West Indian Literature
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Recent papers in West Indian Literature
Whatever the point of view of a particular writer, the overriding concern of the West Indian novelist or poet has been history and its oppression. West Indian literature has moved excitingly and rapidly in the last forty years, obsessed... more
This paper investigates the various ways in which Errol John's play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl dramatizes Caribbean social realism through the use of sound. It discusses how commonplace sounds can be quintessential and linked to the time... more
West-Indian writers and radicals played a seminal role during the Harlem Renaissance. They contributed significantly to the struggle for Black equality and identity during this period.
The language of love in John Agard’s English Girl Eats Her First Mango explores the delicate areas and ideas of history, culture, sin and love. The use of language in the poem provides the reader with explicit imagery of sin, love and... more
A review of a novel where the heroine turns her back on a life of comfort in North America to spiritually embrace the heritage of her Neg Mawon ancestry.
In every story one must understand that, "there is always the other side, always."(pg77) if the intention is to achieve a sense of equity in judging different characters and their actions.
A study of the first two poems in Malika Booker's Pepper Seed.
Family relationships are central to the way Caribbean writers define their identities. This is particularly the case of Caryl Phillips. Most of his fiction presents the family as a site of disruption, but also includes examples of... more
An early account of anti-slavery poetics and one of its most common tropes. Also an early argument for thinking about nonhumans (“objects”).
The persecution of persons wearing dread locks for primarily political purposes stands as a permanent tear on the visage of a former British West-Indian colony.
Chapter 1 of the book "Caricom Options: Towards Full Integration Into the World Economy" is presented. It explores the history of the civilization in the Caribbean region as well as the important events that shaped its culture. The book... more
The uncapitalized Englishes, as construed by Bill Ashcroft, of Caribbean-British (performance) poetry have been studied at length by various scholars: from Kamau Brathwaite’s encompassing notion of ‘nation language’ to Velma Pollard’s... more
An introduction to Mr Biswas, which discusses the influences of H.G. Wells's The History of Mr Polly and Naipaul's father Seepersad's fiction, the image of the house and the novel's response to Hinduism. An essay developed from an... more
The Cuban Revolution trip in 1978 undertaken by student leader Gabriel Christian is at the centerpiece of this well-documented memoir of the Caribbean independence movement by Gabriel Christian, who participated in it as a young student... more
Campbell argues that Naipaul writes through what she terms as a "refinement of rage." Naipaul creates his fiction and nonfiction under a backdrop of powerful, negative emotions such as anger, outrage and revulsion.
This book presents the phenomenon of Afro-Caribbean poetry in English from Jamaican classic dub poetry of the 1970s to (Black) British post-dub verse of the 2000s. It showcases the literary continuum, as represented by Jamaican,... more
Since “the etymology of diaspora suggests both routes (scattering) and roots (sowing)” (Procter 2003: 14), Afro-Caribbean and Black British dub poets, as represented by Jamaicanborn Linton Kwesi Johnson, take heed of their artistic and... more
Earl Lovelace’s fiction can be said to, ultimately, work as a force to give validity to the Creole culture created out of the coming together of many worlds in the Caribbean. As in his novel The Dragon... more
Not unlike other literatures, Anglophone Caribbean writings frequently and syncretically explore the topos of death. The scope of West Indian texts ranges, to name just a few, from the depiction of folk funeral rituals, such as the... more
When Marlon James won Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction in October, it came as a surprise to many — including the 44-year-old, out gay Jamaican author. James won for “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” a long, violent,... more
IN the West Indies a concern with the slave past and the disorienting effects of colonialism on contemporary man's individuality underlies works as different in tone and technique as V.S. Naipaul's novels and Derek Walcott's poems. This... more
West Indians played a seminal role in the Harlem Renaissance. Writers and radicals helped in the struggle for equality and identity.
Embracing the Other: Addressing Xenophobia in the New English Literatures. Ed. Dunja M. Mohr, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. (341 pages) In the wake of addressing multiculturalism, transculturalism, racism, and ethnicity, the issue of... more
El trabajo que aquí se presenta toma como objeto de estudio la primera etapa de The West Indian Review (1934-1940), revista mensual dirigida por Esther Chapman en Kingston, Jamaica. Pese a su conservadurismo editorial, la revista emplea... more
Vidiadhar Surajprasad (VS) Naipaul was a Commonwealth citizen extraordinaire. But from the unofficial side. He showed all of us what we can be on the world stage, even if we were born in its periphery. His advice to us was what his father... more
originally a conference paper, this article was published in the Antigua & Barbuda Review of Books in Fall 2015. It explores the political thought of two figures of the Caribbean New Left (1968-1983) influenced by CLR James who... more
This paper discusses Edward Kamua Brathwaite's Masks as a poetic travelogue that features self-definition and self-reinterpretation as striking themes. Pitched against a countervailing background that sees the poetic collection as a set... more
It is clear that in 2017, 25 years after Derek Walcott received the Nobel Prize for Literature and over a decade after V.S. Naipaul’s accolade, the observation of Montserratian E. A. Markham (2001) that Caribbean authors “no longer have... more
Close readings of the first four poems of Derek Walcott's most recent collection of poems.
This article examines the ways in which Shani Mootoo and Achmat Dangor meditate on heritage and ruptures in their novels "Cereus Blooms at Night" and "Bitter Fruit". What their heroes have in common is the fact of being “bastards of... more
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Let it be noted that this paper is subjective because of the perspective that was to be argued.
Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La guaracha del Macho Camacho (Macho Camacho’s Beat) portrays Puerto Rican society as a locus torn asunder by discourses of hegemony. Over five-hundred years of Spanish and North American colonial rule have left the... more