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QUITTING AMERICA: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Island Exile
Reviewed by Jake Lamar
QUITTING AMERICA
The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land
By Randall Robinson. Dutton. 245 pp. $23.95
Randall Robinson's new book straddles several genres. It is an
impassioned jeremiad against the war in Iraq. It is a fascinating history of the
Caribbean, from the horrors of slavery and colonialism, through the battle
for independence, to the economic dilemmas of the 21st century. But, above
all, Quitting America is a love story; more specifically, a wrenching tale
of unrequited love.
"I tried to love America, its credos, its ideals, its promise, its
process," Robinson writes. "I have tried to love America but America would not
love the ancient, full African whole of me." As a driven political activist
and social critic, Robinson struggled to get America to live up to its
declared standards of justice and equality. His best-known fight was the as
yet unsuccessful effort to get the U.S. government to pay African Americans
reparations for the 250-year atrocity of slavery.
Today, Robinson has given up on America. Sick of banging his head against
a wall of resistance and obliviousness, he quit his native country in the
summer of 2001. "America. America. Land of my birth and erstwhile
distress. Hypocrite immemorial. My heart left long ago. At long last, I have
followed it." He is clearly enamored of the tiny Caribbean country of St. Kitts
and Nevis, where his wife, Hazel, was born. His evocation of life in this
lush and beautiful island nation forms the strongest section of the book.
St. Kitts is filled with gentle, trusting people, the overwhelming
majority of them black. It is a place where violent crime is rare and health care
is universal. After his 11-year-old daughter, Khalea, received emergency
treatment for a brief illness at a local hospital, Robinson was astonished
to learn what he has to pay: nothing. "Our job here is to get your
daughter well," the nurse told him.
In St. Kitts, Robinson discovers, America's overriding fixation is no big
deal: "Money is not the only thing and it is never the first thing." He
writes compellingly of Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of St. Kitts in
1493 and of the subsequent extermination of the island's indigenous Carib
people. He also includes a long history of Haiti and its successful slave
revolt. Black independence there and the relatively early end of slavery in
the region (it was abolished in St. Kitts in 1834) served as a "psychic
tonic." Robinson writes: "The cultural, social, political, and economic
successes of the Caribbean arguably qualify it as the healthiest quarter of
the black world. It is our jewel to be relished and protected, small but
exquisite, unboastful but luminous."
But he fears that his island paradise is in danger of being despoiled.
St. Kitts's economy has relied heavily on sugar production. Due to falling
sugar prices around the world, the nation is rapidly losing money. So, like
other Caribbean islands before it, St. Kitts is increasingly looking to
tourism as a way of bringing in revenue. A Marriott hotel is preparing to
open its doors. A representative of the chain advised St. Kittians "to greet
every tourist with a 'big bright shiny smile.' " And to make its guests
feel more comfortable, Marriott has offered to build a police station and
holding pen right near the new hotel. "It is my profound conviction,"
Robinson writes, as a warning to St. Kitts and Nevis, "that given the smallest
opportunity, the United States will gobble up the hard-fought relative
independence of the Caribbean."
Despite Robinson's affection for his adopted home, it is America that
obsesses him. He's like a man in a happy second marriage who cannot stop
thinking about the ex-wife who broke his heart. He relentlessly dissects the
ruined relationship, picking at the wounds, reliving the hurt. "For all of
my life, I had wished only to live in an America that would but
reciprocate my loyalty," he writes. He wants "an official confession of all the
lurid details, a report, for once, of brutally candid self-investigation, a
book from on high of awful truths about what all had been done to me and
why." None was forthcoming.
Robinson's pain is made palpable in this fiercely eloquent, nakedly
honest book. But there is an uneasy question lurking beneath the surface. Why
has the vast majority of black Americans with the resources and wherewithal
to quit America opted to stay? There are millions of African Americans who
share Robinson's disgust with the Bush administration and the Iraq war,
who share his tortured knowledge of America's race-crazed history and his
despair about the future, yet choose not to live in another country. Surely
America must offer a great many black citizens -- who have had the
opportunity to leave -- something that they have not found elsewhere.
"We wanted to leave America with as much conviction as we wanted to come
here," Robinson says of his family's decision to move to St. Kitts. But
one gets the distinct impression that his sunny love for St. Kitts will
never be as powerful as his stormy love-hate relationship with America. It
would not be surprising if he wound up back in the USA someday, fighting the
same old "American social battles," giving no quarter, refusing to
surrender. Perhaps Randall Robinson's exile is, ultimately, internal. •
Jake Lamar is the author, most recently, of "Rendezvous Eighteenth." He
lives in Paris.
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