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LITR / CRCL 5734:
Colonial & Postcolonial Literature Kasi
Hlavaty Introduction: When I was in high school, I missed the beginning of a movie I wanted to see, and I wandered in to a film called The Serpent and the Rainbow, based on a book by Wade Davis about his experiences in Haiti. At the time, I was not even aware that the island nation existed, and I was simply fascinated with Dr. Davis’s story. His depiction of the politics, the medical system (or lack thereof), the religious practices, the superstitions, and the alleged non-acceptance of anything American intrigued me. It never occurred to me that there was another side to the story – the voices of the Haitians, the real Haitians. Therefore, when I began researching post-colonial Caribbean islands, Haiti again caught my attention. Although I have chosen to look at biographical information on authors not exclusively from Haiti, much of my other research did center on it. I wanted to research some of those things that captivated me so many years ago, and see if I could learn the facts and not just the fiction. I wanted to see things from an islander’s point of view, not from one American’s interpretation of events that could have been embellished for any number of purposes. Post-colonial studies tend to spotlight the literature and issues of Africa and India, far overshadowing the research and recognition of the effect of colonialism on the scattered islands of the Caribbean. I did, however, find a nice variety of journal articles and websites discussing some of the above-mentioned areas of interest. I also found periodical articles concerning the United States attempts to “Americanize” the islands, especially Haiti. Also, after hearing so much in class about how people of the West Indies do not pay attention to race issues, I was surprised to see an article relating to racial tensions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the two nations that share the island of Hispaniola. I. Review of: Atanaski, Neda. “Edwidge Danticat.” Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color. http://voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/EdwidgeDanticat.html. 28 June 2001. Atanaski’s article really gives only the basics, but then again, Edwidge Danticat has not yet had an extremely long life or literary career. Born in 1969, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Danticat was raised by an aunt because her parents immigrated to the United States. Atanaski does not explain why the parents left without their daughter; she simply states that Danticat formed a strong bond with her aunt, who influenced her by telling stories, a Haitian practice developed because “much of the population was not literate at the time.” Danticat’s memories of Haiti are quite influential to her writings today. In addition, her Creole “has proved to be an asset in her writing of fiction, as it adds a freshness to her use of the English Language.” When she was twelve, Danticat emigrated from Haiti to the United States to live with her parents in Brooklyn, New York. Unfortunately, Atanaski gives few details of the early years in Brooklyn. She does report, however, that high school was very difficult for Danticat; she was teased because of her accent and was extremely shy. Atanaski states that Danticat remains “proud of her origin,” and found “support from her family and the Haitian community in Brooklyn” during times of personal upset. Danticat earned a bachelor’s degree in French literature and a master’s degree, “fulfill[ing] her parents’ desire that she be successful in spite of, or because, she is an immigrant.” She wrote her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, as her thesis work at Brown University. “This novel speaks of four generations of Haitian women who must overcome their poverty and powerlessness” and it includes scenes of disturbing traditions, such as “testing a daughter to confirm that she is still a virgin.” Danticat’s next published major work was a collection of short stories, entitled Krik?Krak! These stories are about a Haiti before democracy. Atanaski quotes an interview Danticat gave to a reporter for NPR regarding the stories; Danticat states that she “wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, . . . poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.” The title evolved from the Haitian storytelling tradition. The person who wanted to tell a story would say, “Krik?,” and any interested listeners would respond, “Krak!” At the end of Atanoski’s report, she included a bibliography of Danticat’s works which listed one other work published in 1998, entitled Farming of Bones; however, Atanoski does not mention the book in her report. The reason for this may be found in her works cited listings, all of which are from 1996 or earlier. II. Review of: “Derek Walcott.” Adorno.html. www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Walcott.html. 12 June 2001. No credit was given to any author(s) of this report on Derek Walcott for Emory University’s website for Post-Colonial studies. The report begins with a powerful description of Walcott, given by James Dickey; he states that Walcott is a man “posed between the blue sea and its real fish and the rockets and warheads, between a lapsed colonial culture and the industrial North, between Africa and the West, between slavery and intellectualism, between the native Caribbean tongue and the English learned from books, between the black and white of his own body, between the sound of the home ocean and the lure of European culture.” After our studies of Walcott in class, I found this quote to be absolutely perceptive of Dickey, and absolutely evident in Walcott’s poetry. The report focuses more on Walcott’s work than on his personal life, but does give the year and location of his birth: “1930 on the island of St. Lucia.” The report also states that his father died before his birth, but does not detail how this affected Walcott, except to say that he grew up in poverty. Testament to this was Walcott’s need to borrow money from his mother to publish his early poetry. In 1950, he earned a college degree, began writing plays, and moved to Trinidad where he founded the Little Carib Theatre Workshop. He wrote and worked with the theatre until 1976, when he immigrated to the United States to teach. The report then moves on to discuss Walcott’s dramatic writings, stating that they “display a passion to record Caribbean life,” and use native folk traditions and the French-English Creole language so familiar to the author and poet. His early plays, Henri Christophe, The Sea at Dauphin, and Ione mix many European traditional styles with “a new emphasis on West Indian language and customs.” One of his more mature plays, Dream on Monkey Mountain, “chronicl[es] a peasant fantasy of rejecting the white world and reclaiming an African heritage,” showing that Walcott’s plays were growing and evolving from close imitation of European styles to satire of “the bureaucratic idiom of colonialism.” After founding the theatre workshop, Walcott rewrote many of his earlier plays but devoted most of his time to the writing of poetry. “Between 1964 and 1973 he published four volumes, which continued his exploration and expansion of traditional forms, and which increasingly concerned themselves with position of the poet in the postcolonial world.” Walcott’s influences for these books of poetry are varied, but The Gulf draws literally from the ocean that physically separates Walcott from his home island, St. Lucia, showing the “breach between the poet and all he loves, between his adult consciousness and childhood memories.” The Castaway draws from Robinson Crusoe, and casts the poet in isolation from both Africa and Europe. The story of Robinson Crusoe can also be seen in Walcott’s comic play, Pantomine, in which a black hotel servant plays Crusoe, and his white boss plays Friday. The race reversal “highlights the fraught relationship that binds black to white, master to slave, colonizer to colonized.” A sense of guilty abandonment seems evident in Walcott’s poetry after his immigration to the United States. The report discusses one in particular that we also read in class, “Sea Grapes.” In the poem, “Odysseus is portrayed as a divided man, who finds himself both a husband going home, and an adulterer unable to forget his trespasses.” The themes of estrangement and division are present in almost all of his mature poetry, as well as other, darker themes, such as injustice, racism, hatred, and oppression. Walcott himself is quoted in the report as saying that people can alleviate their feelings of the guilt and shame of being a part of colonization by doing something positive with that reality. Walcott’s positive contribution to a uniquely Caribbean form of drama was affirmed when he was named Nobel laureate in 1992. Since that time, Walcott has continued writing, expanding his craft by writing increasingly ambitious epic poems in which he “continues to explore the complex legacy of colonialism with a poetic vision that recognizes the range of traditions comprising his beloved West Indies, and with a poetic voice that harmonizes the discord between the English canon and his native dialect. III. Review of: Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. “The Life of Jamaica Kincaid.” Jamaica Kincaid: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999. The twenty-two-page chapter of this book entitled “The Life of Jamaica Kincaid” is probably the most detailed and extensive that I have seen in my research of postcolonial Caribbean authors. It does, however, bog the reader down in minute details, such as the name of the hospital in which the author was born and the land mass, in square miles, of the island of Antigua. Yet, the details are important because readers are interested in different aspects of the author’s life. I was actually shocked to learn that it was only as recently as 1981 that Antigua gained its independence from Britain. I had associated the break from England as happening some time in the 1940’s or 1950’s, like India. As a child in Antigua, Elaine Cynthia Potter did not travel from village to village. She lived with her family – farmers, fishermen, and carpenters – in the capital city of St. John’s. Kincaid did not meet her father, a taxi driver, until she was an adult, and even so, only has a “distant acquaintance” relationship with him. The man who serves as father in her highly autobiographical novels is David Drew, the man who would eventually marry her mother. Until her three brothers were born, her family’s situation was relatively middle-class, with money for “occasional private schooling, books, lessons, and new dresses.” It was Drew’s illness that forced Kincaid to emigrate from Antigua and work as a “servant” in the United States in order to help her family financially. Another interesting facet of her life Paravisini-Gebert includes in the chapter was the religious influences that shaped her childhood. Although the family was Methodist, her mother and grandmother practiced Obeah, “a system of beliefs grounded in spirituality and an acknowledgement of the supernatural and involving aspect of witchcraft, sorcery, magic, spells, and healing.” It was often because of fear of spells, which may have been cast on her daughter, that Kincaid’s mother often sent her to visit her grandmother in Dominica. In school, Kincaid’s favorite subjects were history and botany, which affected her writing profoundly; “her fiction and nonfiction have been increasingly concerned with the question of how to write about Caribbean’s history of slavery and colonialism; botanical topics have been frequent in her writing, and since the early 1990’s she has been writing about botany and gardening and their relationship with colonialism and empire.” Another major influence on her writing came from her school days; as punishment for rebellious behavior, she was forced to memorize long passages of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the echoes of that epic can still be seen in her fiction. One of the most haunting influences on Kincaid’s fiction is the relationship she had with her mother. When Kincaid was thirteen, and just before her qualifying exams for university, her mother withdrew her from school in order to help care for her stepfather and three younger brothers. The loss of her dreams of becoming a teacher caused deep resentment and bitterness toward her mother. The lasting void between the two is a striking contrast to the “love affair” she describes as having with her mother up until the time when her brother Joseph was born, which Kincaid associated with the loss of her mother’s love just at that adolescent time when she most needed her. The rest of her adolescence seems to be summed up as a rebellion against a mother who insisted she be a “well-behaved, soft-spoken, proper Afro-Saxon girl.” She resented her mother’s anglophilia and the colonial education which seemed to support racism and suppression; therefore, Kincaid broke all communication with her mother during her first seven years living in the United States. A huge chunk of the chapter wearily details Kincaid’s journey from au pair to artist. Paravisini-Gebert even lists outfits that Kincaid used to wear in her early years in order to make the statement that “this was someone who did not necessarily fit anyone’s conventional idea of who she would be.” Gebert lists the magazines for which Kincaid wrote, and finally begins chronicling her major literary successes with the publishing of a collection of short stories, At the Bottom of the River, which won numerous awards. It was after her marriage and birth of her first child that Kincaid wrote the autobiographical novel, Annie John. A year later, she returned to Antigua for the first time since she had left it, prompting a tentative reconciliation with her mother. During the visit, she found that her younger brother had contracted the AIDS virus, and she became active in getting medication to help him with his devastating illness, which she depicts in My Brother. The visit also prompted the creation of A Small Place, which was considered so libelous by some Antiguans that, only a few years after its publication, she was banned from the island. Paravisini-Gebert ends the chapter by reporting that Kincaid, teaching creative writing at Harvard, still focuses on “the evils of colonialism, the relationship between the powerful and the powerless, the links between literature and empire.” IV. Review of: Nair, Supriya. “Daughters of Caliban: Caribbean Women in the Twentieth Century, by Consuelo Lopez Springfield.” Research in African Literatures. 09-30-2000. V. 31; N. 3, p. 191. In this article, Nair reviews Daughters of Caliban, edited by Springfield. She begins by explaining the origin of the title -- Caliban is the name of the savage in Shakespeare’s The Tempest -- and explaining that this reference reflects on the association of the predominately male world of “defiance and decolonization.” The editor is quoted as saying that this book is an attempt to “correct the historical omission” of female voices in the process of nation-building after the expulsion of the colonists. The book is organized into five parts: Caribbean Women and Women’s Studies; Women and Work; Women and Health; Women, Law and Political Change; and Women and Popular Culture. Nair states that the most problematic theme running throughout the book is “the external-internal, Western theory-local materiality split [that] is a difficult binary to maintain in the face of the literal transnational movement by Caribbean women into so-called Western countries (reflected in the academic backgrounds and current locations of most of the book’s contributors).” In addition to this, Caribbean women face sanctions imposed on them by their colonizers, as well as suffering the imbalance of power in mainly patriarchal communities. In concluding her essay, Nair asserts that the only drawback of the book is that the essayists are all women; she wonders if no male scholars could have contributed to this discussion. V. Review of: Apollon, Willy. “Vodou: The Crisis of Possession.” Jouvert. (Translated by Peter Canning and Tracy McNulty) University of Southern California. 1999. Apollon begins this article by stating that the most fascinating aspect of Vodou for the foreigner is the possibility of possession. He continues by citing that when possession is studied, it is always done so in terms of “deviancy, psychological weakness, or pathology.” He maintains that the act of studying the phenomenon eventually leads to writing. It is through writing that the description of possession seems condemned to interpretation, thus losing its “voice.” At one level, possession seems to take the place of an impossible articulation of the economic, social, and political structures particular to the organization of Vodou societies. The peasant classes invest the imaginary with cultural figures that “substitute themselves for the economic and social structures that serve to order the relationship between the powers that be and the class struggle that lies at the heart of social conflict.” Apollon goes on to take issue with the determiner of possession as a “crisis.” He asserts that that word brings with it “psychopathological and psychiatric connotations.” These individual terms ignore the social or societal aspects of vodou, and Apollon argues that in order to truly explain vodou, one would have to find the “rupture” in the social history of the particular culture. As an example, Apollon uses Haiti, a society whose peasant and working classes, as well as large segments of the middle class are uncertain as to the satisfaction of their most basic daily needs. The ruling class makes the rules, and in order to maintain a sense of fear and chaos does not reveal the rules of the social game to the masses, thus making themselves and their success seem the result of magic. The remainder of the article traces Vodou from the slave revolt in 1791 through its decline and containment at the end of the war for Independence, when new social relations were established. The slaves used vodou as a subversive, revolutionary measure during their revolt; the leaders of the push for independence from the colonizers used vodou as a validation for their ascension to power, but following the new social order it was relegated to mere theatricality. VI. Review of: Wyrick, Deborah. “Divine Transpositions: Recent Scholarship on Vodou and Santeria Religious Art.” Jouvert. 1999. Miss Wyrick’s article traces the movement and adaptability of African gods and reviews recent books published in the field of study. She states that “as they have moved from West Africa to the Caribbean to North America and Europe ancient spirits respond to new politics, new social organizations, new needs, [and] new technologies. Part of the movement is reactive, replacing colonial religion with aspects of ancient religions, in hopes of strengthening neo-national identity. These hybridized gods represent a “new stylishness,” as prescribed by artist interpretation and by tourism (the article includes the mention of a Brazilian god that was redesigned to meet tourist expectations). In this sense, Wyrick believes that especially Caribbean and Brazilian religious studies have “shifted from anthropological investigations to aesthetic ones.” They are producing religious art for a new audience, the consumer of “religious exotica.” In the middle of the article, Wyrick reviews Henrietta Cosentino’s book, Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou. The book focuses on the problem of orthography in the study of Haitian vodou practices. Cosentino asserts that the Haitian Creole is an oral language, which still has no definitive dictionary. How can a speaker of the English language study vodou when it cannot be determined which pronunciation of “houngan” (a god) is correct. She also states that some pronunciations are determined by their place in history, and the question becomes one of which history to honor. Wyrick concludes that the range of issues involved “suggest the exemplary cultural-historical sensitivity” of the subject itself. I am beginning to see this cultural-historical sensitivity as a hindrance to global reconciliation. VII. Review of: Sagas, Ernesto. “A Case of Mistaken Identity: Antihaitianismo in Dominican Culture.” www.websteruniv.edu/~corbetre/haiti/misctopic/misctopic.htm. 12 June 2001. Sagas article reveals the true antagonism between the countries of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The term, antihaitianismo, has evolved from “the present manifestation of long-term racial prejudice, the selective interpretation of historical facts, and the creation of a nationalist Dominican false consciousness.” Sagas traces the origins of antihaitianismo to the racial prejudices of the Spanish inhabitants of the colony of Santo Domingo, where the white Spaniard was the elite and ruled over the Creoles and slaves. It was also from this Spanish colony and its chief rival, the French colony of Saint-Domingue, that the first traces of nationalism surfaced. Even after Haiti won independence from France in 1804, the Spanish colony persisted in maintaining difference, even concluding that “they preferred to be anything but Haitian.” The Spanish colonists, who thought of themselves as white, catholic, and Hispanic, promoted the division. They looked down upon the “black voodoo practitioners who had an African culture with a thin French veneer.” Resentments ran high when the Haitians occupied Santo Domingo in 1822, especially when many of the upper class Spanish families left the country, leaving only the lower classes to represent the Spanish heritage. The Dominican Republic finally won independence from Haiti in 1844; they restored high-ranking Spaniard to the important administrative positions. Sagas asserts that the presence of modern day antihaitianismo stems from the struggle for independence; however he finds it hard to justify. By 1865, plans of the Haitian government no longer included any thoughts of the re-annexation of the Dominican Republic; in fact, Haiti even helped them win final independence from Spain. The only way Sagas says that the present sentiments can be explained is by citing it as a tool for Dominican nationalism. A nation can come together against something, and the Dominican elites chose Haiti. Sagas includes in his article names of Dominican authors who are influential in prolonging antihaitianismo through literature. Among them are Jose Gabriel Garcia, Americo Lugo, and Juan Antonio Alix, who have “developed a nationalist narrative and poetry that contrasts Dominican Hispanic values with Haiti’s African superstitions and customs.” VIII. Review of: “Haiti: Changes in Language Use.” Dec. 1989. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+ht0039). 12 June 2001. This article overviews the change in attitude toward the use of Creole language in Haiti during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Creole is the everyday language of the masses in Haiti, yet it is considered by all as a “nonlanguage,” having no definitive rules. French, until the 1970’s was the acceptable language used as a determiner of elite status and literacy. Increasingly, advertisers began to figure out the value of mixing Creole with French to reach larger markets, and the dominance of French was quickly replaced with the benefits of speaking Creole. Politically, the use of Creole by the radio stations to broadcast news led to greater unity in the population, and alleviated fears during the fall of the Duvalier regime. In addition, English has emerged since 1986 as the language of business in Haiti, further decreasing the use of pure French. Trade with the United States and U.S. investors in Haitian industry have led to a greater use of English in areas of commerce. English has also gained importance as many Haitian elites send their children to the U.S. for their education. The article reports that English now cuts across class lines. Those elites who have returned from exile in the United States during the reign of Duvalier, and those who have been educated in the U.S. have introduced English words into the Creole language. The middle and lower classes also have fewer qualms about learning English since it was not the language of domination, as was French. Even further growth of English can be traced to television programs now available to Haitians through cable television. The article seems to reveal the language in Haiti as an ever-evolving one. Creole incorporates the native island tongue with French, English, and Spanish words, making communication both precarious and available at the same time. IX. Review of: Bowling, Nakia. “F.I.U. Works Towards Building a Bond with Haiti Through Education.” The Miami Times. 01-20-2000. V.77; N. 21, p. 1A. Bowling reports in her article that five delegates from Florida International University traveled to Haiti to explore possible collaborations between Haiti’s State University and Universities throughout Florida. Her first sentence states that the visit was in an effort to “bridge social and educational gaps.” The purpose of the trip was said to be to establish possible student and faculty exchanges, curriculum development, and scholarship opportunities. Interestingly though, the report states that, although they did talk with someone about improving engineering education, the primary focus seemed to be on health care, especially the problem in Haiti of maternal mortality. I am not sure what university delegates can do about health care, so it was hard to tell who was manipulating whom in the visit. If the delegates were not there to talk about health care, then the Haitian government simply allowed them to take a message back to the United States. On the other hand, if the delegates were a clandestine attempt to introduce the benefits of American involvement in the everyday concerns of Haiti, then perhaps the trip was worth while. X. Review of: Dempsey, Gary T. “Fools Errands: America’s Recent Encounters with Nation Building.” Mediterranean Quarterly. 12.1 (2001), p. 57-80. This is an extremely interesting article that explains Nation Building so that the average American can understand it. Dempsey gives example after example of how the United States has been participating in this practice since the end of World War II. All sorts of excuses are given, such as protecting one country from another, or helping to “liberate” a territory from the “tyranny” of its possessor. Dempsey argues that these truly are excuses; the United States enters into this process in order to replace an unfriendly government or to create a friendly government where there is anarchy. Dempsey cites advocates of nation building as offering proof of the success of this program in the nations of Japan and West Germany. He goes on to disagree with these advocates, stating that it is “an abuse of history to imply that Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, or Kosovo come anywhere close to warranting the same military concern as postwar Germany or Japan.” His argument contends that the security and economic benefits of building a friendly Germany and Japan were essential to the United States, but neither of those benefits are inherent in helping the smaller countries mentioned above. In a further defense of his argument, Dempsey reminds readers that many of these smaller countries are fighting civil wars, while Japan and Germany were not fighting amongst themselves. He states, “Perhaps if a third party had forced the French to live with the Germans, or the Koreans to live with the Japanese under a single government after the war, then a comparison could be made with modern Bosnia or Kosovo.” The successful examples given by the advocates of nation building simply did not have the same social, historical, or economic conditions as the countries Dempsey is using for his examples. Dempsey advocates an end to the huge amounts of money being spent on these efforts that seem doomed to fail because money cannot buy resolution to the problems these countries have to face before nationalism can be considered. Conclusion: After reviewing these articles, and about five more not included, it seems that the word “between” was a recurring expression of the problem facing the Caribbean island nations. Whether it is a Caribbean author who feels lost somewhere between two identities, two nations that cannot come to terms with the differences between them, two languages between which one nation cannot choose a preference, or an new dominant nation trying to come between warring factions – the facts seem to state that the Caribbean nations are still between identities. At this time in their history, they are still unsure if they prefer the more pure identity of their ancient past, or the hybridized identity of their present (and their future). I can simply say as a citizen of the United States, that I am not sure, even 225 years into our “nationhood,” that our citizens are truly comfortable with the identity of American. Dear Kasi, The conclusion was a little odd, and you had some trouble with possessive forms, but overall this was a well-written and interesting journal. I learned a lot and am having to resist the temptation to comment on odds and ends. I read Danticat's Breath book a few years ago. A somewhat sturdier novel from the Dominican Republic that alludes to antihaitianismo is Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents. My wife was a big fan of The Serpent and the Rainbow. Perhaps most creepy was the trade in religious artifacts, because I could imagine myself snatching them up without a thought. We're still unsure how much the "free market" is just more imperialism. Well, sorry to go on, but thanks for the good reading.
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