In Zilla Jones' novel, an opera singer gives a voice to the Grenada Revolution

CBC

7 days ago

The 1983 revolution in Grenada was a major moment of the Cold War era — and writer Zilla Jones grew up hearing stories about its connection to her own family.
Jones transports readers back to that time in her debut novel, The World So Wide.
It follows a Canadian opera singer, Felicity Alexander, who is caught up in the military coup and placed under house arrest. What unfolds next is a saga that spans decades and reflects on race, love, belonging and revolution.
"What is nice about historical fiction is that it's historical, but it speaks to now," said Jones on Bookends with Mattea Roach.
She crafted the novel by envisioning three parallel journeys involving her characters and herself.
"One is the story of Grenada and the rise and fall of that revolution, one is Felicity and the rise and fall of her career, and then one is the rise and fall of me, the artist, the writer."
Jones is a Winnipeg author and has been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize on four occasions, and the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2024.
If you're interested in the CBC Literary Prizes, the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is currently accepting submissions. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems from April 1-June 1.
Jones joined Roach to talk about why opera centres the story, her own work as a lawyer and the power of art as protest.
Mattea Roach: Your main character, Felicity Alexander, is a renowned international opera diva from Winnipeg Opera. What is it that draws her to the world of opera?
Zilla Jones: Felicity has a very unusual beginning in the world of opera, for sure. She was born in 1947 in Winnipeg. She doesn't have any opera in her background that she knows of. Her mother's from Grenada and she's a single mother raising her. Her father isn't known to her; he's a Ukrainian Canadian man.
She just has this innate belief in herself that drives her to go throughout the world and sing. - Zilla Jones
She falls into opera by accident. She starts piano lessons as a child and the piano teacher discovers that she has this amazing voice and the piano teacher believes that that can be developed. Felicity just believes in her own talent really, when there's no real reason to.
But she just has this innate belief in herself that drives her to go throughout the world and sing.
What is your relationship with opera?
I did study opera as my undergraduate degree. I've always just loved music and, like Felicity, I think from childhood, just been drawn to it. Opera in particular, I love because it's so dramatic. I think somewhere in the book talks about opera being a world — and you have all the human emotions, love, betrayal, revenge, forgiveness, all of that is there. Those are universal themes that anyone can enjoy.
The format of it is sometimes intimidating because it's often not in your native language. So for English speakers, many of the operas are Italian or French or German. The style of music is very complex, so it does take some study to really appreciate opera, but I'm always somebody that wants to make art accessible.
I think that people can understand it and writing about it is one way I think to come at it a little bit differently. So instead of using the music, you use the words to enter the world of music.
There's quite a culture clash happening in this novel because we have, on the one hand, this character who is an opera singer. She is singing in opera houses in Europe. She's a regular at the Met in New York. But we meet her under house arrest in the country of Grenada in 1983, which was at the time a nation that was experiencing a military coup. What puts Felicity in this situation?
She's in Grenada because of love, essentially. So when you read the novel, you'll see that her first and real love is a man named Claude Buckingham, who is from Grenada. He comes to London to study law. Felicity is there to study opera. They meet there and then they separate because they have different dreams and different destinies. Hers is to go and sing opera at the Met and in different places in the world, his is to go back to Grenada and bring the revolution, but she never forgets him.
She sees this as her opportunity to reconnect with him and she also believes in the revolution so she wants to be there to support it. - Zilla Jones
Near the beginning of the novel, she receives an invitation to come and perform at a showcase that's being held in Grenada. So she sees this as her opportunity to reconnect with him and she also believes in the revolution so she wants to be there to support it.
Was there anything in your own personal experience that you were pulling from and crafting this character?
That's always the question in fiction, right? How much of it is autofiction and how much is "fiction fiction?" And the good thing about writers is we don't have to tell.
There are definitely pieces of me in there; and then there are things that are not me at all. I did study opera. So I know what it's like to be in that world as a little bit of an outsider and somebody that maybe didn't come to it the same way as other people.
I am also a person of mixed-race; I am of Trinidadian heritage, but I also have roots from many of the other Caribbean islands. So I've always grown up with these stories of Caribbean history and the Grenada revolution had a huge role in my family story. I always heard about that story.
These stories are definitely very much part of my DNA. But a lot of the other things that happen to Felicity are just imagination.
What was the discourse like about the Grenada revolution when you were growing up?
My connection to it was in multiple ways, but the leader of the Grenada Revolution in real life was somebody that my mother knew and my aunt knew, and he had actually been in a relationship with one of my mom's cousins, which is where I got the idea for Felicity because I always wondered what it would be like to see your ex-boyfriend executed in front of the world and how you go on from that.
So they used to hang out in London and go to protests. And a lot of the things that the characters in the book are doing, anti-apartheid protests, in particular, as well as anti-nuclear bomb protests.
So I always heard about him that way; my mom used to laugh about how he would come to the house when he was a young law student and say, "Someday I'm going to be the Prime Minister of Grenada." And they'd go, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, right, right, right."
He actually did it. And then also later on, after they had their coup in 1979, when they did take power, my real life uncle worked for the Grenada government as a constitutional advisor, trying to get them to adapt a constitution for their own circumstances.
So I heard about that and then just generally I would hear about how the revolution was killed, I guess, by the United States invasion and kind of was a cautionary tale a little bit that they got a little bit too confident. They poked the bear, they provoked the United States and they brought this on themselves.
It was kind of almost a lesson to be more realistic in your revolution, when you choose to have it.