Book: The Last Ship
Author: Jan Lowe Shinebourne
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
Price: £8.99
Review by Ronke Lawal
The Last Ship is a poignant novel which spans three generations of a Chinese family who settle in Guyana after arriving on one of the last ships from China to the Caribbean.
At the heart of the family saga is Clarice Chung, whose experience as a member of the Chinese migrant population is fraught with complexities. A cold-hearted and hard-nosed matriarch, Clarice’s life is dedicated to ensuring her Chinese heritage survives through her family and children.
Her unshakeable pride in maintaining her racial and cultural identity is juxtaposed with her son’s mother-in-law Susan Leo, whose failures and desire to identify with Indian culture through her choice of romantic partners and lifestyle, brings shame and suffering on the family.
It’s up to Clarice’s granddaughter Joan Wong, who we meet later on in the novel, to maintain the family’s honour as they disperse during the country’s civil unrest, and her ensuing pilgrimage to ancestral China at the turn of the 21st century, which leads to some surprising discoveries.
This novel offers you a glimpse into colonial and post-colonial Caribbean history, and highlights how deeply entrenched Imperial powers were at that time. A truly international perspective is part of the narrative as it reveals the mixture of African slaves and Indian and Chinese forced labour who worked on plantations to build the wealth of colonial Britain.
What is fascinating is how fiercely Clarice clings on to her family name and Chinese identity, despite living most of her life in Guyana. Her disregard for Africans and Indians alike reflects the cultural superiority complex which allows her to maintain her coldness towards even her closest relations.
Her inability to fully express her love to her children is in parallel to her inability to show love to the land that she must now call home. To her, Guyana will never be home.
Jan Lowe Shinebourne has written Clarice in a way I’m sure many first generation migrants will relate to: the fact that a new life can’t offer you the security and certainty, which your nationality and ethnicity does. The only certainty is the memories and your identity.
Clarice’s emotional hardness contrasts with her granddaughter Joan, who she never meets. Being born and bred in Guyana, Joan lives a full and vibrant life, despite the challenges of living in the loveless shadow of her mother Mary, Clarice’s daughter-in-law. Mary has her own inner struggles and finds solace in the love of her aunts and her grandmother Susan.
Joan is, in essence, “The Last Ship”; the last family member who does what she can to uphold the family legacy, despite the “storms” and hardships that she faces along the way.
Each character, through the generations, represents a different facet of the migrant experience, and Shinebourne does a great job of interweaving each one’s experience into the narrative. But given the length of the novel, there are perhaps just too many characters as you are left with a desire to know more about each person.
Shinebourne’s style of writing effortlessly brings complex issues to life, and with grace. The depth of culture that she carries throughout the book offers a glimpse into a part of history I wouldn’t normally read about.
There is scope for this book to be stretched further as it is written so well. It will leave you wanting to know more about the Chinese-Caribbean diaspora, about Guyana and perhaps about your own identity.