Image of the Caribbean

1
Image of the Caribbean

• Jan van de Straets engraving America--the new
  world as a woman

2
On Diaspora

• diasporic cultural forms can never, in
  practice, be exclusively nationalist. They are
  deployed in transnational networks built from
  multiple attachments, and they encode practices
  of accommodation with, as well as resistance to,
  host countries and their norms.
  --James Clifford

3
Diasporic Cultures in the Caribbean

• The Caribbean is a region in which the
  aboriginal communities Amerindians-- Arawaks,
  Caribs, etc. were virtually exterminated, and
  replaced by peoples from Africa, Asia and
  Europe. --Louis James
• names West Indies (Anglophone) / the Antilles
  (Francophone) / the Caribbean

4
Caribbean Literature--Chronology 1

• 1492-96 Columbuss discovery of the West Indies
• 1808 Britain and USA abolished slave trade
• 1838 complete abolition of slavery in British
  colonies
• 1845 East Indian indentured laborers in Trinidad
  Chinese indenture in French colonies
• 1950 colonization in reverse West Indian
  migration to England

5
Colonization in Reverse

• What a joyful news, Miss Mattie
• Ah feel like me heart gwine burs--
• Jamaica people colonizin
• Englan in reverse
• By de hundred, by de tousan
• From country an from town,
• By de ship-load, by the plane-load,
• Jamaica is Englan boun.

6

• Dem a pout out a Jamaica
• Everybody future plan
• Is fi get a big-time job
• An settle in de motherlan
• What a islan! What a people!
• Man an woman, ole and young
• Jussa pack dem bag an baggage
• An tun history upside dung!
• --Louis Bennett

7
Trickster Tradition

• Anancy stories (spider)from West Africathe
  experience of the Middle Passage in animal forms
  (42)
• The Monkey Businessthe monkey as a
  gentleman-like animala symbol of the
  (pseudo-)colonizerundressing unmasking the
  (pseudo-)colonizer
• Functions of a tricksterfor survival and revenge

8
Caribbean Literature--Chronology 2

• 1958-62 The Federation of the West Indies
• 1962 independence for Jamaica, Trinidad and
  Tobago restrictions imposed on West Indian
  immigration to Britain
• 1966 independence for Barbados and Guyana

9
Caribbean Literature--Overview 1

• Edward Kamau Brathwaite--Little Tradition (the
  culture of ordinary people) vs Great
  Tradition--the writer functions in, from, for
  his own society (cultural nationalism)
• V.S. Naipaul voluntary exile writers
  self-cultivation to get out of West Indies, a
  destitute, sterile void

10
Caribbean Literature--Overview 2

• New Day--London West Indies
• importance of West Indian poetry since
  Independence--openness to pop culture and esp. to
  music (reggae and calypso) appeal of public
  performance acceptance of social responsibility
  --poetry has a function (poetry vs
  fiction as a middle-class genre)
• amateur poetic practice in the WI

11
Caribbean Womens WritingsMajor Themes

• female Bildungsroman stories of growth and
  development--national allegory the personal as
  the political
• racial and class issues and the process of
  socialization
• Mother Country vs mother land
• the process of education and mother-daughter
  relationship--usually alienation
• the grandmother as the positive figure

12
Major Themes 2

• female sexualities
• stereotyping
• male-female relationship--the abuse and
  objectification of women in the Caribbean society
• importance of human resources, especially
  sisterhood
• the close connection of women and nature (the
  land)

13
Working Miracles Womens Lives

• Single mothers as breadwinners (1/2 of the
  Caribbean households are headed by women The
  Dancehall Queen)absent father (mother)child-shif
  ting (adoptionsBright Thursdays adopting to
  fill in an empty space for the grandparents 210)
• Outside childrenchildren born out of a fathers
  stable residential unionbut legitimacy is not an
  issue
• Olive Senior, Working Miracles Womens Lives in
  the English-Speaking Caribbean (Chapter 1)

14
Bright Thursdays--Genealogy

• Dolphie Watson Miss Christie
• Mina Bertram Myrtle Johnstone
• (white) (brown)
  (dark)
• Laura 2 sons (2
  fathers)
• (Bertrams Mistake Bertrams stray shot)
• A childs perspectivea gradual process of
  alienation and otheringLauras burdens in life
  (194, 210, 206)

15
Color System in the Caribbean Society

• Dying to raise their color all of them (199)
• The color triangle white
• brown
• dark

16
Narrative TechniquesSpace

• Spatial imageryto carry out the sense of
  displacementtransported from mothers house to
  fathersout of place or no space (photos on the
  bureau195)fear of open space, empty space (the
  dinning table 196 fathers house
  204-05)enclosures (hemmed in 203, blue bowl
  204)desire for a protective space (mothers
  house 203) or safe space (digging potatoes 207)
• What are the meanings of the mirror in the story?

17
Narrative TechniquesContrasts

• Inside/outside (203)sense of insecuritysearching
  for a safe space
• Meal mothers housenatural
• grandmothersritual (the Table, Table
  Manners, the Meal 195-96)
• Can you think of other examples of contrasts in
  the story?

18
Bright ThursdayTitle and Ending

• What is the meaning of the title?
• dreaming about being rescued by her father will
  bring nothing but bright Thursdays (208)
• A fairy tale created by her motherMyrtle causes
  her displacement, a life of solitude, and
  silence (205)
• A story of disillusionmentthe breaking up of her
  hope and dreamsbloody bastard (211)
• What do you think about the ending?