Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.[1]
The literature of Caribbean is exceptional, both in language and subject. Through themes of innocence, exile and return to motherland, resistance and endurance, engagement and alienation, self determination, Caribbean literature provides a powerful platform for Post-Colonial studies and to Caribbean literatures in importance the context of all literature.
"Caribbean literature" vs. "West Indian literature"
As scholarship expands, there is debate about the correct term to use for literature that comes from the region. Both terms are often used interchangeably despite having different origins and referring to slightly different groups of people. Since so much of Caribbean identity is linked to "insidious racism" and "the justification of slave labor", it is usual to refer to the author of the piece for their identity preference.[2]
West Indian is defined as coming from the "West Indies", which includes "the islands of the Caribbean" and was "used first [for] indigenous population, and subsequently both [for] settlers of European origin and of people of African origin brought to the area as slaves." West Indian can also refer to things that can be "traced back" to the West Indies but the creators "live elsewhere".[3] West Indian "was a term coined by colonising European powers."[4] Caribbean, on the other hand, is defined as "of the Caribbean...its people, and their cultures" only.[5]
Further issues include language classifications like Creole Caribbean literature and Anglophone Caribbean literature. Different languages also make different references to the texts. While there is no terminology that is obsolete, the issue requires acknowledgement, since it is the literature of historically oppressed people.[2] The Spanish Caribbean islands include Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Panama as well as the islands of Venezuela and the Caribbean coast of Colombia.[6]
Development of the concept of West Indian literature
The term "West Indies" first began to achieve wide currency in the 1950s, when writers such as Samuel Selvon, John Hearne, Edgar Mittelholzer, V. S. Naipaul, Andrew Salkey, and George Lamming began to be published in the United Kingdom.[7] A sense of a single literature developing across the islands was also encouraged in the 1940s by the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices, which featured stories and poems written by West Indian authors, recorded in London under the direction of founding producer Una Marson and later Henry Swanzy, and broadcast back to the islands.[8] Magazines such as Kyk-Over-Al in Guyana, Bim in Barbados, and Focus in Jamaica, which published work by writers from across the region, also encouraged links and helped build an audience.[9]
Many—perhaps most—West Indian writers have found it necessary to leave their home territories and base themselves in the United Kingdom, the United States, or Canada in order to make a living from their work—in some cases spending the greater parts of their careers away from the territories of their birth. Critics in their adopted territories might argue that, for instance, V. S. Naipaul ought to be considered a British writer instead of a Trinidadian writer, or Jamaica Kincaid and Paule Marshall American writers, but most West Indian readers and critics still consider these writers "West Indian".
West Indian literature ranges over subjects and themes as wide as those of any other "national" literature, but in general many West Indian writers share a special concern with questions of identity, ethnicity, and language that rise out of the Caribbean historical experience.
One unique and pervasive characteristic of Caribbean literature is the use of "dialect" forms of the national language, often termed creole. The various local variations in the language adopted from the colonial powers such as Britain, Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands, have been modified over the years within each country and each has developed a blend that is unique to their country. Many Caribbean authors in their writing switch liberally between the local variation—now commonly termed nation language—and the standard form of the language.[10] Two West Indian writers have won the Nobel Prize for literature: Derek Walcott (1992), born in St. Lucia, resident mostly in Trinidad during the 1960s and '70s, and partly in the United States since then; and V. S. Naipaul (2001), born in Trinidad and resident in the United Kingdom since 1950. (Saint-John Perse, who won the Nobel Prize in 1960, was born in the French territory of Guadeloupe.)
Caribbean lands and seas have been depicted as a paradise on earth by foreign artists and writers.[11] Scholars and writers in Postcolonial Studies have researched and published on this cultural phenomenon of an empty island, and the racist implications of a fantasy void of local people and their cultures.[12][13] Caribbean classic novels such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) have inspired films, stories, and poems by other artists who seek to decolonize the relationship of people and landscapes.[11][14]
Caribbean novelists imbue island landscape with bustling life of the locals and migrants. The migration of Caribbean workers to the Panama Canal is often used as a narrative foundation. Maryse Condé’s novel Tree of Life (1992) discusses the involvement of family ties and how people seek to improve their lot in life by working to build the Panama Canal.[15] Another contemporary classic about migrant cultures is Ramabai Espinet’s novel The Swinging Bridge (2003), which explores trauma of displacement, Indian indentureship, and the phenomena of invisibility relating to women.[16]
Caribbean stories and poems are ripe with references to storms, hurricanes, and natural disasters.[17] Derek Walcott's wrote "The Sea is History," and dramatized the impact of tropical storms and hurricanes on the locals.[18]
Caribbean writing deploys agricultural symbolism to represent the complexities of colonial rule and the intrinsic values of the lands. Native fruits and vegetables appear in colonized and decolonizing discourse. Derek Walcott describes the complications of colonialism using local fruit metaphors, such as star apples, in his poetry to connote the complexity of acidity and the sweetness.[19][20]Giannina Braschi's postcolonial work United States of Banana imagines a political and economic deal between China and Puerto Rico as the exchange of a bowl of rice for a bowl of beans, and a Lychee for a Quenepa.[21]
Since the mid-1970s, Caribbean poetry has gained increasing visibility with the publication in Britain and North America of several anthologies. Over the decades the canon has shifted and expanded, drawing both on oral and literary traditions and including more women poets and politically charged works. Caribbean writers, performance poets, newspaper poets, singer-songwriters have created a popular art form, a poetry heard by audiences all over the world. Caribbean oral poetry shares the vigour of the written tradition.
Common themes include: exile and return to the motherland; the relationship of language to nation; colonialism and postcolonialism; self-determination and liberty; racial identity.
Women writers
There is great abundance of talent, styles, and subjects covered by Caribbean women writers spanning the genres of poetry, theater, short stories, essays, and novels. There is also a burgeoning field of scholarship on how women authors address women's lives under dictatorships, eroticism and the body, history and identity, migration, Afro Caribbean history, decolonization, revolution, queer theory, among countless other topics.
In the 20th century, epics approach subjects such racist legacies, economic terrorism, and the decolonization of Caribbean culture and politics.[24][25] Nobel prize winner Derek Walcott pens one of greatest modern epic written in the English language, Omeros (1990).[26] This epic poem is divided into seven books containing sixty-four chapters. Most of the poem is composed in a three-line form that is reminiscent of the terza rima form that Dante used for The Divine Comedy.[27] The work uses local island folklore and ancient Greek myths such as Homer' Iliad to address legacies of Greek, Roman, and American culture including racism and slavery.[28] Parts of the story occur on Walcott's native island St. Lucia, but there are also time travels to ancient Greece and Rome, as well as travels to modern day Lisbon, London, Dublin, Toronto.[29]
Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.
Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries, originating from all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. A range of literary theory has evolved around the subject. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism.
The Honourable Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB, was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
Puerto Rican literature is the body of literature produced by writers of Puerto Rican descent. It evolved from the art of oral storytelling. Written works by the indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico were originally prohibited and repressed by the Spanish colonial government.
Earl Wilbert Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. He is particularly recognized for his descriptive, dramatic fiction on Trinidadian culture: "Using Trinidadian dialect patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures." As Bernardine Evaristo notes, "Lovelace is unusual among celebrated Caribbean writers in that he has always lived in Trinidad. Most writers leave to find support for their literary endeavours elsewhere and this, arguably, shapes the literature, especially after long periods of exile. But Lovelace's fiction is deeply embedded in Trinidadian society and is written from the perspective of one whose ties to his homeland have never been broken."
Lawrence Scott FRSL is a novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad and Tobago, who divides his time between London and Port of Spain. He has also worked as a teacher of English and Drama at schools in London and in Trinidad. Scott's novels have been awarded (1998) and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and thrice nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. His stories have been much anthologised and he won the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award in 1986.
Trinidad and Tobago literature has its roots in oral storytelling among African slaves, the European literary roots of the French creoles and in the religious and folk tales of the Indian indentured immigrants. It blossomed in the 20th century with the writings of C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul and Saint Lucian-born Derek Walcott as part of the growth of West Indian literature.
Latin American poetry is the poetry written by Latin American authors. Latin American poetry is often written in Spanish, but is also composed in Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, English, and Spanglish. The unification of Indigenous and imperial cultures produced a unique and extraordinary body of literature in this region. Later with the introduction of African slaves to the new world, African traditions greatly influenced Latin American poetry. Many great works of poetry were written in the colonial and pre-colonial time periods, but it was in the 1960s that the world began to notice the poetry of Latin America. Through the modernismo movement, and the international success of Latin American authors, poetry from this region became increasingly influential.
George William Lamming OCC was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and poet. He first won critical acclaim for In the Castle of My Skin, his 1953 debut novel. He also held academic posts, including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and lectured extensively worldwide.
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).
Caribbean poetry is vast and rapidly evolving field of poetry written by people from the Caribbean region and the diaspora.
Raymond R. Ramcharitar is a Trinidadian poet, playwright, fiction writer, historian and media and cultural critic.
The term Caribbean culture summarizes the artistic, musical, literary, culinary, political and social elements that are representative of Caribbean people all over the world.
OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, inaugurated in 2011 by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, is an annual literary award for books by Caribbean writers published in the previous year. It is the only prize in the region that is open to works of different literary genres by writers of Caribbean birth or citizenship.
Kris Rampersad is a writer, researcher, lecturer, journalist, publisher, activist and advocate from Trinidad and Tobago.
Caribbean Voices was a radio programme broadcast by the BBC World Service from Bush House in London, England, between 1943 and 1958. It is considered "the programme in which West Indian literary talents first found their voice, in the early 1950s." Caribbean Voices nurtured many writers who went on to wider acclaim, including Samuel Selvon, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, John Figueroa, Andrew Salkey, Michael Anthony, Edgar Mittelholzer, Sylvia Wynter, and others.
Henry Swanzy was an Anglo-Irish radio producer in Britain's BBC General Overseas Service who is best known for his role in promoting West Indian literature particularly through the programme Caribbean Voices, where in 1946 he took over from Una Marson, the programme's first producer. Swanzy introduced unpublished writers and continued the magazine programme "with energy, critical insight and generosity". It is widely acknowledged that "his influence on the development of Caribbean literature has been tremendous".
Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) is a postmodern novel in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi. The cross-genre work is a structural hybrid of poetry, political philosophy, musical, manifesto, treatise, memoir, and drama. The work addresses tensions between Anglo-American and Hispanic-American cultures in the United States.
Latino literature is literature written by people of Latin American ancestry, often but not always in English, most notably by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Dominican Americans, many of whom were born in the United States. The origin of the term "Latino literature" dates back to the 1960s, during the Chicano Movement, which was a social and political movement by Mexican Americans seeking equal rights and representation. At the time, the term "Chicano literature" was used to describe the work of Mexican-American writers. As the movement expanded, the term "Latino" came into use to encompass writers of various Latin American backgrounds, including Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and others.
Empire of Dreams is a postmodern poetry epic by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi, who is considered "one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin American literature today".
References
↑ Dash, J. Michael (1998). The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
↑ Ramchand, Kenneth. The West Indian Novel and Its Background. London: Faber, 1970.
↑ Griffith, Glyne (September 2001). "Deconstructing Nationalisms: Henry Swanzy, Caribbean Voices and the Development of West Indian Literature". Small Axe. 5 (2): 1–20. doi:10.1353/smx.2001.0018. S2CID146195981.
↑ Garcia, Cristina. "'The 'Rich Cadence' of Carribean [sic] Life as Conveyed by Novelist". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 24 September 2020. Tree of Life is also a grand account of the Caribbean, the politics of race and immigration, and the intricate, often sordid legacy of colonialism... Albert Louis seeks his fortune helping the Americans dig the Panama Canal.
1 2 3 Paravisni-Gebert, Lizabeth (2000). "Caribbean Literature in Spanish," The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.671–680. ISBN9781139054638.
↑ Ostriker, Alicia (1994). Empire of Dreams. O'Dwyer, Tess. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN0-300-05795-4. OCLC29703241. Poetry here dresses itself in the garb of dramatic monologue, love letter, TV commercial, diary excerpt, movie criticism, celebrity confession, literary theory, bastinado, manifesto
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