Summer Lightning Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Thelma B. Thompson-Deloatch

Critical Essay by Thelma B. Thompson-Deloatch

SOURCE: Thompson-Deloatch, Thelma B. “Conflicting Concepts of Time and Space: Narrative Technique in Selected Short Fiction of Olive Senior.” MaComère 3 (2000): 141-52.

In the following essay, Thompson-Deloatch regards Olive Senior's Summer Lightning as a combination of Eurocentric and African styles and thematic concerns, focusing on her treatment of time and space in the short stories in the collection.

“I have lost my place, or my place has deserted me.”¹

Summer Lightning, a collection of ten short stories by Jamaican fiction-writer Olive Senior, presents itself polysemously as a study in structural dichotomy and, also, as a good example of the fracturing legacy of colonialism that erodes post-colonial societies in the African diaspora. The author struggles with the narrative, the plot, the exposition, and the traditional inciting action but often leaves the climax and conclusion of the story to inference. This structural pattern appears to reflect a combination of Eurocentric narrative...
(read more)