SOURCE: "Mapping the Mangrove: Empathy and Survival in Traversée de la mangrove," in Callaloo, Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter, 1992, pp. 156-66.

In the following essay on Traversée de la mangrove, Munley attempts to answer the question, "Why do some [characters continue to struggle toward life while others stagnate, resign themselves to solitude and exclusion, or beckon death?"]

You cannot pass through a thicket of mangrove trees. Their stiltlike stems and roots impale you. You dig your own grave and suffocate in the brackish water.

I will seek the sun, air, and light to live the rest of my days.

Contrary to the novel bearing the same title within Traversée de la mangrove which its mysterious author, Francis Sancher, will never complete, Maryse Condé's novel bears thoroughgoing witness to the stories of twenty individuals. Some become entangled and drown in the mangrove thicket, a metaphor for present-day...