The Jamaican Dilemma

A stirring passage in Olive Senior’s haunting first novel, Dancing Lessons, depicts the wordless, mesmerizing courtship of Gertrude, the story’s heroine. Gertrude, a lonely, emotionally neglected teenager, is being raised by her grandmother and aunt just outside Kingston, Jamaica. The family are light-skinned blacks, members of a respected country clan that prizes their fair complexion above all. They are so cold and uncommunicative that several years elapse before Gertrude even realizes she is the illegitimate daughter of the shellshocked veteran who wanders in and out of their lives. Gertrude is the product of his scandalous affair with a dark-skinned woman, who passes away when she is small. Gertrude is lonely the rest of her life.

As a teenager, Gertrude’s primary pleasure comes from her weekly jaunts to the local store where she spends her meagre pocket money on mouth-watering sweets. One day she notices a man eyeing her from across the street. She...