers to run foolishly if she wants to, and no one has forbidden her to pursue it. When Seth talks to Chantal about her dreams, he remembers once when the entire class laughed at Samona's dream of being an astronaut, how she went home at lunch time and brought back her mother to show that she had support. Chantal's dream to be a politician and someday help the impoverished and oppressed people of Haiti is realistic, noble. . .and forbidden in her household. In Samona's household, they may have dreams that are unlikely, but at least Leticia's plan to be an opera star is considered to be of equal importance to Nigel's plan to be an inventor.
The resolution of the crisis over Jerome's influence comes when Jean-Claude realizes that, not only is Jerome not a threat, but that he was wrong to pay such little attention Chantal. He realizes that Chantal has been treated poorly, that there is much more to her life than cooking and cleaning: it is an important breakthrough for Jean-Claude, bringing him into the modern American way of thought, breaking from his Haitian past. It just as much a moment of revelation for Seth, who understands that his understanding of women as secondary citizens will not suffice to explain the world anymore. "Jean-Claude thinks he knows what's best for everybody,’’ Seth muses. ‘‘He tries to change people and usually it's for the better, but he was wrong about Jerome and Chantal. They don't need changing. It was Jean-Claude who needed to do some listening.’’
There are several results from this. One is that Seth, seeing himself reflected in Jean-Claude's sexist attitude toward Chantal, begins to wonder about his own relationship with Samona, and whether he has failed to take her as seriously as he should. "Was I being like Jean-Claude?'' he thinks, feeling guilty about constantly dismissing her ideas as "crazy." The complexity of Seth's relationship with Samona has less to do with gender roles than with his constant repression of his attraction to her as a woman (as is made clear by his nervousness when matters of sex or beauty come up), but his self-awareness is nonetheless a good sign for his chance at a relatively stable future with her.
The other result of all of this is that, at the command of their grandmother, the member of the household most firmly entrenched in Haitian tradition, Seth and Jean-Claude are forced to scrub the bathroom. For males in a Haitian home to do any household chores represents a severe break with tradition, but the bathroom has special significance in this story. When he had to wait while Chantal scrubbed the tub, Jerome muttered, just loud enough for Seth to hear, a judgment that cursed the sexist tradition of the whole family: "typical Caribbean.'' Now, with boys taking part in the cleaning, the family is more typically American.
Source: David Kelly, in an essay for Literature of Developing Nations for
Students, Gale, 2000.
David Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and composition at the College
of Lake County and Oakton Community College.
Review of Seth and Samona
Seth Michelin is a proper Haitian-American boy, studious and serious. His sixth-grade classmate, Samona Gemini, is an African-American girl, the child of an artist and a brilliant prankster who is always getting Seth caught up in her schemes. Yet when Seth's older brother, Jean-Claude, goes ballistic over their sister's boyfriend, Seth convinces Samona and her older brother to follow Jean-Claude and stop him before someone gets hurt. To compound Seth's worries, Samona is changing. On a whim, she signs up for a neighborhood beauty pageant. Pretty soon, she is hanging out with a prissy, feminine girl she used to hate, wearing a fluffy hairdo, and stewing over the right dress.
Hyppolite's principal characters are well drawn as they deal with each other and with the changes of early adolescence. The Haitian-American author portrays Seth's family and his working-class Boston neighborhood in a convincing and affecting manner. Though there is the hint of danger and violence, she presents characters who genuinely care about each other and about their own futures. The theme of pride in one's heritage is evident throughout. If there is one flaw in this generally well-written work, it is the overabundance of secondary characters and subplots, which threaten to make this first novel more a series of vignettes than a unified story.
Source: Lyn Miller-Lachmann, ‘‘Seth and Samona,’’ (book review) in Multicultural Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, June, 1996, p. 90.
An Unusually Ambitious First Novel
An unusually strong cast populates this ambitious first novel, set in Boston. Narrator Seth Michelin, the youngest of a closely knit Haitian American family, has spent two years trying in vain to distance himself from Samona Gemini, the kooky, flamboyant daughter of a free-spirited poet who happens to be a friend of Mrs. Michelin. The warmth—and the strict codes of honor and propriety—that bind Seth's family prove a powerful attraction to Samona, just as they will to the reader, while Seth's fresh voice adds witty counterpoint. Hyppolite errs, however, in adding too many complications. Seth's older brother, for example, serves essentially as a mouthpiece for observations on being a person of color in America; there's also a brief foray into a neighborhood of gun-toting youths and some discussion of women's roles in traditional families. The plot wobbles under so much baggage, and the final story lines, about Samona's participation in a girls' beauty pageant, lose their force. Even with these flaws, Hyppolite's promise is unmistakable, and readers will hope for encore appearances from her characters.
Source: ‘‘Seth and Samona,’’ (book review) in Publisher's Weekly, Vol. 242, No. 25, June, 19, 1995, p. 60.
