More to my activism paper...Should follow previous post.

In No Telephone to Heaven, Michelle Cliff writes about poverty, racism, and colonialism in 1970 Jamaica. The central character in this novel is Clare Savage, a light skinned Creole. Clare lived in Jamaica as a small child, and moved to New York with her family to escape the political turmoil disfiguring their Jamaican lifestyle. Clare becomes an activist through a specific process, which surely starts as soon as the audience meets her but becomes evidently clearer as the novel progresses, showing Clare studying at the University in England and then eventually reconnecting with her friend Harry/Harriet from Jamaica. The initial stage of activism for Clare is when she begins to realize that she cannot live a divided life between her Jamaican roots and her European life and education. As one point, Harry/ Harriet argues this separated life, reiterating that Clare is destined for activism and can no longer ignore it, “I mean the time will come for both of us to choose. For we will have to make the choice. Cast out our lot. Cyaan live split. Not in this world.” (Cliff 131). This is Clare’s initial stage in the process of becoming an activist because she realizes that she cannot fight against something that is so a part of her; that she is already a part of the movement and must accept it.
Although at this point Clare already has begun to realize that she needs to be an activist, events continue to pull her closer to the movement happening in Jamaica. Clare befriends a soldier named Bobby, and his experience with war directly mirrors and symbolizes her connection with activism:
Bobby’s nightmares, once confined to sleep, were let loose. Engaging his mind when he was awake. He had tried to protect her from them before this- the depth of them. The war slid in whenever his effort to will it away let down. Incessant. He took extraordinary means to stay it. Sometimes reciting the words to every poem he could dredge, things he had spoken as a boy. The poems ran together into nonsense (Cliff 158).
As Bobby struggles to disconnect himself with something which is entirely integrated into his very being, similarly does Clare have to embrace the terrors taking place on Jamaican soil, the soil from which her very soul developed and sprang. Harry/Harriet again explains activism when he writes Clare a letter saying “We got to do something besides pray for the souls of our old women.” (Cliff 160). Clare eventually responds to this call to action, when she admits “I am in it. It involves me…cruelty…resistance…grace. I’m not outside this history-it’s a matter of recognition…memory…emotion.” (Cliff 194).
Thus, Clare Savage first becomes an activist by realizing her connection with the Jamaican community, and then understanding that connection to be more than a thin floss wire connecting body to movement, but the very intricate thread of her being.