Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the women's lamentations inadvertently release the dead infant's 'unused vitality' to draw Ezili-the Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and love-into the physical world.Īs Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwife's body-as well as those of Jeanne, a mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Paris, and Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria.īound together by Ezili and 'the salt road' of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddess's presence in their lives. In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |