Postcolonial literature

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Post-colonial literature

• Velma Pollards
• My Mother

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The Caribbean
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Jamaicas history

• 1655 conquered by the British
• import of African slaves
• ? today about 95 are of African descent

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Jamaicas history

• 1850 modern-day migration began as a
  job-hunting strategy
• 1962 Independence
• USA Emigrants first choice instead of Britain

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The author - Velma Pollard

• 1937 born in Jamaica
• is a lecturer at the Department of Education
• special academic interest teaching language in a
  creole-speaking environment, language in
  Caribbean literature

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Narrative technique

• first-person narrator
• a girl tells the story from her point of view.
• ? Velma Pollard identification
• ? autobiographical?

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Content - My Mother (1989)
financial reasons
JAMAICA
NEW YORK
? mother
? girl grandmother
years later
death
funeral
final understanding
visit
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Setting (atmosphere)

• JAMAICA
• the girls home

• NEW YORK
• alien city

• reader gets positive impressions

• negative impressions
• ? heartless, cold, scary

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Setting (pictures)
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Characters - Girl

• Her opinion on New York
• ? dingy stores and tiny disorganised offices
• ? Everybody was running and everybody looked
  frightened.
• ? But you could see that all this had become
  natural.

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Characters - Girl

• mother stranger
• no understanding for her mothers reasons
• ? just realises that shes gone
• ? disappointment when her mother doesnt come
  home for vacation
• irritation
• ? the guide-lines at home were less clear

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Characters - Girl

• shes proud of her mothers gifts
• feelings of guilt after her mothers death
• ? the last letter should have shown more
  gratitude than the others
• her dead mother American
• ? The woman in the coffin was not my mother
• after her visit in NY better understanding

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Characters - Mother

• left for financial reasons
• important proper language
• ? she couldnt offer guide-lines either - only
  vague hints like the necessity for me to speak
  properly

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Characters - Grandmother

• important gratitude
• ? ... if her daughters sacrifice was not to
  be meaningless
• is overcharged with the situation

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Characters - Woman

• assumption the mother was in England to earn
  money
• shes been there herself and doesnt have a good
  opinion of Britain
• ? An you sih des big finneral shi have? She
  wouldnt have get it in Englan you know. Since
  one oclock she woulda gaan an if they cremate
  ar, while we drinking a cuppa tea, she bunnin.

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Language - Jamaican Creole

• based on English with influences from several
  West African languages
• not bad English
• indicator for a persons background and his
  intentions

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Language - Jamaican Creole

• ? woman at the funeral
• She brags by using British expressions (cuppa
  tea) in the usual Jamaican Creole to show off
  her great experience in life.
• ? Britain important for showing
  sophistication.

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Analysis British influence

• historical reasons ? emigration for
  survival
• for those who left their home, life changed
  dramatically
• ?The mother in the story has to leave her family
  

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Analysis British influence

• ? She has to give up her identity
• Cheap, curly wigs hugged their temples
  protecting their black youthfulness and hiding
  their kinky strands.
• ? She becomes American
• The woman in the purple dress and black shoes
  (...), the highly powdered face, framed by jet
  black curls ....

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Analysis British influence

• Consequences for the girl
• ? she never gets to know her mother but realises
  her difficult life when she visits NY
• I was glad I was a guest in the great USA and a
  guest didnt need a wig.
• ? she couldnt mourn at her mothers funeral but
  in NY she weeps for her

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Analysis British influence

• When all their great wreaths with purple
  American ribbons had long faded ...

• ... my maiden-hair fern started to grow.

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Analysis British influence

• The British Empire vanished

• ...but Jamaica still exists!