diasporic cultures in the caribbean and caribbean literature: an overview pinchia feng 馮品佳...
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• 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