Buxton spice

The time is the 1970s. The place is the coast of Guyana, a world of color and light, dust and heat, flesh and earth. Here in the cool, wood-floored home that doubles as a school and a community center, a young girl opens her window and breathes in the redolence of a Buxton Spice mango tree. And asks the tree to tell her its secret - and the secret of its indifference. Buxton Spice is the song of Oonya Kempadoo's young narrator, Lula, and the song of her ill-fated town of Tamarind Grove: its colorful inhabitants, its eccentric families, its sweeping joys and sudden tragedies. Here are the…