You Alone Are Dancing

By Brenda Flanagan

Book Overview

Rape, the devastation of hurricane Flora, a child's tragic death, and an indifferent and corrupt government are some of the numerous problems challenging the people of Rosehill. Set on the fictional island of Santabella and spanning three years, You Alone Are Dancing follows the life of young Beatrice Salandy, balancing her ambitions, obligations, and love for Sonny Allen. Determined to create his own opportunities, Sonny leaves Rosehill for the United States in a swirl of promises and expectations. Beatrice remains on Rosehill, sharing her neighbors' struggle, adding their pain to her own, but sharing as well their music and their laughter, their history and their allegiance to it.
Like Santabella, set in an indifferent blue sea, Rosehill is part of a larger neglected Caribbean society, and Beatrice must learn to negotiate its tides and ebbs, overcome its storm and ensure its lulls, as she peruses what has to be done. She succeeds--but at a price that changes her life forever, as it does that of Sonny and all of Rosehill.
"In Brenda Flanagan's novel, You Alone Are Dancing, there's talk and talk, the life-long dance of talk--it's lyrical, raucous, sorrowful, vibrant, inventive. And there you are, on the island, in the midst and mix of it all. What the best musicians do with wood and brass and air, Brenda Flanagan does with words--she gives them voice and life." --Janet Kauffman, author of Places in the World a Woman Could Walk
Brenda Flanagan, a native of Trinidad, is Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University, where she teaches creative writing and African-American and Caribbean literature. Flanagan is a three-time Hopwood award winner, including one for this novel. She is also the author of a play, When the Jumbie Bird Calls, and a forthcoming short story collection, In Praise of Older Women and Other Crimes. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Caliban, Calalloo, the Caribbean Review, and the Indiana Review, among others.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0472066277
• ISBN13: 9780472066278
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

editorial error

I think that the editor of this sight did not justly review Flannagan's text. He/she wrote that this is a story about only two things: the politics of Trinidad and the story of Sonny Allen's struggle. Yes, this is a powerful political story, but it is not only a story of Sonny's struggle, as is written here. It is also a story about women and their choices. The editor, in addition to forgetting to mention the novel's female protagonist, did not even seemingly notice the cover artwork of Brenda Flannagan's novel on which a woman is shown walking toward or past a man lying stationary in a hammock. Beatrice's story is a keystone of the political story. She is the true hero because she does not abandon her conflict, hoping to rebuild her life without her culture. Beatrice's development is superior to Sonny's because he feels that he is unable to rebuild what exists, and must build something new. While all Flannagan's characters speak as though alive, I think that the strongest voice in her novel should be recognized as that of Beatrice, the peddle pusher wearing queen- not Sonny Allen. Sonny and this editor did not realize that one can not shake all the soil out of the roots of the plant. Beatrice is the soil that allows the root of this novel to grow in the mind of the reader.

This was Great Story.

Much more then just a romance novel, this book dives into a real world situation that allows the reader to develope an understanding of how many poor people live outside of the US. A lot of the novels dialog contains pharses and terms native to the location and adds a sence of realness and escape to what we are use to as English in the US. This is also the reason I gave it a 4 (actually 4.5) instead of a 5. If there were some kind of dictionary or glossory, it would make some things a little more clear. If your looking for a good book thats a different style then your use too, this is the book.