Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night is, in my eyes, a novel which examines to deeply explores the connection between colonial and bodily invasion. As the graphic, horrific sexual assaults of Mala play out throughout the book, Mootoo wants to guide us further than just the terrible nature of Chandin’s individual transgressions. She wants to develop an allegorical narrative on colonialization, expressed through the experiences of Chandin, Mala, and the whole island of Lantanacamara. Looking through the lens of Qwo-Li Driskill’s “Map of the Americas” poem, I want to briefly examine how Chandin, Mala, and Ambrose each fit into the larger allegory around colonization that is present throughout this novel, in order to get a better sense of how the prevalence of colonial forces on the island shaped both the suppression and formation of Mala’s identity.
Driskill’s poem, much like budding romance between Mala and Ambrose, is told from the perspective of someone who has faced the hardship of colonization and assault. The speaker in the poem tells their lover to “know these lands have been invaded before / and though I may quiver / from your touch / there is still a war” (Driskill, lines 60-64). Something has been taken from both this speaker and Mala that continues to haunt them, and while the poem relates this assault and theft more directly to colonialism, I do think that in the novel Chandin is clearly meant to be a representative of colonial domination as well, especially considering his upbringing with the Thoroughly’s. In both pieces of literature the focal character is hesitant to pursue their own interests, with Mala specifically being very concerned about the eventuality her father’s retribution when he finds out about her and Ambrose.
This is what makes the ending of the novel so tragic, because Mala is unable to escape her father’s influence in the same way the speaker in Driskill’s poem reclaims themselves through their intimacy. At the end of the poem, the speaker says “I walk out of the genocide to touch you” (Driskill, line 85), but even after embracing Ambrose and becoming intimate with him, Mala can’t emerge from her father’s all encompassing influence, through no fault of her own. Driven by the embarrassment of losing Lavinia and Sarah, he refuses to let Mala escape, seeing any step away from him and towards independence as a step towards rebellion, which he, as a controlling, colonial influence, meets with brutal violence.
I do think Mala is eventually able to formulate an identity that lies outside of the colonial/paternal rule that long governed her life, though it is not in the way Driskill’s poem outlines. While Ambrose was always only a temporary escape from this influence, the independence she gains after her father dies is truly what allows her to express her truest self, expressing her love for plants, bugs, etc. more fervently. She has been freed from the shackles of tyrannical rule, and in her joy we see just how much she’d been holding in for all those years.