Fiction in Progress
The Mango Stone is a series of connected stories that follow three generations of a family back four decades and through successive migrations, to Canada from Britian and East Africa, and originating in the plantations of Goa, former Portuguese India. Told in reverse chronological order, these stories reflect both the immigrant experience, and the puzzle-like nature of the past experienced by the children. Each move brings altered expectations, and cultural and inter-generational conflicts. During great colonial upheaval, countries and citizenships changing at a distance, these stories dip into the personal journeys of the Lobo family.
The first story begins in 1973 as Xavier and Tia Lobo arrive in Canada. The ageing couple have left Tanzania after forty year to join two of their sons and their families in suburban Toronto. For all immigrants, and mangoes, our first impression is based on their present state and the appearance of their skin.
As each story takes place before the one preceding it, The Mango Stone spirals back slowly in time, delving deeper to reveal the past and recontextualize the stories told. The reader gets to know the characters in much the same way that immigrant children learn of their origins, and the way Canadians at large learn the histories of new immigrants, in fragments and tales. From the present we move forward through the past.
The flesh of the story is the family, particularly Xavier, who was born in Goa but left home for East Africa, and Peter, his eldest son, who was born in East Africa and whose aspirations take him to Britain, and by the beginning of the book, Canada. Around the stone’s edge, bridging the two halves, is Tia, a wife, mother and grandmother. At the centre, the stone of the fruit so casually discarded, is the seed.
Goan culture by its history and its nature is diasporatic and adaptive. And with each transplanting, there is gain and loss. This work seeks to capture the oral tradition that was so vital to the culture in this period, a waning tradition as successive generations are increasingly removed, and as Goa today keeps pace in a global world. The Mango Stone is a taste of a migrant culture always in flux.
I have been working on this story for a long time. Different drafts have borne different titles, and each has had its time in the proverbial bottom drawer. Five selections from those earlier drafts have appeared in Descant, The Toronto Review, and West Coast Line.
The Mango Stone is a new book, though it shares characters and events with earlier work. I have completed the first five chapters, and the concluding chapter. Expecting five more stories in between, I hope to complete the book in 2010.
I am grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and City of Barrie for support which periodically allowed for the time to write and edit much of this work.
