Tags
Authentic Caribbean/Guyanese Male Characters, Divisive racist politics, Georgetown/Guyana/South America, Indie-Author Rosaliene Bacchus, Under the Tamarind Tree: A Novel by Rosaliene Bacchus (USA 2019)
Photo Credit: IMDb
When I began work on telling Richard Cheong’s story in my 2019 debut novel Under the Tamarind Tree, I faced a mental hurdle: Was I up to the task of creating an authentic male protagonist? As a newbie novelist at the time, I followed all the guidelines for creating a fictional character, as set out in the Writer’s Digest Book on Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.
There was no shortage of Guyanese men of my father’s generation from whom to draw inspiration. Like my father, Richard’s father (deceased) was a Chinese immigrant to what was then British Guiana—the only British colony on the mainland of South America. They both lost their parents at a young age. Richard also enjoys reading and listening to music. But the likeness ends there.
Richard’s obsession with having a son was inspired by a landlord, in the 1960s, who longed to have a daughter. After three marriages and six sons, he never got a girlchild. Was this too much pressure for his wives? Will Richard’s obsession threaten his marriage if his wife, Gloria, fails to give him a son? Gloria knows nothing about his childhood trauma, following his little brother’s murder under the tamarind tree on the sugar plantation where they grew up.
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