While reading, I noticed that most of the characters involved in Crossing the Mangrove have strong opinions, coming from the perspective of race and class. They live their lives with harsh judgments by categorizing their fellow Guadeloupean citizens according to their race, their success, their heritage and their gender. Francis Sancher came to live on the island of Guadeloupe and people were wary of this “foreigner”. I found it interesting that most of the women in the novel had positive feelings towards Francis Sancher, while the men had a strong distaste for him. Although interestingly, every character seemed powerfully attracted to this strange man. “Women secretly had a weakness for this tyrannical man, so tall and straight under his silver hair. But the men couldn’t stand him and called him all kinds of names.” At the beginning of the story, no one knew where he actually descended from, but many liked to guess. Cuba was the main rumor: “As soon as we learned that he was Cuban, dad declared that there were too many foreigners in Guadeloupe and that he had to be expelled with a visa....