Source of book: Borrowed from the library
This is one of two books I read for Pride Month this year. If my goal was to trigger the MAGA snowflakes, this one definitely is a doozy. It’s like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion threw up on them or something.
Queer author? Check.
Female author? Check.
Black author? Check.
Foreign author? Check.
Book written in a language other than English? Check.
I mean, what are we missing here? Oh, and because it is non-linear and leaves a lot of stuff out, it is a challenging read and one that the book banners would never ever be able to get through, let alone understand.
Astrid Roemer (who just passed recently) was from Suriname, which is one of those countries that takes a while to remember exactly where it is. The answer is that it is on the north coast of South America, and, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons, is considered more closely connected to the Caribbean than to Latin America.
It was a Dutch colony, and did the usual “sugar plantations ‘n’ brutal enslavement thing” that still colors the Caribbean today. Because of the high death rate among the enslaved, the Caribbean colonies including Suriname depended on a constant supply of fresh meat from Africa. Thus, when the trade was outlawed in the early 1800s, the plantations largely collapsed. (This is important to understand the book.)
After the collapse of the plantation system, the old mansions fell into disrepair, and the enslaver class mostly moved back to their home countries, leaving behind a polyglot mix of poor whites, formerly enslaved blacks, indigenous tribes, and a merchant class from, well, all over the globe. In the book, this includes Muslims and Hindus from India, Christians from China and Korea, and a scattering of other ethnicities that have mostly intermarried.
The old plantations are occupied by a mix of white families trying to hang on while finding other jobs, and the formerly enslaved black workers who have taken over after their enslavers have left.
This makes for a rather unfamiliar culture in which the caste lines have blurred, the races have intermarried, and differences of religion mean as much as those of class and race.
At the same time, the culture in the book is deeply patriarchal, with women having few rights and no options outside of a husband or clergyman to “protect” or “manage” them - they cannot work or obtain housing by themselves. Queer people exist not so much on the margins, as well hidden in the closet and from prying eyes.
Roemer grew up in Suriname, graduating with a teaching degree, and writing on the side. However, things went wrong for her when she refused to participate in the Sinterklaas celebration because it had a blackface character. She was fired from her job for this, and ended up relocating to the Netherlands.
Little is known of her personal life, as far as I can tell, other than that she identified as a lesbian, and that she spent her retirement years traveling with her cat. Which, well, is pretty cool.
Her works were apparently fairly popular and well regarded in Suriname and Europe, but tended to be translated (if at all) into German, not English. Some of her works still haven’t been translated.
On A Woman’s Madness is considered a classic of queer literature, but didn’t come to the attention of English readers until just a few years ago. It was published in Dutch in 1982, but wasn’t translated into English until Lucy Scott did so in 2023. It was longlisted for the Booker in 2025, the longest gap between publication and translation of any book considered for that award. I myself didn’t know the book existed until it made the Booker list.
So what is it about? That is a bit difficult to explain. It is about Noenka, a black Surinamese woman who defies cultural expectations in a variety of ways. But, like most actual lives, the book is more of a series of episodes than a plot arc. There are multiple story threads, which, combined with the non-linear writing, makes things a bit difficult to track. Plus, Noenka is not only an unreliable narrator, but she also leaves things out, assumes the reader knows the rest of the story, and refuses to talk about other things.
So, on the one hand, one must work a bit to keep all of the information in one’s head throughout the book so that the missing pieces can be assembled. On the other, one must simply live with gaps, knowing that whatever happened will not be disclosed.
The book is more like a collage than a picture, fragmentary, multi-perspective, and evocative rather than descriptive. Accept what it is, and enjoy it.
The scenes in the book range from the backstory of Noenka’s parents to an epilogue of sorts decades after the main events.
Noenka’s parents are in a mixed-religion marriage, more or less. Mom is devout and Christian, Dad comes from a family that has taken over their plantation and practically worship the giant snakes which inhabit it. This has not made for either a happy marriage or harmony with extended family.
Noenka, seeking to escape this life, takes a job as a teacher, but, under pressure from her minister-sponsor to make a respectable marriage, gets married to Louis.
That marriage lasts nine days.
It takes most of the book to understand why, however, because Noenka clams up and won’t talk about it.
We get the hint about halfway through when she tries to explain to the school inspector, who insists she reconcile with her husband or be fired.
“That’s not fair. My husband is abnormal!” I fought back.
“In what way?”
“That I can’t say.”
“In any case, you must have known that before the wedding.”
“We wanted a Christian wedding.”
The inspector stood up, turning beet red.
It isn’t until near the end of the book that we find out just what all went wrong.
[spoiler alert]
As it turns out, he insisted on sex with her while she was menstruating, and, when she refused, raped her. And also told this horrible story about how he came across a lesbian couple and violently “correctively” raped them both. Violently enough that he still has visible scars from how hard they fought back.
Yeah, that’s….disturbing.
So, on the run from her abusive, horrible husband, she ends up having a pair of notable flings. First is with Ramses, a man who grows orchids, and is at least better than Louis, even though he still has a lot of patriarchal ideas.
The other, which is really the central romance of the book, is with Gabrielle, an older (and married) white woman.
These choices eventually get Noenka labeled as a “black madwoman” - hence the title.
I think that is as far as I will go with the plot - there are some pretty crazy happenings, although you really have to stick with the book to put all the threads together.
Throughout, Noenka reveals her frustrations with patriarchy, with monogamy, and with family expectations. She wants a level of freedom that neither society nor the men in her life are willing to grant. The freedom to have undefined relationships, to have feelings for more than one person, and to want to live and support herself without having to be bound to a man.
And this is considered madness.
As a final thought on the book, it is definitely what we now refer to as “intersectional.” For Noenka, the racism she experiences as a black woman, the misogyny she experiences as a woman, and the homophobia she experiences as a queer person, all intersect. They are part of the same system of white male supremacy, and each of her “outsider” identities are in their own ways threats to that system.
The book exposes the ways that anyone who fights unjust systems tends to be labeled as “mad,” and that even mental health itself is intertwined with the unjust system, placing insupportable mental burdens on the marginalized. Thus, mental health care needs to involve the dismantling of the systems that place that impossible burden. A bit of therapy cannot cure the distress of a demand that a woman submit to abuse. Medication cannot fix the distress of racialized violence and aggression. And neither can wipe away anti-LGBTQ bigotry and the violence that it perpetrates.
On A Woman’s Madness is a fascinating book, and worth reading. I would recommend setting aside some uninterrupted time, though, to work through the collage format and connect all the threads.
***
This is only the second book translated from Dutch that I have read. You can find the complete list of books I have read in translation here, the list of books by black authors here, and the list of books by queer authors here.
www.smtcl-eu.com
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