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An approach to literature Caribbean English II: Ana Bringas López

Authors emblematic

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By Ana Bringas López

University of Vigo, (Galicia), Spain

L The origins of Caribbean literature in English back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in which literature is essentially imitative of English literature, as people writing in this period were mainly British settlers established on the islands of more or less permanent. Thus, the Caribbean experience are considered, during this era, especially since the colonial perspective and from English literary models. In the first half of the nineteenth century there are two important texts, both female authorship: The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related By Herself (1831), autobiography of the slave Mary Prince, the first Caribbean prose written by a woman and the only autobiography of Caribbean slavery is preserved, although there were probably others. It is also the first female witness on slavery, as the memoirs which had appeared before in other slaveholding territories were male authorship. Claude

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few years later, the Jamaican Mary Seacole also published his autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857), which gives an account of his intense activity as nurse in Jamaica, Panama, Colombia and Finally, in the Crimea, where he established a hotel for the British officers and spent time caring for the wounded and dying. Mary Seacole challenged traditional gender roles by traveling alone world, practicing medicine and establishing his own business. Her autobiography depicts a black woman assertive and independent in a context of both colonial and metropolitan-Caribbean-British-dominated and controlled by white men.

Already in the first decades of the twentieth century stands out a name that has a place of honor in the letters Caribbean: the Jamaican Claude McKay. McKay grew poetry and fiction, although his novels is where it gets its greatest literary value. In Home to Harlem (1928), Banjo (1929) and, especially, in the classic Banana Bottom (1933), addresses one of the most productive of the letters Caribbean: the dilemma of the black person should try to preserve their identity in a world where the prevailing norm is white. McKay figure is significant for another reason, as it was the first major writer in the Anglophone Caribbean who was exiled for professional reasons, a path that at this time followed by many others.

Kamau Brathwaite

The decades of the thirties and forties of the twentieth century are a preparation for the great blossoming of Caribbean literature that will take place in the fifties. The literary movement that began during these decades is firmly based on economic, social and political era. The First World War, the Russian revolution and the economic depression of the late twenties seem to have exerted a great influence on literature and the beginning of the cultural and political nationalism that eventually lead to the independence of the Caribbean countries.

From the point of view literature, the most notable of these twenty years is the proliferation of literary magazines in almost all territories. In these journals published a very important part of Caribbean literature of the thirties and forties. Some of them had a very limited distribution or lasted very short time, some were well integrated into local life while others had a pan-Caribbean and internacional.De calling all these journals highlight four of its impact on cultural life and the importance Caribbean feather who participated in them: Bim in Barbados, Focus, Jamaica; Kyk-over-al, in Guyana, and The Beacon, in Trinidad. The latter marked the beginning of the development the gender of the Caribbean story, a genre that continues today booming. The magazine selected for publication only those works that contain characters, settings, situations and talk typical of the region, and rejected works that imitate foreign models and, therefore, lacked authenticity. This editorial policy reveals the deep commitment of the authors from the time the definition of a distinct cultural identity that could only be achieved by breaking with the English tradition.

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Among the members called "The Beacon Group (The Beacon group) three names are of great importance in the literary canon Caribbean: CLR James, Alfred Mendes and Ralph De Boissiere. These three authors were the only members of the group that published novels, and also were among the first, along with Claude McKay, who left the Caribbean to become professional writers abroad.

Valerie Bloom

Paradoxically, the so-called "boom period" of Caribbean literature, occurred in the 1950's, was a phenomenon mainly British, based in London which had an important community Caribbean intellectual. Many authors and writers chose exile because of the limited opportunities offered by the Caribbean for the development of a literary career: in the fifties there were very few publishers and readers with the possibility of access to books was very low. Thus, it is even more remarkable profusion of creativity and the number of works published during the decade. This boom did not occur only in the literature in all genres-poetry, drama and narrative, but also in other arts, especially sculpture and painting. The growing interest from the public what went further promoted and established institutions to promote indigenous culture, dance companies and theater, arts and crafts schools, etc. At the same time, also flourished calypso and steelband, and Louise Bennett studied and disseminated folklore and oral history of Jamaica.

In all these diasporic cultural center was the Caribbean society: intellectuals and artists were struggling to achieve self-discovery and self-definition, and this interest was parallel to the increasing political consciousness was forged extended independence . The social and political movements are key to understanding the true meaning of the literature of the period, because, despite the many authors and writers who went into exile voluntarily, they all remained linked to the Caribbean and discussed in his works social change processes that were taking place. Mass exile provoked a debate about the responsibility of the individual writer to his community. So, as Kamau Brathwaite expressed the fear that exiled writers to move away from its roots and lead to the inability to explore the physical territory, social, moral and emotional that was his place of origin, George Lamming, in The Pleasures of Exile (1960) - was convinced that, from his exile, the authors remained firmly rooted in Caribbean culture with a sense of responsibility towards the same as that advocated by Brathwaite.

Linton Kwesi Johnson



Therefore, all the literature of the fifties is very sensitive to the social and cultural condition of contemporary Caribbean. Often, the exploration of the personal self or individual experience is linked to the exploration of the interdependence of personal and public worlds, and the exploration of the individual's relationship with the structure inherited values that dominates its society. The writers had a sense of social commitment and strong political, inherited after generations. This period of Caribbean literature is seen as the literary canon of the region. The following authors are some that nourish the Caribbean literature courses in universities: Sam Selvon, George Lamming, Andrew Salkey, Wilson Harris, Edgar Mittelholzer, Kamau Brathwaite, John Hearne, Jan Carew, VS Reid, Derek Walcott ( Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992) and VS Naipaul (Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001).

Significantly, all these authors are male, highly educated, middle class, with few exceptions, set in England during this period. His works helped to establish a canon and an agenda criticism that still continues to apply, and often limits the study of Caribbean literary production as a whole, since it is inapplicable to other kinds of writing, such as, for example, the most notable works mujeres.Entre this period is The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (1956), one of the first narrative experiments in Creole as the language of the narrative and not just the dialogue. Selvon used a modified version of the speech of Trinidad to tell the harsh life experiences of a group of Caribbean immigrants in London and the difficulties of adaptation and integration in a racist society that is far from them, as they expected to get there, British.

In 1953, George Lamming published his famous novel In the Castle of My Skin, one of the best examples of children's novel, which experienced a boom in this novel período.La Lamming, located in his native Barbados is an exploration of the growth process of a Barbadian child in parallel with the changes leading to the island from being a feudal society based on the plantation system to the beginnings of the independence movement. Alienation and dispossession is evident in the change process are also present in The Hills Were Joyful Together, that was published in the Jamaican Roger Mais year, although the action does not place Mais in rural Jamaica but in the depressed suburbs of Kingston.

Jean Binta Breeze


This decade is also beginning to publish his first works VS Naipaul, an author who was exiled, never to return to reside in his native Trinidad. This early work, unlike most of his later work, is set in the Caribbean as a whole. To this period belong the novels The Mystic Masseur (1957) and The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), and the story collection Miguel Street (1959). In these works, Naipaul describes the society of Trinidad in racial and cultural diversity, but with a logic attention to Asian ethnic group to which he belongs. Later, in 1961, the novel A House for Mr Biswas marks a shift in the focus of his literary output, which acquires more complexity and a more philosophical and allegorical, seeking to analyze the identity of the individual by postcolonial through the symbolism of the house as a place of identity construction.

Naipaul, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, is one of the most prolific-Caribbean authors also arguably the most controversial because of its ambivalent relationship with the Caribbean culture, "and his literary production runs regularly until today.

In the sixties and seventies, while the canonical authors consolidated, new names made their appearance, including Michael Anthony, Austin Clarke, Roy Heath, Marion Patrick Jones, Earl Lovelace, Merle Hodge and Shiva Naipaul, "and together they established a strong presence from the Caribbean literature in the international publishing market. In this period there was a phenomenon of re-centralization of cultural and critical activity in the Caribbean, not in exile as had happened in the fifties. And begin the search and the definition of a Caribbean aesthetic and are held deep discussions on the linguistic and formal experimentation in literature, especially in relation to the new generation of writers. This intense activity resulted in the seventies is known as "the decade of criticism." There was a critical shift, going from the false notions of universality to a greater appreciation of cultural and political contexts of the region.






mid-seventies, there was an explosion of voices new to the dub poetry and performance, both in the Caribbean and Britain. This was due in part to a new appreciation of the work of poets such as Louise Bennett of Jamaica, which led to a better reception of oral poetry as literature. Also strongly influenced by Kamau Brathwaite, in his trilogy The Arrivants (1973), built as experimental poetry and exploring the possibilities of using pace and black musical forms (work songs of the era of slavery, spiritual, mento, ska, reggae, steelpan, calypso, jazz, blues).

In this period there is the debate on the classification of diasporic literary production. Although, as we saw in previous decades a significant number of Caribbean writers and authors had been settled in Europe or North America, and although there are black textuality presence and documented in Britain for many centuries, is at this time when we first met a series of writers and authors, British-born or born in the Caribbean and residents in Britain, which is beginning to identify as British and British, something they never did or could have been done by Caribbean writers who came to England in the fifties . This does not mean that the label "literature afrobritánica" (or Black British literature) was universally accepted "On the contrary, has always been a much debated term, but nevertheless, we can say that it was in this period afrobritánica contemporary literature was born.

Jackie Kay


Among its pioneers was the poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson, who published a groundbreaking collection in London in 1975 under the title Dread Beat and Blood. His poetry is characterized by the use of Jamaican Creole, a strong aesthetic representation (or performance), formal and thematic influence of reggae music, stylistic devices as the use of biblical references and content highly politicized. Johnson's poetry is firmly rooted in the realities of life in a British urban context, rather than the abstract concept of "Babylon" rasta-that is, capitalist Western culture show other dub poets. The radicalism of his work, especially in linguistic matters, opened the way for the consolidation of a new generation of black poets and blacks in Britain since the Eighties, like Valerie Bloom, Jean Binta Breeze, Benjamin Zephaniah, John Agard, Jackie Kay and Grace Nichols, among others.

addition, the eighties and nineties were marked by the emergence of literature written by women, both in the Caribbean and the diaspora. The 1970 publication of the first novel by Merle Hodge, Crick Crack Monkey, was the inspiration and model to many authors, who acknowledge that this was the first literary work that appealed directly to his personal experience and allowed them to identify with a protagonist.

Crick Crack Monkey tells the story of T, divided by the security that gives the traditional rural world represented by her paternal aunt Tanti, and alienation felt in the world of middle class and westernized values representing her maternal aunt Beatrice. Each of these women represents a set of values class, race, language and gender, and T must choose one of these two conflicting models. In the end, T will eventually belong to both worlds at once but none of them completely. The novel thus reflects the cultural alienation resulting from the juxtaposition of two opposing value systems and hierarchical relations, a topic that Hodge also addressed in his second novel, For the Life of Laetitia, published in 1994.

addition to the general characteristics of Caribbean literature that have been mentioned, the literature written by women shows specific features, the most notable of which is the mainstreaming of gender. Women writers provide texts that have women as central axis, in an attempt to compensate for the absence or distortion of female experience in the literature of male authorship, which in many cases draws on archetypal stereotypical images and representations that have little to do with reality of Caribbean women. Thus, some of the recurring themes addressed by the authors are female sexuality, the troubled relations between women and men, motherhood and the bond between women.

George Lamming



The development of Caribbean women's literature is especially connected to the genre of short stories and poetry, although in recent years have seen an increase in the number of novels. Also fundamental to the anthologies that from the eighties, allowed to visualize the creative writing of women. Two anthologies of pioneers in this sense, that match authors to include works from different linguistic areas of the Caribbean with inclusive and pan-Caribbean will are Her True-True Name, edited by Pamela Mordecai and Betty Wilson in 1989, and Creation Here: A CAFRA Anthology of Caribbean Women's Poetry, compiled by Ramabai Espinet also in 1989. These anthologies are incorporating not only contemporary authors but also writers of earlier decades, as the authors Dominica Creole Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey, which many critics claimed as precursors of Caribbean women's literature.

During the last decades have revealed a lot of new writers and novel writers, many of whom write and publish in European or North American diaspora. The diversity of these writers and authors, both topics in his literary treatment is too overwhelming to pick in this brief survey. Suffice to say that his literary interests range from the articulation of identity in both Caribbean and diasporic narratives of childhood, until the revision of the colonial past and slavery and its impact on the contemporary Caribbean, through the detective novel, and all in styles ranging from narrative forms more or less conventional narrative to polyphonic and growing acceptance posmodernistas.La Caribbean literature by the readers and the growing critical recognition that took place especially since the nineties has, of course, far from positive for the region's own literature and also for people who have access to the rich cultural contribution that is a tradition as diverse and hybridized.

However, as indicated by Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh, publishers of an important manual of Anglophone Caribbean literature (The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature) appeared in 1996, this fact also meant that Caribbean literature saw absorbed by the postcolonial canon, as in recent decades postcolonial literature has established a very strong field of academic research in the Western world, and from postcolonial theory and literature is usually performed outside the Caribbean region.

As a result, the cultural peculiarities of the Caribbean, as is the absence of a native language or culture precolonial or the extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity are likely to be homogeneous or even eliminated within this sea global co is the postcolonial world. Moreover, in recent years there has been an appropriation of peripheral literature, including the Caribbean, by the cultural center is the West-consider the claim of Nobel prize nonwhite Third World (the Caribbean Derek Walcott and VS Naipaul, Wole Soyinka and the Nigerian) as part of a canonical literature "universal" -, this undoubtedly helps, the fact that many Caribbean writers and authors write and publish in the context of emigration. Thus, Donnell and Welsh Lawson reflect this situation of Caribbean literature in the center represented by Western academic institutions might respond less to a contemporary trend towards globalization, as a disruptive movement's own cultural neo-imperialism. This cultural encroachment and revealed in the day George Lamming, when in 1960 he criticized the assumption by England in the Caribbean writers of the fifties and wondered to whom these authors wrote. More recently, the writer and critic of Trinidad Merle Hodge has also denounced the lack of cultural sovereignty of Caribbean countries, invaded by tourism and by the Western media and stressed the need to create alternative cultural models which serve to define the Caribbean identity without resorting to foreign neo-colonial patterns.

is difficult to anticipate what direction it will take Caribbean literature, or any other post-colonial literature "in the coming years and how to respond to cultural pressures and editorials in the Western world. What is clear is that the Caribbean culture remains as vital and creative as it was earlier in its history, when they knew how to face and overcome the economic exploitation and cultural denigration accounted colonialism more atrocious. Therefore, it is expected that their reaction to this new challenge is, again, the regenerate and redefine the cultural diversity that is probably its greatest asset.

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Ana Bringas López

Ana Bringas López specializes in English philology and is a lecturer in the Department of Philology English at the University of Vigo, Galicia, Spain, where she teaches Language Arts Inglesa.Su research focuses on literature written by women and Terms & postcolonial theories. On these topics he has published several papers. Feminario is a member of Feminism and Resistance Research at the University of Vigo, in the framework of which has organized several international conferences, courses, workshops and seminars on feminism and postcolonialism.

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