C. Liegh McInnis  

On the surface we know that duplicity means deliberate deception and double-dealing. Yet, Toni Lee has crafted a novel that goes beneath those shallow waters to study the innate human nature of duplicity--a quality or state of being double. In much the same manner as Richard Wright’s Native Son or first Batman movie directed by Tim Burton, Lee has created characters who grapple with, first and foremost, their dual or ambiguous nature. More than Batman is fighting the Joker, he is waging a civil war with himself. More than Bigger Thomas is waging a war with white society, he is waging a war with himself and his culture. So is the case for all the characters of Lee’s work, and specifically, Will Creech, his brother Clinton Creech and their adversary Saa’iqa. What we realize early is that, in the existential or naturalistic, chaotic manner of the universe, these three become advisories by happenstance. The real war wages within each of these characters--how to reconcile all of the seemingly contradictory elements or aspects of their lives and themselves. They each are grappling with the notion that who and what we are is a result of our history, our heritage and our family. The individual in each of them must reconcile his personal to the historical and cultural elements that make him. To not realize this or to not deal with this is asking for a disastrous end. The characters in Duplicity all struggle with their places in the world and their personal lives in relation to their socio-political matrix. Lee’s writing shows that we, as individuals, are unable to escape our racial, cultural, ethnic or national roots, and will come to a fatal end if we are never able to reconcile this battle.

 

On the surface, Duplicity shows how people of color have been forced to draw upon their culture as a way to deal with this existential life of European colonization. That is--one’s reaction to existentialism is deeply influenced by one’s personal and cultural identity. What we find is that those who are more closely related to or rooted within their culture have a better time dealing with existentialism. It is when one releases one’s culture and embraces the ways of existentialism that one is cast a drift, aimlessly, to one’s disastrous end. Saa’iqa, though she has in many ways embraced existentialism, is protected from harm by her lifelong connection to her culture through her servant Naseer and by staying rooted, even if artificially, to her cultural community. Clinton Creech is saved, not by his Western, FBI tactics, but by his connection to his family and his connection to his African ancestry. Clinton, in his initial response to existentialism, releases his heritage by releasing his family. But, it is only after embracing his family is he able to find the essence to deal with the world’s existentialism. Lee juxtaposes Clinton’s rejection of his heritage or home with the steadfast embracing of her home by Malika, a Kenyan doctor. Because Malika always stayed connected to her people and her land, she never felt alone, displaced or as she was drifting aimlessly without any guidance or protection. Clinton, on the other hand continued to drift, alone, as long as he failed to connect with his people. 

 

"It was this comprehension and respect for other people of original Africa that made Kenyans able to survive colonialism without losing themselves. Maybe slavery on foreign soil made American Africans so disjointed and lackadaisical about their heritage because they felt no real connection to the earth. Though she fought the urge, she pitied them. She always felt that the dirt beneath her contributed to the brown of her skin and that the rain that fell on the ground of Kenya was made of recycled tears from any black mothers and fathers. She was not a visitor in her own country, and though she wished these American Africans could see it, they were not either. Surely enough black tears of joy and sorrow had fallen on the soil of the United States for them to know that they were at ‘home’ and had a history that couldn’t be taken or written away. She felt anger and sorrow at the plight of these intelligent, yet strangely unconnected people, who seemed to recreate their history every two generations or so."

 

Clinton runs from these recycled tears instead of embracing them. His action is a shining example of Malika’s notion of American Africans as "intelligent, yet strangely unconnected people." This statement indicates that the Africans dislocated in America and around the globe are struggling with the loss of their Africanism, which comes from having embraced too much of the white man’s ways. The European perspective pushes mankind to embrace technology while the Africentered perspective pushes mankind to embrace their metaphysical selves. Because African Americans continue to embrace the physical world, the are losing what has sustained them, their spirituality. This is expressed in Malika’s feelings toward African Americans. "Often, she found American Africans exasperating, yet beautiful--like young children. Attracted to the shallow, baubles of life, avoiding the deeper expansive qualities we share as humans...‘You American Africans! I find very few of you who understand that all you are and do are a result of your bloodline and heritage. Your ancestry!" It is Clinton’s mother, Bernice, who holds the link to this spirituality and bridges the gap for Clinton back to his foundation. There is a spiritual/ancestral connection between Bernice and Clinton’s brother, Will, as well as between Clinton and his twin sister, Clarisse. We know that Will is in danger when his mother loses that connection with him, and Clinton and Clarisse only come into danger when they lose their spiritual connection.

 

Will’s end represents what happens when man turns away from his history and embraces the history and values of capitalism. When Clinton discovers Will’s secret occupation and mysterious second life, he knows that Will has abandoned everything that his family held sacred for the hopes of making money. "Nothing in his history could have prepared him for what he saw." Will had become a thief, equated with the European colonists and imperialists who have colonized the world. It was because of this lifestyle that Will came to his horrible end. Capitalism had seduced Will form his base, metaphysicality/spirituality and caused him to embrace death by embracing the physical. Most wealth, if not all wealth, is evil money because it was earned on the backs of exploitation and colonization. Will, as a trope of the African American community, falls prey to this. It is left to Clinton to redeem Will and, in the process, redeem his family. In fact, capitalism is the central or primary antagonist, which destroys most of the families in this work. It Destroys Saa’iqa’s family, it destroys Claude Dupree’s family, and it almost destroys Clinton’s. What holds Clinton’s family together is the foundation of history that each member of his family has, like the family story of Duff. The story of Duff is a symbol of the importance of storytelling as a way to pass along history and heritage. Duff, for the Creeches, is a symbol of courage and a source of strength whenever someone in the family is faced with a difficult task. "Bernice, of course, never met her great, great Uncle Duff, but she had heard the story many times as a child."

 

Duplicity is laced with African and African-influenced artifacts that guide and sustain both Clinton and the reader. Lee seems to have a stronger understanding of Africanism than say Eric Jerome Dickey who uses Africanism artificially or superficially. For instance, Dickey will have one of his characters listening to the Tom Joyner Morning Show, but the reader will not be informed of the importance or significance of the Tom Joyner Morning Show to the lives of millions of African Americans. African Americans listen to the TJM Show because it represents a reaffirmation and a celebration of who they are in a world where being black is a liability. So, the TJM Show represents a little piece of "soul," which allows them to cope with the white world. Dickey’s work often fails to show the importance of the Africanism or African American artifacts that the uses. Thus, they become merely worn clichés. Lee, on the other hand, connects Clinton’s African American mother to the Kenyan doctor’s Africentered view of the world. This gives the reader a deeper, more thorough understanding of the importance of Africanism and African American artifacts in their survival under the umbrella of white supremacy. When Clinton returns home, it is only then that he rediscovers all of the things that he already had to help him cope with the loss of his wife and child. It is then that he finds that connection to his past and his ancestry about which Malika is constantly lecturing to him. 

 

"To the right of them was an old straw hat with a huge bright, red feather. Clinton smiled and picked up the hat. ‘Ma, who did this belong to?’ ‘Your great grandfather owned that hat, but the feather was handed down by your great, great, great grandfather. Don’t quote me on this, but it was handed down from father to son several generations because it is a sign of great wisdom and humility, if I remember correctly.’ ‘Was it tribal you think? I know we are part Indian.’ ‘Its African. Yoruba I believe, but I know there is more to it than that...I can’t remember anything else except that it has some religious meaning.’ ‘I’ll find a book so that I’ll know before talking to Malika about it.’"

 

Malika had become a spiritual/moral/ancestral guide to Clinton. Even if he would not admit it, his action shows that his connection to her made him want to be a better man. This is evident in the fact that he does not want to discuss his family heirloom with her until he has some amount of information about it himself. This handed down history is a lesson to Clinton that he can survive anything, just as his forefathers had done before him. No matter how chaotic and existential the world seemed, history and culture is what orders it.

 

It is important that Clinton’s family is taken away from him by some happenstance. This shows the importance of Africanism in reacting to and protecting the people from the whims of existentialism. Furthermore, it connects his pain to Saa’iqa’s pain, which is more metaphoric. On one hand, Saa’iqa’s pain is caused by the calculating hand of capitalism which causes havoc in her life and destroys her family. At the same time, her personal plight, the manner in which the events destroy her family, is seemingly at the whim and fate of the gods. These factors make the global struggle of people of color more complex. They are dealing with both logical and illogical fates, left with only a faith in their culture to save them. Often, as we see in both Clinton and Saa’iqa, the illogical nature of the universe can become, at times, overwhelming, causing us to abandon all that we hold dear because it fails to sustain us in our immediate, personal needs.

 

"Can you believe that? I couldn’t. Some imbecile destroys my life in one fell swoop. What had I done to deserve that? It could not have been anything Grace had done...she was much too kind; and what the hell could a four year old do to warrant some shit like that? It just didn’t make any damned sense....I couldn’t get over the irony of it all Justine. On the very day I complete my career at the F.B.I.; a job I left because my wife was afraid for my safety; I get home only to find that my wife and kid were killed by some drunk, coming home from the stupid grocery store."

 

Saa’iqa co-signs his exasperation from their existential lives. 

 

"There was no real justice in this world. The cards were indiscriminately unkind, and if you wanted retribution or fair play, it was very likely that you had to exact it yourself. [Naseer] could see how easily a child [Saa’iqa] could make the leap that she had. It had been hard for him as an adult not to take the same road, even processing his pain through a myriad of adult experiences."

 

Both Saa’iqa and Clinton initially react to their chaos in the same manner, by rejecting the artifacts of their culture. This adds to the depth and complexity of Lee’s writing. They, at that moment, are seen as humans, more open to self-doubt and human frailty to the reader. What they must most overcome is themselves. Lee’s craft is that she juxtaposes Saa’iqa’s complexity to Will’s and Clinton’s and forces the reader to evaluate each on their own merits within the context that, often, right and wrong, exist on the sliding scale of humanity. With Saa’iqa and Clinton, there is the issue of how one deals with the world and its randomly sliding scale. Like Clinton’s flight from America so as not to deal with his pain, Saa’iqa flees her customs as a way of dealing with her pain. "I learned that values are relative and have little to do with the outcome of your life." At this moment, Saa’iqa becomes connected to the African American plight of constantly reassessing one’s culture in the chaos of white supremacy. Saa’iqa chooses the path that Clinton chooses, that many African Americans choose--to scrap or abandon the traditional path for a more expedient and self-gratifying path. "I live my life however I choose and make my own justice. Being right or wrong won’t make much difference one way or the other as to the final results." Yet, it is, even for a brief moment, a sense of community and belonging the shields and comforts both Saa’iqa and Clinton. For Saa’iqa, it is with both Naseer and Clinton. "Although she did not know as many details about the man she was kissing, she could feel the commonalty of their pain and sorrow." Lee is bridging a kinship between people of color all over the globe who suffer under white supremacy, having to find family and a sense of belonging where they can. Even Clinton finds momentary happiness in the arms of Saa’iqa because their lovemaking is heightened by their connection of pain and loss. "He awoke more rested and calm than he had been in years..." Both Clinton and Saa’iqa become adept at cultural and emotional quilting to survive. Saa’iqa’s rejection of Islam parallels many African American’s rejection of Christianity to find a new type of religion that fits their own personal benefit and emotional safety. "I have been a dutiful daughter of Islam. It had done me no good." Although we know that Saa’iqa does not hold to all of the laws of Islam and that she practices the rituals as a front for her own social standing, we know that the principles are still embedded deeply within her as evidence by her belief in reciprocity as a guiding force in her life. "She strongly believed in reciprocity." This civil strife that Lee injects into all of her characters is what gives her novel its depth. Often, man’s greatest antagonist is himself or his beliefs. Life is not just about what people do to us, but how we react to life. This means continuously and thoroughly grappling with who we are and what we believe.

 

Despite the powerful writing, the novel is temporarily slowed by three minor flaws. One of the flaws of the book is that the first three chapters are uneven and flat. In the first three chapters, Lee seems to be struggling to reconcile her literary eye to her journalistic eye. There could also be the notion that there is a point in the fourth chapter where the plot starts to gel, and she is working to get to that point. Whether it is the unbalanced writing or the fact that she is trying to get to point, Lee runs a risk of losing her reader with the shaky writing of the first three chapters. However, for those who wade through the most shallow waters of the novel, there is a considerable pay-off in the deeper recesses of the work. Secondly, Lee over uses name brands as descriptive devices. This hurts her imagery and picturesque style that she is working so diligently to achieve. The use of these name brands is an easy and cheap manner to draw a picture, but the pictures have no real essence, weight or depth. Class and status, or a character’s essence of these attributes, are not in the name brands, per se, but in the manner in which the garments are woven, lay or are worn. Fine clothing had a feel, a texture, a shine and a glow that catches the eye immediately. We may not know the particular brand, but fine clothing announces itself, not by the brand but by the detail. The final flaw is Justine’s pregnancy by Clinton. This is a flaw in that it feels worn or cliché-ish. Every point in a plot must lead somewhere or to something. Because it is not directly connected to the plot, it feels forced, even soap opera-ish. It would make more sense, especially if Lee is working toward a sequel, to impregnate Saa’iqa with Clinton’s child. This flaw is heightened with the final words in the novel "The End - maybe..." Lee has left enough loose ends for the possibility of a sequel. This technique seems cheesy.

 

Lee is able to rebound from any flaws through her handling of her characters. Lee’s strongest asset is her depth of characterization. She gives her characters a depth of humanity by making them complicated and often contradicting. This causes the reader to have empathy for them. There are no real protagonists or antagonists in this work, merely people trying to navigate their physical experience. Though this is clear in both Will and Clinton, this is most obvious in Saa’iqa. Both physically and metaphysically, Lee constructs Saa’iqa as the epitome of human contradiction, which makes her all the more human. Physically, Saa’iqa is an amalgamation of human boxes, which all seem to be grappling within her to find their places. "She broke into a glorious laugh that gurgled and bubbled like Eartha Kitt’s voice, only a half active higher...He noted that [her hair] was not completely straight but somewhat course and wild...Part Moroccan, part French; long dark hair, strange blue-green eyes and drop dead gorgeous." As for her socio-political approach to life, she becomes an allegorical figure who represents the hopes, pains and struggle of a nation. "She was a pillar of Marrakech society, a highly respected princess of the aristocracy upon whom the duties of her father had devolved, and a benevolent benefactor to many causes." Yet, in most cases Saa’iqa is simultaneously a part of the her society and at war with it, constantly trying to reconcile herself to her own duplicity. An excellent example of this is one of Saa’iqa’s party where Aatar Mohammed, the chief of police, is in attendance. Aatar, whose duty should cause him to be suspicious of Saa’iqa, is blinded and conflicted by the work that Saa’iqa does for her community. Lee’s use of Aatar enhances her juxtaposition of our human selves. Having the chief of police attend and support a banquet hosted by Saa’iqa, which is used to raise money to keep poor children off the streets and from trouble, shows a manner in which we, as humans, can use our personal and collective diversity and differences as an asset and not a liability. "‘Aatar, how have you been. I’m quite pleased you could take the time out of your busy schedule to join this cause’ Saa’iqa said. ‘The more children serviced by your foundation, the less I will have to see coming through my jails from trying the pick the pockets of the tourists down at Place Djemaa el-Finn. Better for us all.’" 

 

There is an irony that Saa’iqa is an outlaw--an irony, however, that causes the reader to question all notions of ultimate and absolute right and wrong by invoking the Apostle Paul’s notion that because something is legal does not make it right and because something is illegal does not make it wrong. Lee continues to bombard us with so much external and internal human conflict and contradiction until we are able to find empathy for all of her characters, forcing us to judge people beyond or outside of our personal prejudices of right and wrong. Lee’s notion of this struggle of human complexity shines most brightly when Clarissa, Clinton’s sister, cries for a man whom she thinks is about to rape and kill her. "She cried for her mother, for Will, for Clinton, her husband and for the pitiful child who lost his mother and was exiled by a hateful father that lay across her chest, crying for the losses he had suffered and the pain that he was about to cause his faithful and brilliant attorney." Lee’s skill even allows her to interject Naseer, the large, brute killing machine, with enough human depth and detail of his love for Saa’iqa that she successfully blurs the lines of antagonist and protagonist. There is no one in the novel to hate, other than the concepts of colonization and capitalism. She has successfully constructed a play of human beings, trying desperately to stay afloat the ocean of existentialism. We pity all of them for being short-sighted, but we understand all of them, which allows us to empathize with all of them.

 

Lee is not, in any way, attempting to justify evil or violence, but she writes in a manner where our judgment of an individual’s action are constantly contextualized by their historical circumstance. Saa’iqa is a dangerous, often ruthless, woman, but Lee handles her in such a way that we are not concerned with her as a flat, stock character. We understand how Saa’iqa becomes this way and her struggle to make some meaning of her life. "She is well respected in the community, a real champion for the impoverished and children’s health. Strange contrasts in her personality." Thus, it is Lee’s characters that drive the plot. We feel for their human engagement in this existential existence. They become mirrors against which we, the reader, are able to gage ourselves. It is this struggle with human complexity that makes us all similar. Even in Saa’iqa’s adversarial role, Lee is able to denote a kinship between her and both Will and Clinton. Saa’iqa becomes a prism for humanity. By embracing all of herself, she becomes the ultimate mulatto (mutt) in political and foreign affairs--what Prince wanted do be and do--to unite the world’s "othered" people by transcending our physical boundaries. Lee is at her best when handling Saa’iqa. The easy villain is "the white man." Instead, Lee deals with the complexity of global white supremacy as it embeds itself through miscegenation into the psychological make-up of people of color whose lives and cultures have been pillaged and plundered by capitalism and white supremacy. Yet, even those who know and understand this are never quite able to overcome their civil division, which keeps them vulnerable. Often, this vulnerability causes them to cling to something. This adds to Saa’iqa and Clinton’s complexity because they are saviors who have and need protectors. Clinton’s savior exist in his family and in his partner Gerald. Saa’iqa’s protector is Nasser, her childhood/lifetime servant. "Naseer opened the garden door and went in first, searched the bottom floor and turned on the lights before Saa’iqa entered. It was a ritual they had done for years, and despite her ability to protect herself, she appreciated his concern and meticulous protection." It is this vulnerability that allows us to connect with and understand others. As ruthless as Saa’iqa appears to be, she is remorseful over the thought of taking a mother’s three siblings from her. "‘Nasser, I don’t ever remember killing off all the siblings in one family before. This will be a first. Very messy. Will was stupid and Clinton will be a pleasure for his deception, but this woman is just plain unlucky.’...She felt, for the first time, some remorse for the woman in the trunk of the car and the fate she was about to suffer." We are connected, not by our physical being, but by our metaphysical being. The struggle of humanity is to see past the physical duplicity and see our metaphysical duplicity.

 

Lee’s work proves that there is enough adventure and heroism in African and African-influence life and heritage to produce works as gripping and as adventurous as John Grishim’s works or as exciting as Rambo, Lethal Weapon, the Patriot or Brave Heart. The comparison to Patriot or Brave Heart is necessary because Lee’s work attempts to show the bravery, cultural relevance and importance of the global struggle of people of color, particularly those closest to African heritage and descent. There needs to be more stories where African descendants survive the chaotic world by holding onto or affirming their Africanism instead of embracing a purely European perspective. At the same time, Lee is working under the spiritual guide of critic Barbara Christian in creating female characters who break the mold of mammies and prostitutes. Saa’iqa is a woman of color. Bernice is a woman of color. Clarissa is a woman of color. It seems, at first, that Clinton is the one who embraces life, rolls up his sleeves and gets dirty. But, as Lee moves her magnifying glass closer, we realize that it is Saa’iqa who is really allowing herself to get smelly in the shit of life. Furthermore, it is Bernice and Clarissa who are the acting agents who get Clinton back involved with life. Lee’s work not only shines a light on the diversity of people of color and their heroic struggles to remain sane under the what Cornell West calls the "normative white gaze," she is also able to show black women in a diverse and powerful light, which takes large steps to showing the totality of black womanhood and black humanity.

 

C. Liegh McInnis is a poet, short story writer, and Prince scholar.  He can be reached through:

Psychedelic Literature
203 Lynn Lane
Clinton, MS  39056
(601) 383-0024
psychedeliclit@bellsouth.net

http://www.psychedelicliterature.com/index.html

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