Analysis Of Aliyah Eniath's The Yard

Early in Aliyah Eniath’s novel The Yard, we come across “callaloo”, a quintessentially Trini word, which for me is the summation of both the stylistic and narrative choices employed in this debut work of fiction. Callaloo, being a Caribbean creole word for a soup or stew made with mixed greens and crabmeat, is often used to describe a jumbled or chaotic state of affairs, and it is certainly a very strange mix that Eniath serves up to us in this book.

The Yard is the setting for the proliferous Ali clan, who are the descendants of East Indian Muslims who came over to Trinidad in the 1900s as indentured labour. According to the author, there are multiple personal experiences that wound up being fictionalised within the world of the Yard. Living

In that sense, the Yard is an island within an island; a deeply insular community in which some characters seek to isolate themselves further and others yearn to leave.

Maya and Behrooz both assume the role of the family prodigal at different points in the narrative, leaving and then returning; for the pull of the family seat is such that “they knew they’d been swallowed up and spit out”.

There are many parallels that can be drawn here, from the Dickensian “adopted orphan” trope, the central love story mirroring the savage and destructive magnetism between Heathcliff and Cathy in Wuthering Heights: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” becomes “(…) that girl (sic) going to destroy their marriage. She’ll never get him out of her soul.” There are elements too, of the patient self-denial of Jane Eyre, another Brontëan co-relation that’s hard to overlook. Portentous dreams, sudden deaths, and high melodrama round out the tableau of their family