• Diasporic Cultures in the Caribbean and Caribbean Literature: An Overview

Pinchia Feng 馮品佳NCTU

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/ the Antilles/ the Caribbean

Map of the Caribbean

Images of the Caribbean 1

• Jan van de Straet’s engraving “America”--the new world as a woman

Images of the Caribbean 2

• John Stedman• slave family life• image of happy slaves

Caribbean Literature--Chronology 1• 1492-96 Columbus’s “discovery” of the Wes

t 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

“Colonization in Reverse”• What a joyful news, Miss Mattie;

• Ah feel like me heart gwine burs--

• Jamaica people colonizin

• Englan in verse

• By de hundred, by de tousan

• From country an from town,

• By de ship-load, by the plane-load,

• Jamaica is Englan boun.

• 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

Caribbean Literature--Chronology 2• 1958-62 The Federation of the West In

dies

• 1962 independence for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago; restrictions imposed on West Indian immigration to Britain

• 1966 independence for Barbados and Guyana

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--writer’s “self-cultivation” to get out of West Indies, a “destitute,” sterile void

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

Artistic Expressions of Caribbean Creolization Caribbean S﹠

pirituality

See http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/worldlit/photos/caribbean

_arts.html