SOURCE: Renk, Kathleen J. “‘Her Words Are Like Fire’: The Storytelling Magic of Dionne Brand.” Ariel 27, no. 4 (October 1996): 97-111.

In the following essay, Renk explores images of fire and rage in the short stories in Sans Souci and Other Stories.

An oracle and a bringer of joy, the storyteller is the living memory of her time, her people. She composes on life but does not lie, for composing is not imagining, fancying, or inventing.

Her words are like fire. They burn and they destroy. It is, however, only by burning that they lighten. Destroying and saving, therefore, are here one single process. Not two processes posed in opposition or in conflict.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other

Anglophone Caribbean women's writing crackles with images of flames and conflagration, of dreams of fire, of women whose names are “written in fire,” of torching of homes and great houses.¹ All...