Bénédicte Ledent
Bénédicte Ledent:
I teach at the University of Liege in Belgium where I earned my Ph.D. with a dissertation on the work magnificent literary Anglo-Caribbean writer, Caryl Phillips. My main research interest is the Caribbean and contemporary fiction novels written by writers from the African Diaspora in general. I am also interested in the connections between linguistics and literature.
"To be part of other voices, voices we become
own"
(Linton Kwesi Johnson)
"Past, present and future of Caribbean literature " [1]
Bénédicte Ledent, Université de Liège, Belgium
N or know if you know well the Caribbean culture. I probably sound like rum, reggae and beach music. But as you see, is much more than that. Literature, for example, is one of his great wealth. My original intention was to cover this conference to the entire Caribbean literature, but for obvious reasons, this is impossible, and therefore I will focus on the narrative of the generation of Anglo-Caribbean novelists who came of age in the 80's. My intention is to provide you an overview of this transitional generation of writers, most of whom were born in the Caribbean but raised and educated in Britain. Thus intend to give you an idea of how their literature confronts this cultural tension, the feeling of belonging and yet not belong to Britain.
.
begin with a brief introduction about the context of this generation of writers, and then examine three aspects: first, a definition of the subject, and then will address the case of poetry, and finally, a selection of novels that I think (subjectively ) the most representative of this group of writers.
.
let's start Therefore, in context. I imagine that the name "Empire Windrush" may prove familiar. This is the name of the ship in June 1948 (ie 56 years) led to the UK to 492 travelers Jamaican nationality. This arrival is considered the beginning of Caribbean migration to Britain in the twentieth century, but for me it is just another of the episodes of a long history of migrations that began with the nomadic Native Americans, then continued with the European settlers, African slaves, Indian workers, and all other racial groups that today constitute the Caribbean, one of the world's most cosmopolitan areas.
However, in 1948 the Caribbean immigrants of the "Empire Windrush" received a warm welcome as representing labor at a time when the country urgently needed people to help in its reconstruction after the Second World War. The British media broadcast the event because, in addition to its symbolic value, had a real significance: it was the first arrival of a substantial contingent of people from the Caribbean, and was the beginning of an even larger wave of immigrants that lasted the next two decades.
any event, the arrival of the "Empire Windrush" was the beginning of a huge exodus that brought thousands of people from the Caribbean to Britain, which allowed one of the writers of this generation, David Dabydeen, coined the joke that in the late twentieth century England was, with half a million people of Caribbean origin, the third "Caribbean Island" in size, behind only Jamaica and Trinidad [4].
Among those who immigrated in those postwar years had a significant proportion of artists and writers. The best known are perhaps Wilson Harris, George Lamming, Edgar Mittelholzer, Sam Selvon, and VS Naipaul (Nobel Prize winner in 2001). Its characteristics are representative of typical of Caribbean immigrants, as their motivations are twofold. On the one hand, moving them economic impulses: there was in the Caribbean publishers of a certain size, and the best were in London, so to emigrate increased their chance of being published, and thus reaching a much more wide. On the other hand, the decision to move to England was also moved by emotional factors and metaphysical. Suffice it to say that colonial education had made in the Caribbean to Britain was admired as the real world, the only place where things actually happened. To fully develop their art, these artists needed to confront colonial power (represented by Prospero, Shakespeare's character) in his own country and thus solve their own colonial conflict, a process described by George Lamming in his influential collection of essays "The Pleasures of Exile," published in 1960.
Although the expectations of that Caribbean migrants were very high, both economically and psychologically, they thought they were going "home", the reality was very different from the myth, and therefore disappointment was all the more destructive because the myth had remained strong for centuries. It is true that, at least until the late 60's, there were enough jobs work, but wages were low and these people were hired to work well below their ability or training. Housing was also a problem. Often they are not renting apartments to people of color, and when they are admitted, was negligible housing conditions for which they were required to excessive prices. Discrimination in housing and employment was understood that the Caribbean population in Britain were considered "British" second class only, and that race was exposed to all kinds of grievances.
Although the traumatic impact of these experiences is undeniable, with the over time also perceived some positive effects. The difficulty in integrating the Caribbean forced to consider its status as colonized and rediscover their identity and values. For this reason, immigration to the UK has helped build an identity "Caribbean", rather, "West Indians" among the immigrants as Lamming argues: "No one in Barbados, Trinidad, St. Lucia, or any other island in the Western Indica is seen as 'Caribbean' until he meets another islander abroad ... In that sense, most West Indians of my generation were born in England [5].
This process of self-discovery is well illustrated in the prolific creativity of Caribbean writers in exile in England since the 50's onwards. They not only wrote extensively about his experiences in exile, but also on their homes in the Caribbean, which from a distance glimpsed more clearly. Interestingly, the transfer to the colonizing country provoked a record production which, in turn, marked the birth of a specifically literary consciousness Caribbean. Review the impact this had on the second generation of Caribbean writers, who are already part of the British literary tradition, and whose greatest success is have built bridges between past and future.
is extremely difficult to write a history of Caribbean literature because this work requires respect national or regional differences and also show common traits inherited from the past [6].
Make a chronicle of the new voices within this tradition has the added challenge that it is a body of literature still in the process and therefore more difficult to categorize and objectify. Since there is no temporal distance still necessary, this overview can only be provisional and revisable, and point questions can not yet answer. But these are not the only problems, as the inclusion criteria and the definition of this group have been issues that required further attention immediately.
generation of writers that I'll describe includes, among others, the novelist David Dabydeen, Fred D'Aguiar and Caryl Phillips, Joan Riley and novelist. It should be clear from the outset that this is a transitional generation, heir to a complex tradition, so they should not be considered in isolation. Their literature is indebted to a generation of pioneers who preceded them the transfer to the so-called "mother country" from the writer Jean Rhys in the 30's to Wilson Harris, George Lamming, Sam Selvon and VS Naipaul after the Second World War. While the generation of young writers has not been a culture shock as deep as the first group that came to England as an adult and a live pre-colonial experience and its predecessors between at least two cultures. Therefore, like their predecessors, they are still "trying to solve the loneliness, ambivalence, and confusion arising from his relationship with British society," as the novelist Caryl Phillips observes in an essay entitled "The Legacy of Lamming and Selvon [7]
While it is necessary to try to define this group, one wonders whether it is desirable or even possible when it comes to an essentially nomadic tradition, which refuses on principle to enter into a closed category. Therefore, the following parameters must be understood only as practical concepts for understanding literature, and not as ways to constrain a reality in constant flux.
narrative This generation is classified with some frequency as "Afro-British" (Black British), which, like all labels, is comfortable but ultimately unsatisfactory because it leads to some cheating. As Fred D'Aguiar has argued, such designation not only assumes that the black race and British citizenship are all homogeneous, but also restricts their creativity to racial or national experiences, thereby negating individual artistic freedom [8]. In addition, setting limits thus outside the creative imagination, it seems particularly inappropriate when dealing with a writer as Caryl Phillips, whose work raises inter-cultural vision of the world. It also seems inappropriate to me the term "Afro-British" to describe the new generation of Caribbean literature in Britain because it encompasses an area too broad to be effectively useful. In fact, it is equally true for writers as diverse as Ben Okri, Nigerian or Hindu Salman Rushdie, who do not have much more in common than their post-colonial condition. I therefore propose to use the term "New Caribbean Diaspora in Britain," or simply "the new diaspora." It is a term less static, as it not only encompasses these writers but also to literature, and therefore more accurately reflects the post-migration sensitivity while, at least in its broadest form, indicating their participation in the corpus British literary society in flux.
Then I will discuss who and what temporal and spatial parameters covered by the term "new diaspora." For reasons of space, I'll try only to writers of Caribbean origin who were born in the 50's, and educated in Britain, where they arrived during childhood or adolescence. This approach necessarily excludes novelists Beryl Gilroy, even though most of his works were published in the 90's and dealing with common concerns to the "new diaspora", for example in his work entitled "Boy-Sandwich "(1989) [9], in which the young Tyrone must make decisions about their British identity upon returning to parent island, Jamaica. However, Gilroy belongs to a generation marked by the myth of Britain as the promised land, and came to England with very different expectations from those who migrated in childhood.
geographical parameters also serve to explain the absence of this group such an important figure as Jamaica Kincaid, who lives in the United States. Although its origins affect their literature in a manner similar to that of other writers of his generation living in Britain, his art takes place in a social and literary context quite different, since in the latter the strength of an imperialist tradition has prevented the inclusion of minority cultures to their institutions, although this has begun to change. The ambivalent attitude of Great Britain to Anglo-Caribbean writers, first admitting authoritarian and other shared European cultural heritage, leads, as we shall see, a characteristic literary modes. The ambiguity affects to a lesser extent the Caribbean writers settled in the United States, for their integration into the U.S. multicultural fabric has been facilitated by the existence of a long tradition of African-American [10], allowing these artists find their voice with less difficulty, but this also means that if you reduce to a ghetto pre-established [11]. Kincaid is not the only casole same could be said about Dionne Brand, Shani Mootoo and Neil Bissoondath, settled in Canada.
Finally, my team of writers could produce the wrong impression that this is a clearly defined, and yet the "new diaspora" is a very flexible category, with borderline cases and multiple locations. For example, Fred D'Aguiar and Caryl Phillips spent most of his time in the U.S. for professional reasons, but their minds are still largely shaped by experiences "British." Thus, while fundamental wondering who these new voices Caribbean is even more crucial, given its elasticity diasporic, analyze what they have to offer and how.
Although not the main focus of my lecture, I would like to spend some thoughts on poetry, which has played an important role in the transition from first to second generation of Caribbean writers in Britain. Poetry has enjoyed great popularity at particular times of the literary tradition because it requires less time than prose, yet allows for a more immediate. This, at least, is what is true in the case of the new British-Caribbean voice. But the fact that the Caribbean is composed poetry frequently to be recited in public is a more important key to its success. This oral tradition, inherited from the Caribbean tradition, is a link between artist and audience, and therefore represents a key to strengthen a young community and spreads from exile.
can distinguish two main trends in the poetry of the "new diaspora." The first is a poetry centered in the Caribbean past, either historical, or personal memories of childhood, or often a mixture of both as in the poem by Grace Nichols, i is a woman long memories (1983) or Fred D'Aguiar, Mama Dot (1985). It is no coincidence that most of the authors of this focus group later in the narrative. The case of David Dabydeen is best illustrated this evolution began with an exploration of the past diasporic Hindu family in its collection Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988), and by the 1990s he began writing novels . In addition, the temporary regression found in his poetry reminds us, as the subsequent narrative, the imagination of the diaspora often needs to look back to understand your present circumstances.
The second trend in the poetry of the "new diaspora" is the protest. Although rooted in the British situation, which is commonly known as "dub poetry", ie, poetry recited to the rhythm of reggae, is also a way of "making history" as the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, the figure famous of this movement in the UK, so much so that a selection of his work (My Revalueshanary Fren) [12] was published in 2002 in the prestigious series of literary classics from the publisher Penguin. His classic poem "Inglan is a Bitch" (1980, "England is shit") gives voice to contemporary frustrations of his generation through the disappointment of a first generation immigrants, additional evidence of the close ties linking the two generations, despite their different circumstances:
When I came to London I started immigrant
currar * in metro
But with so much on the subway currar
not get anywhere
England is a shit, nobody
pound
England is crap, every man for himself
I know there is work, work in abundance,
And to me, however, to stop sending me, I have 55
tacos, and I pa 'old
gives them equal to the unemployment line I'm told.
England is a shit, nobody
pound
England is shit,
Dude, what are we going to do. [13]
Amid this evocation of race riots, police violence and anger of black youth, Johnson never proposes a return to the Caribbean. Instead, especially in his later, calls for greater political awareness and continued resistance in the place that the Rastafarians call "Babylon."
Although, as history, the protest must be photographed before they can get a post-migration identity, this revolutionary poetry has failed to give any good novelist, which, incidentally, may be indicative of the negative effect of anger on the art. Nor did its themes are reflected in the narrative, perhaps with the exception of the first works of Norman Smith (Bad Friday, 1982) or David Simon (Railton Blues, 1983) [14] . Written after the race riots in Brixton in the 80's, both respond to the anger of a generation that has realized that her parents were attracted to Britain with false promises [15] . As marginalized youth in the poems of Linton Kwesi Johnson, Britain's exile experience as a new form of colonialism or slavery. However, no gives them the nostalgia of the Caribbean. True Bad Blues Friday and Railton are inferior novels, but deal with issues important for second generation British-Caribbean writers. One is that the dispersion Caribbean has become redundant regional features, which may seem paradoxical if one considers that the vision developed by several authors of this generation tend to be supra-national. Like most dub poets and novelists who are moving in the tradition of social realism, Norman Smith and David Simon are of Jamaican origin, which is not surprising because Jamaica, birthplace of Marcus Garvey and home of the Rastafarian philosophy and Reggae [16], has with a literary tradition marked by an acute political consciousness. In contrast, the characteristic poetic imagination of David Dabydeen and Fred D'Aguiar is linked to the history and landscape of Guyana.
Significantly, one of the first novels of the "new diaspora" is The Unbelonging ("Uprooting", 1985), another Jamaican writer, Joan Riley, whose work is as close to literature protest that just described. As its title indicates, this book recounts the dilemma of a generation that did not feel comfortable nor in England nor in his native Caribbean. Jacinta tells the story of a teenager who arrives in England with his family in the 70's. Beset by his father and his schoolmates, takes refuge in dreams of a Jamaica idealized and becomes a nightmare when, after finishing his studies, returns to the Caribbean. Once there, she is forced to recognize that homeless because you poor Jamaicans say "go home the way you came, just as in England are required to form the racist" go where you belong ". [17] The difficulty of returning home Caribbean is one of the classic motifs of the "new diaspora," and also evokes the novel by Caryl Phillips, A State of Independence (1986).
Besides its symbolic value for a generation, The Unbelonging is noteworthy as a pioneering work [18]. It is one of the first novels published by a Caribbean writer in Britain since Jean Rhys did in the 30's, and announces the emergence of a group of women writers still in the process, since, with the exception of Pauline Melville (a writer of mixed origin, British Guyana), author of the novel The Ventriloquist's Tale (1997), Anglo-Caribbean literature of the postwar period was not remarkable writers at the beginning [19]. The picture has changed recently with the publication of the novel White Teeth (2000), the original writer British-Jamaican Zadie Smith and Small Island (2004) by Andrea Levy, author also of Jamaican origin. Another interesting case is that of Leone Ross, also from British-Jamaican origin, whose novel Orange Laughter (1999) identifies as a writer of talent. However, I think these writers belong to a younger generation that feels at all British, and therefore can not say that part of Caribbean literature.
But back to The Unbelonging, published in 1985. Even not being at all a great literary work, especially given the heightened realism, The Unbelonging contains in embryo the issues that shape the ethical universe of the generation of Riley. The main ones are broken family as a metaphor for post-colonial situation, and an obsession with memory as part of the search for a post-migration identity. Then attempt to examine how this literary generation addresses these two issues.
Much of the novels of the "new diaspora" located in the family break. Good example is The Intended, David Dabydeen, which focuses on a teenager unidentifiable that, far from his native Guyana, under the guidance of British social services, faces temptations and attractive but also the dangers of multiracial London. As reported by the criticism, it is a variation on the classic novel of learning [20], a genre popular among Caribbean writers of the 50 and 60, in which the transition from adolescence to adulthood equals progress the nation to independence. The main difference residing in that they are social services, as an institution, which is responsible for the boy's emotional needs [21]. This amendment is important because it highlights the lack of entertainment in England, it is as if the new generation of Caribbean immigrants had finally rejected the idea of being the "mother" (homeland) or even the "stepmother" (Homeland) in England. The arrival in England, the protagonist of Dabydeen, and also that of Riley, has announced more than the coldness and indifference: it symbolizes the recurrence of colonization and slavery.
colonial trauma has not disappeared with the exile, but if mplemente seems to have moved to the family, which, as Milan Kundera reminds us, works through psychological mechanisms similar to those of society in general [22]. Abusive behavior Jacinta's father recalls the colonial era and exemplifies how the "new diaspora" is often associated with colonial exploitation exploitation sexual. Like the previous-generation immigrants, she claimed left his Caribbean home to meet the needs of his father. Their violence, both physical and psychological, and her voice that resonates "like the crack of a whip" [23] immediately evokes the owner of the plantation. Also in Dabydeen's novel the orphanage where the child has been abandoned by his father is described as a "youth prison" [24] where newcomers must pass "a season of acclimation [25], as well as new arrivals to the Caribbean slaves.
However, parenthood nonbiological or adoption contained in the literature of the "new diaspora" in a more positive but still ambiguous. This happens in the novel Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips (1993), a novel that examines the visionary tone inter-cultural imaginary journeys through the history of the African diaspora. Perhaps the most striking image of adoption in this novel is that of an African father who sold his three children into slavery, thus causing its spread, eventually welcoming Joyce, a white English woman as one of their own children [ 26]. In Phillips's novel, A Distant Shore, published in 2003, an African refugee who has lost most of his family in the war, Gabriel, is hosted by an elderly British couple who regard him as the son they never had. [27]
Interestingly, this recurring concern with genealogy and kinship are reflected in the extensive use he makes the "new diaspora" of intertextuality. For example, Higher Ground (1989), Caryl Phillips, creates a complex intertextual network (which includes, among others, Joseph Conrad, JM Coetzee, George Jackson, and Anne Frank) to highlight not only their relationship but also distance from the literary traditions of the Caribbean, Europe and the United States. The same ambivalence is given in The Intended, David Dabydeen, which as its title indicates, is built on multiple references to the work of Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
remember The obsession is the second major concern in the literature of the "new diaspora." Interesting to note that the two or three dozen novels he has written this generation, relatively few take place in contemporary England, and they do also include sections in other times of the Caribbean and Africa, as if the writers had to face to directly examine the past before the present. For example, Caryl Phillips took six novels before treating Contemporary England A Distant Shore, although it had already addressed the issue in his plays, and also all the novels have been at least part of this allegory.
For much of the younger generation of Caribbean writers, migration seems to have lost the appeal mimetic that remained in most novels of the previous generation. The experience of exile has acquired a symbolic, almost mythic flavor that is best done when the environment is abroad, away from potentially explosive scenario in the England of today. Foreign theaters choose an option attached in many cases on a journey into the past, can not be seen as escapism or nostalgia, or, as Jason Cowley, a "sterile archeology [28]. In contrast, seems to be the result of the need to lay siege to these writers to examine their current post-colonial situation (or even neo-colonial) from a privileged position for its symbolic significance. He explains Fred D'Aguiar in reference to the Afro-British poetry: "Even when it seems that is completely unrelated issues, it is often a didactic allegory about life in Britain" [29]. Similarly, D'Aguiar suggests that a novel can "deal with contemporary issues through past events" [30]. Therefore, his narrative and that of his generation should be studied from this perspective.
As part of the search for a new aesthetic of exile Caribbean caught between old and new, past and present, home and host country, exploring the past gives way to many novels whose ambition is to discover the hidden complexities of history not only of Caribbean societies but also in Britain. It is worth mentioning two works by David Dabydeen, The Counting House (1997), which deals with the arrival of Indian workers to Guiana in the nineteenth century, and A Harlot's Progress (1999), that, as the title suggests, it retrieves the characters in a series of drawings of the eighteenth century painter Hogarth, from among which Mungo, who has the exploitation of the colonial metropolis as the prostitute of the title.
Other similar texts are The Longest Memory (1994) and The Sea of Ghosts (1997), both of Fred Daguia, the second of which it is a story that tells the story of Zong a century slave ship XVIII, whose captain threw overboard more than a hundred slaves to claim the insurance money, an event immortalized by the painter Turner one of his paintings. Finally, Cambridge (1991), Caryl Phillips's novel is about the most sensitive to violence and the intricate relations century Caribbean plantation XIX, while in Crossing the River (1993) the author covers the 250 years of the African diaspora. Unfortunately
no time to discuss these novels in detail, so I decided to focus on one of the most representative, the first novel by Fred D'Aguiar, The Longest Memory. The book offers a reconstruction of the past is not revenge but rather a way to better understand and to report their prejudices. Far from withdrawing from this, the novel begins with the promising premise that "the future is that past slope occur "[31]. History works here as a clear starting point and not as an end in itself. Located in a Virginia plantation in the early nineteenth century, the longest memory revolves around the figure Whitechapel, an old and obedient slave that inadvertently causes the death of their runaway son, Chapel, to reveal his love of flight direction. Around this main event, the work builds the evidence of his many characters: Mr . Whitechapel, a slave liberal, his foreman Sanders Senior, escaped slave's real father, the owner's daughter Lydia, who taught reading and writing Chapel, the Chapel itself, slave and poet, the employee of a newspaper local and Junior Sanders, the son of the foreman, who ends up killing his brother with a whip.
stylistic techniques used in memory longer (and also adopted in other novels mentioned by Dabydeen and Phillips) allow us to observe innovations in the narrative of the "new diaspora." On the one hand, kaleidoscopic treatment is the formal vehicle revisionist intent. Upon discovering the hidden complexities of the plantocracy, thus subverting a system efficiently, such as racism and essentialism today, are based to survive in a dichotomous and simplistic logic, thus rejecting the ambiguity as a "sign of weakness" [32]. And yet, while successfully avoiding the binary, the novel also avoids the easy self-indulgence to suggest that the "tangled skein" created by slavery, "and can not be undone, only understand" [33]
In addition, the polyphonic structure of memory longer, like other historical novels mentioned above, affects the compassion for the dispossessed and the victims, whatever their race or origin, as if exile have deleted the specific responsibilities for past suffering, leaving only pain loss. This new feeling reflected in the words of a character in the novel by Lawrence Scott Witchbroom, which shares many features of the "new diaspora", "My pain is like yours, but the boundaries between them are fuzzy" [ 34]. As the beurs, that is, the second generation North African immigrants in Europe, the new diaspora "is identified with the oppressed groups in many parts of the world" [35]. The colonial system may be officially over, but remains a larger order of oppression, whether economic or patriarchal, to which these authors are sensitive because of their origins. For example, there is a growing concern both among writers and the writers, the situation of women as "other" and excluded person to be seen in the treatment of more domestic issues such as relationships between men and women or the generation gap. This change in sensitivity seeks to bring people silenced, or, as expressed by Carole Boyce Davies, "people disregarded in the narrative of history" [36].
Of the other novels I have been mentioning, perhaps Caryl Phillips are best exemplify this "empathy" with "others." This shows in his sensitive recreation of the female voices, treatment sympathetic but never sentimental marginal characters, both black and white, and especially, his interest in the Jewish experience, reflected admirably in The Nature of Blood (1997). It would take at least another conference to convey the originality and maturity Phillips diasporic vision, expressed in Crossing the river by a "chorus of many voices" of all children in a global diaspora who have left their homeland forever yet somehow have managed to be part of a community, with all the pain and all the love that this experience can become involved. Suffice it to say here that Phillips's vision is rooted in the experience of exile Caribbean to suggest a cultural concept of the universal, away from the traditional model because it offers a native model instead of Euro-centric. It is important to note that its contribution to the English novel, like the rest of the generation is not limited to the narrative techniques and the topics described in this talk, but above all, this is one of the new meanings and values challenge the Anglo-Saxon myth of homogeneity and gradually lead to a redefinition of British identity that includes diversity and therefore excluded people. As Phillips himself explains in his introduction to Extravagant Strangers, an anthology devoted to authors born outside Britain but as part of its literary tradition:
"Britain has developed a vision of itself as a homogeneous nation both culturally and ethnically, and this made it difficult for some Brits really feel we are entitled to participate fully in narrative of British life "[37].
His own literature and the rest of the Anglo-Caribbean writers should be regarded as an exponent of a durable and vibrant British heterogeneity has been slow to be recognized.
In conclusion, I would like to recap some the characteristics of the "New Diaspora" and emphasize once again its originality. The themes emblematic of his vision, like the past, family, or the construction of an identity, have always been key elements of Caribbean literary fabric. But what distinguishes the new generation of its predecessors is a 'changing identity "[38], a difference of nuance and emphasis rather than new interests. David Dabydeen and Nana Wilson-Tagore reminds us that the draft of the first generation of Caribbean artists in Britain was based largely on the desire to give voice to a specific identity that fought against colonization dehumanizing:
I, the writer / A colonies felt the need and obligation to represent the colonial societies, to reveal the humanity of people with a British company maliciously ignorant of that humanity. The most urgent task was to address and convince the British public human values existing in black communities "[39].
The" weight of revelation "and does not affect the second generation, they have with a readership achieved by its predecessors. [40] have been away from the idea of the writers of the second generation to be "missionaries in the First World" [41], although, as Phillips lamented, "the missionary attitude" the idea that he or the writer / color to be white people explain how black people, dominates the thinking of some publishers and many critics "[42]. While still writing for a predominantly Western audience," New Diaspora "feel more confident about their own sense of identity, even if it is multiple or fluctuating. Free from" Caliban complex [43], ie, the colonial inferiority complex that affected much of the previous generation This new group now faces the condition of Othello, that is, Westernized abroad, which is one of the leading figures of Phillips's novel, The Nature of Blood. Its writers have become an affirmation of the right to belong to British society and an embargo on a story too often silenced and partially represented.
perceptible change in the way of writing of the New Diaspora into a Catholic perspective, that is, more open and universal, is maintained by an interaction between personal and collective, a pair of concepts in fact, that constitute the condition of exile and cause a tension that keeps the creativity alive. The first exile has led to fragmentation resulting from a confrontation with herself, followed by an attempt to heal the disintegration using a frame of reference wider political and historical that often goes beyond the Caribbean condition to include the world in general.
As I tried to show, what characterizes The New Diaspora is an increasing emphasis on the individual, perhaps imagined autobiographical trend in the outstanding but boring novel Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival, which concludes with the idea that history is a much more personal that can reside in the heart "[44]. As Margaret Joseph says, this growing interest in the individual as opposed to the group also prevalent among contemporary Caribbean writers outside of Britain.
For Lamming and Selvon (and other writers of the West Indies in the 50 and 60) Caliban was the oppressed inhabitants of the islands colonized the heir to "off" of a traumatic past. A focus change is evident in the young Caribbean writers such as Earl Lovelace, Erna Brodber and Jamaica Kincaid, who has changed his concerns about other businesses ... These writers have achieved a sense of self and are interested in the individual by own good. "
As
counterweight to this subjectivity and sociological exploration of alleged suffering, how to write for The New Diaspora has changed simultaneously with a universal memory, not only colonial history, to explain, but also to examine and review the past. With the exception of Joan Riley, who said "as a writer, I am the sole responsibility of myself and my conscience" [46], the other writers have commented on a sense of collective responsibility not only of his "tribe" but also the human race in general resulting in a complex rede of connections that go beyond the Caribbean and Britain.
However, as noted by Bruce King, Caribbean literature, especially the latest, must be considered "work to work.
" The broad generalizations do not take us too far, since incorporate themselves, and theories that are based, as they claim to investigate themselves "[47].
Thus, it is necessary to examine individually all the writers I have mentioned too quickly here and delve into the complexities of experience Caribbean exile.
------
[1] Dabydeen and Wilson-Tagoe, A Reader's Guide, p. 83.
[1] Caryl Phillips, 'Living and Writing in the Caribbean : An Experiment', Kunapipi, 11. 2 (1989), 44-50 (p. 47). This article was also published in Us/Them, ed. by Collier, pp. 219-23 (p. 221). Phillips expresses a similar rejection of the role of missionary for his generation in 'The European Tribe', in The European Tribe (1987; London : Faber & Faber, 1988), pp. 119-29 (p. 129).
[1] Margaret Paul Joseph, Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction (New York/London: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 123.
[1] V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival (London: Penguin, 1987), p. 318.
[1] Margaret Paul Joseph, Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction (New York / London: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 114.
[1] Joan Riley, "Writing Reality in a Hostile Environment ', in Us / Them, ed. by Gordon Collier (Amsterdam / Atlanta: Rodopi, 1992), pp. 213-18 (p. 214).
[1] Bruce King, 'Caribbean Conundrum', Transition, 62 (1993), pp. 140-57 (p. 156).
[1] This article is a text of a reading obtained from the University of Huelva in Spain in March 2004.
[2] Linton Kwesi Johnson, 'Voices in Voices of Life and Death - (London: Editorial TRJ 1974), p. 23.
[3] John Solomos quoted it verbatim in the work of Peter Fryer, "Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain "(London: Pluto Ed. 1984), p. 399.
[4] David Dabydeen," On Not Being Milton: Nigger Talk in England Today ", in Tibisiri: Caribbean Writers and Critics, edited by Maggie Butcher (Sydney / Mundelstrup: Dangaroo, 1989), pp. 121-35 (p. 133)
[5] George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile (1960, London: Aliison & Busby, 1984) p. 214
[6] Albert Gerard, "Problems of literary history of the Caribbean world," Journal of Comparative Literature 245.1 (1988), pp.
45-56 [7] Caryl Phillips, "The legacy of Lamming and Selvon "Wasafiri, 29 (Spring 1999), pp. 34-36 (p. 36).
[8] Fred D'Aguiar, "Against the black British literature, in Tibisiri Caribbean Writers and Critics, edited by Maggie Butcher pp. 106-14. Some of the items listed here have also been raised by Bénédicte Ledent, "Africa in the Anglophone diaspora novel" 'Critique, 711-712 (August-September 2006), pp. 739-750.
[9] Beryl Gilroy, Boy-Sandwich (London: Heinemann, 1989).
[10] This applies mainly to the Afro-Caribbean writers. Michelle Cliff, a Jamaican writer, identification with African-American tradition is less direct but not impossible. In this regard, see Carole Boyce Davies, "Black Women, written and Identity: Migration of the subject" (London / New York: Routledge, 1994), p.
123 [11] See "Jamaica Kincaid: From Antigua to America," in Frontiers of Caribbean Literature in English, ed. by Frank Birbalsingh (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 138-51 (p. 142)
[12] Linton Kwesi Johnson, My Revalueshanary Fren: Selected Poems (London: Penguin, 2002)
[13] Johnson, My Revalueshanary Fren, pp.
39-41 [14] Norman Smith, Bad Friday (Birmingham: Trinity Arts Association, 1982. Also published by New Beacon, London, 1985), David Simon, Railton Blues (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1983
[15] See Dennis Ferdinand, Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (London: Gollancz, 1988) investigating this phenomenon.
[16] It is interesting to note that David Simon Railton dedicated to Bob Marley
[17] Joan Riley, The Unbelonging (London: The Women's Press, 1985), p. 142.
[18] is one of the few novels with Caryl Phillips's The Final Passage (1985), which provides an overview of women in Caribbean migration to UK.
[19] The major contemporary Caribbean writers such as Erna Brodber, Michelle Cliff, and Dionne Brand outside the British-Caribbean tradition.
[20] A part of Margery Fee, 'Resistance and Complicity in David Dabydeen's "The Intended", "ARIEL 24.1 January 1993, see Mario Relich,' Literary Subversion in David Dabydeen's The Intended ', Journal of West Indian Literature, 6.1 (July 1993), pp. 45-57 (p. 46) and Benita Parry, 'David Dabydeen's The Intended', Kunapipi, 13.3 (1991), pp. 85-90 (p. 85).
[21] What is the case to some extent on some heroines in fiction by Caryl Phillips. Leial in The Final Passage is cared for by a health auxiliary, while Irina and Eva leave their family in Poland and Germany to land in the care of an elderly woman and the National Health Corps.
[22] Milan Kundera The Art of the Novel, trans. by Linda Asher (1986; London: Faber & Faber, 1988), p. 109
[23] Riley, The Unbelonging, p. 29.
[24] David , The Intended (London: Martin & Secker, 1991), p. 79
[25] Dabydeen, The Intended, p.81
[26] Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River (London: Bloomsbury, 1993)
[27] Caryl Phillips, A Distant Shore (London: Secker & Warburg, 2003), p. 287
[28] Jason Cowley, 'Fictional Failure', Prospect, December 1997, pp. 26-29
[29] Fred D'Aguiar, 'Introduction', The New British Poetry, ed. by Gillian Allnutt et al. (London: Paladin, 1988), p. 3
[30] Christina Koning, “El pasado. Otro país”, Independent on Sunday, 23 July 1995, p. 32
[31] Fred D'Aguiar, The Longest Memory (London: Chatto & Windus, 1994), p. 1
[32] D'Aguiar, The Longest Memory, p. 133.
[33] D'Aguiar, The Longest Memory, p. 137.
[34] Lawrence Scott, Witchbroom (London: Heinemann, 1992), p.
96 [35] Alec G. Hargreaves, "Resistance and Identity in Beur stories" Modern Fiction Studies, 35.1 (Spring 1989), 87-102 (p. 91) Beur writers share other characteristics with those of The New Diaspora, such as its predilection for Bildungsroman and multiple perspectives.
[36] Carol Boyce Davies, Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (London / New York: Routledge, 1994), p.
108 [37] Caryl Phillips, Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (London: Faber & Faber, 1997), p. xiii
[38] I owe this formulation of a continuum differently focused Deborah E. McDowell, 'The Changing Same': Black Women's Literature, Criticism, and Theory (Bloomington / Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995) who in turn borrowed it from Leroi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka), 'The Changing Same (R & B and New Black Music) "in The Black Aesthetic, ed. by Addison Gayle, Jr. (New York: Anchor / Doubleday, 1971), pp. 112-25
[39] David Dabydeen and Nana Wilson-Tagoe, "A guide for readers of literature in the British West Indies and black" (Sydney / Mundelstrup: Dangaroo, 1987), p. 83);
[40] Frank Birbalsingh, "An Interview with Fred D'Aguiar," Ariel 24.1 (January 1993), pp. 133-45 (p. 141)
[41] Dabydeen and Wilson-Tagoe, A Readers Guide, p.
83 [42] Caryl Phillips, "Living and writing in the Caribbean: an experiment", Kunapipi, 11. 2 (1989), 44-50 (p. 47). This article was published in the Us / Them, ed. by Collier, pp. 219-23 (p. 221). Phillips expressed a similar rejection of the role of missionaries for their generation in the "European Tribe (1987, London: Faber & Faber, 1988), pp. 119-29 (p. 129).
[43] Margaret Paul Joseph, "Caliban in Exile: The outsider in Caribbean fiction" (New York / London: Greenwood Press, 1992), p.
123 [44]. S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival (London: Penguin, 1987), p.
318 [45] Margaret Paul Joseph, "Caliban in Exile: The outsider in Caribbean fiction" (New York / London: Greenwood Press, 1992), p.
114 [46] Joan Riley, "actually written in a hostile environment, in Us / Them, ed. by Gordon Collier (Amsterdam / Atlanta: Rodopi, 1992), pp. 213-18 (p. 214)
[47] Bruce King, 'Caribbean Conundrum', Transition, 62 (1993), pp. 140-57 (p. 156)
...
Curran * : working in a precarious situation, working in jobs with low qualifications. -----
Video: Caryl Phillips with students from the University of Cincinnati (English):
http://streaming.uc.edu/student_affairs/osp_20040504. php
Go ----- cover of Digital Veins:
http://vetasdigital.blogspot.com
encourage our readers to react to this article and comment on their assessment of it. Thank you very much.
0 comments:
Post a Comment