SOURCE: Drake, Sandra E. “Tumatumari: The Great Game.” In Wilson Harris and the Modern Tradition: A New Architecture of the World, pp. 91–107. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Drake explores the feminist themes of family, society, and history in Tumatumari.

We play the game of history, my child

Henry Tenby, Tumatumari, p. 127

History never repeats itself but it never outlasts itself either.

Comrade Block at Port Mourant, Tumatumari, p. 74

The consequences of centuries of failure to resolve social oppression in Guiana are explored in Tumatumari. The oppressive relations obtain among races and between the sexes; the exploration is organized around shifting patterns of identification and differentiation within the collective psyche of a family. The principal locus of this reorganization of collective familial and societal experience is the mind of Prudence Tenby Solman. The almost simultaneous deaths of her newborn child and her husband precipitate her mental...