David Chariandy
DAVID CHARIANDY has explored ideas of dislocation and cultural memory as an academic at Simon Fraser University, but he now offers those ideas to a wider audience in his luminous first novel entitled Soucouyant (Arsenal Pulp). Set in Ontario, the story focuses on the fraught and tender relationship between a Canadian-born son and his Trinidadian-born mother, a woman who is suffering from dementia and uncannily “forgetting to forget” the traumatic secrets of her past. The soucouyant—an evil spirit in Caribbean folklore—stands as a symbol of how the legacies of “elsewhere” continue to haunt the lives of those born “here.” Chariandy lives in Vancouver.