“Mala wished that she could go back in time and be a friend to this Pohpoh. She would storm into the house and, with one flick of her wrist, banish the father into a pit of pain and suffering from which there would be no escape. With piercing eyes she would pull the walls of that house down, down, down, and she would gather the two children to her breast and hug them tightly, rock and quiet them, and kiss their faces until they giggled wildly.” (Mootoo 142)
One of the key themes throughout Cereus Blooms at Night, are names and who calls who what and who has the power to change their name. In this passage, the reader gets Mala and Pohpoh and Mala interacts with these two as if they were two completely different people. In his transcription of what Mala is saying and relaying to him, Tyler treats them as two different entities. At this point, the reader knows that Mala is Pohpoh. Pohpoh is just Mala as a child. We learn later on why Mala changes her name, “Pohpoh was what her father had lovingly called her since she was a baby, long before the crisis in the family” (200). She decided to change it because she could not stand what the nickname had turned into, something he called her while abusing her. I think Mala is the identity that she came up with to retake her power and the part of herself that she identifies as strong. Pohpoh is the little girl that had to protect her sister, and watched her mother leave, but Mala is the woman who had to watch out for herself. Mala only changes her name after Asha leaves and she is no longer her responsibility, her priority can now switch to protection of herself.
Something that is similar to this name change is how Boyie turns into Ambrose. When Ambrose comes back to Paradise, Lantanacamara he is now referred to as Ambrose, not Boyie. There is a whole scene where Mala does not know what to call him, starting with being very formal “Mr. Mohanty” until Ambrose asks her to just call him Ambrose (197). We do not get a reason as to why Ambrose changes his name, we just know he has shed his boyish nickname to something more formal and grown up. It signals a new stage in their relationship, one that is inherently more adult. Both of these name changes signal the end of their childhood and the acceptance of adulthood.
I adore this observation, and I also wrote about the distinction between Pohpoh and Mala! When Pohpoh becomes Mala, she does so both willingly and unwillingly. The transformation, though self-induced, is a necessary defense against her abuse, as you have noted. Maybe Mala “retake[s] her power and the part of herself that she identifies as strong” to salvage her childhood self. She cuts off a piece of Pohpoh, the strong part, in hopes that she will bloom again as Mala––like a cereus clipping. What if Boyie’s transformation to Ambrose is also a trauma response? As you mentioned, we don’t know why he changed his name, but maybe it has something to do with his time in the shivering northern wetlands. Tyler points out that many of the men who go to the wetlands don’t return… I wonder if the absence of the Boyie-to-Ambrose transformation is intentional, and a hint that his connection to, and obsession with, Mala is because of their shared (figurative) deaths at the hands of an oppressor.
I think is such a smart observation! I think names are such an interesting theme, which is one of my favorite things in this novel. Your specific note about Pohpoh being the name Mala was called while being abused reminded me of a Youtube video about the word “queer.” I remember someone talking about an older gay man saying he didn’t like the word queer because “it’s the word you hear when you get punched in the stomach” which always stuck with me. I also love what you said about Boyie/Ambrose which was a name change I didn’t think too much about. I’m curious what you think about name changes in the context of Otoh. I remember someone in class saying something about Mala not being queer in terms of her sexuality, but very much so in the way she’s characterized. I think the way names changing is another way the whole novel feels queer, even in reference to the seemingly cishet characters.