Identity In Caribbean Literature With Focus On Walcott, Brodber, Brathwaith And Senior

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West Indian or Caribbean literature comprises of several authors spanning a period beginning in the sixteenth century. The authors, responding to the complex demographic and cultural reality of the region, sought to articulate the concept of Caribbean identity through art. Many authors had different and outright contradicting views that were transposed into the aesthetics of Caribbean literature. Caribbean identity itself is comprised of various concepts: a fragmented self, hybridity of the individual, the need to re write history, and a fluid evolving identity or a shared one based on ancestry. The different views are embodied in Brodber’s Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Brathwaite’s X/Self, Senior’s Gardening in the Tropics, and Walcott’s The Prodigal. Caribbean identity is often viewed as fragmented into many different, often opposing selves. The identity is describes as schizophrenic, as the Caribbean person grapples with an ancestral identity rooted in the Old World and a creolised one based in the region. In addition the creolised identity itself is fragmented into the urban versus the rural, a foreign one based on migration and a feminine identity that is stigmatised and ill defined. The fragmentation of the individual is seen by Edward Kamau Brathwaite as essential to understanding identity, “piling up is the most suitable technique for exposing a reality that is itself being scattered” (Josephs). That is why X/Self is a continuous narrative of different individual voices and histories. The Caribbean identity is viewed by many artists as pastoral in nature. The link between the landscape and individual is not confined to subsistence or monocrop farming. Instead the colours of the fauna populating the region provide a rootedness in

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the region the different diasporic peoples have been brought to. The rural-urban drift that has taken place in the region is viewed as abandonment of the peasantry. Eric Roach has glorified this class in his poetry as being essential to national development. Roach describes the peasant as being able to survive harsh conditions; the very survivalism that the peasant possesses creates the backbone for the entire nation. Roach writes, “Look on the sower and the seed / That thrives between rock and rain” (134). Existence in the urban areas is seen as a step towards the metropole, the urban life is characterised by confinement and cramped conditions. Despite the emergence of the steel pan and calypso from such a backdrop it is seen as “the crampedness of the yard which allowed little poverty;”” (Rohlehr, 381). Walcott, in his poem “Laventille”, describes the impact of the stifling urban conditions on the lives and sense of identity on the people living in the area. For Walcott, it has no opportunity as “lives revolve round prison, graveyard, church” (“Collected Poems”, 86). The urban squalor revolts Walcott, as with it comes amnesia of one’s past and the assimilation of an alien culture: climbing, we could look back with widening memory on the hot, corrugated –iron sea whose horrors we all shared. (“Collected Poems”, 86)

The move from the rural to urban is seen as a loss of innocence. The characters of various authors seek to regain the metaphorical lost garden. This process is undertaken as a means to recover the serenity that nature provides but that is sacrificed in moving to the city. However, the return home is not often triumphant or glorious. The biblical prodigal

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son returns after a harsh reality and is forced to account and repent at home. This characterisation is seen in Gardening in the Tropics and The Prodigal. The very things that the urban areas boast, separate characters from the rural roots. Nellie in Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home feels a separation from the urban people and views their culture as insignificant, far removed from the rich folk heritage of the proletariat. “Those people throw dice, slam dominoes and give-laugh-for-peasoup all day long. They have no culture, no sense of identity, no shame or respect for themselves” (51). Therefore the urban person must redefine the link to the landscape. “Education destroys Nellie’s link with the village and the past which it represents but also apprises her or her true relationship with the segment of the society towards she is being pushed” (WalkerJohnson, 51). Therefore the response is a renewed yearning for the pastoral. The rejection of the land is seen as a rejection of the pastoral heritage it is a severing of the umbilical cord that provides the soothing balm of nature. The rejection of Mass Stanley by David is described by Brodber as a betrayal of the entire way of life of Mass Stanley, “the soul that he will pass on to his son and his son’s and for his one and only child to come and rebuke him about it, to tell him that his life was nothing, he could not take” (Brodber, 106). Migration, especially towards the metropole, has served to further create a fragmented self. Upon leaving the region, the Caribbean person is faced with the need to assimilate into the unwelcoming, temperate states. This further complicates the question of identity as it adds a new dimension to the existing polar influences on the concept of self. The region’s authors too had a similar experience that Brathwaith described as: “the writers at home wrote of their islands on the one hand, but wished for exile (in spirit or in fact)on the other, and where the writers in exile embraced and recoiled from their foreign

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status in the same gesture as it were” (qtd. in Rohlehr, 467). Brathwaite laments the acquisition of foreign tastes which is seen as a betrayal of the Caribbean values, “they dream of Rubenstein of vogue and Guinevere at Camelot at Arthur’s fogey castle” (Braithwaite, “X/Self” 16). Migration for Brathwaite is a double edged sword, while the nostalgia provides material for the creation of art, the separation from ones roots divorces one from the source material and more importantly the people for whom the literature is thought to represent. The female is described in Caribbean literature as being even more fragmented. In addition to the different selves there is the female self that the female as dissuaded from embracing. In growing into adulthood the female is not adequately prepared to deal with individual sexuality and its expression. The education system in both the written and hidden curricula does not adequately prepare for leadership, purpose and service. The female is trapped in Brodber’s “kumbla”. In Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Nellie has to seek self expression in different ways, among them dance, which was previously off limits. The dance itself is a journey back into the rural, free self. The dancehall is a “surrogate version of the rural kumbla, its relative absence of rules and rites means that it is less constricting, less prescriptive, less demanding than the communities and pseudo communities of the village” (Rohlehr, 500). The rural kumbla may be difficult to live in but for the woman it is better than the urban one, however because she cannot truly express herself both spell the same pain. The Caribbean woman is brought up to passive, to avoid conflict with societal norms and to carry on despite abandonment by men. The schizophrenia that Nellie faces is the struggle to leave the kumbla and face the confusion of the world or stifle in it like her maternal ancestors. The

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woman is therefore left with no option but to achieve wholeness and self expression through leaving reason, she has to go mad. Only as a mad woman does society dictate and force her to suppress different aspects of herself. Senior also shows that the mental breakdown of the woman is the means to escape the constraints on her. In “Hurricane Story 1951”, a woman migrates leaving her son. The only link they have is the ocean that links Jamaica and the Metropole, however when she realises that all she needed for a better life was not migration and material gain she breaks down having cut herself from her home and son. Senior writes; I must go to mystripping off her clothes

-son

in Aenon Town, Jamaica-

stepping into the water (as the rushed to restrain her)

-my son my s – (Senior, “Gardening”, 41)

The passage into adolescence is shrouded in mystery and proverbs. The emerging woman grows to view her sexuality as dirty and mysterious. ““Woman luck de a dungle

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heap” they say, “fowl come scratch it up”” (Brodber, 17). This creates a rejection of men, as the fragmented psyche of women is viewed in binaries by men. Nellie is an innocent virgin girl then a sexual being that must be guarded against. Nellie responds to the situation by calling her father a “clown”, referring to his hypocritical pandering to her. The self is further fragmented with racial identity, to be one of a multiple of ethnicities in the region, or more problematically to be of mixed descent in a region fixated on ethnic identity. The question of race has spawned one of the great debates in Caribbean literature, the Wasafiri debate. Dubbed after the journal in which the opposing views were published, the debate cantered on the inclusion of Jean Rhys, a Caribbean person of European descent in the Caribbean literary canon. The question of the validity of race as a criterion for Caribbean identity was sparked by Brathwaite’s statement that: White creoles in the English French West Indies have separated themselves wide a gulf, and have contributed too little culturally, as a group, to give credence to the notion that they can, given the present structure, meaningfully identify or be identified with the spiritual Sargasso Sea. (Brathwaite, “Contradictory Omens”. 38). This stems from the scene in Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea when Antoinette looks at Tia, during the burning of Culibri, yearning for solidarity and friendship. Brathwaite’s statements are not necessarily fanatically nationalist or racist; the question of race being a part of the identity of the Caribbean person is explored. Race is important, not as defining identity, but its question forces the individual to look at its previous role in shaping social relationships in the region. Race “has always been at the heart of Caribbean culture, and

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it was the British, along with other Europeans, who firmly put it there from the beginnings of their residence in the region” (Savory, 33). By raising this, power relations are removed and the Rhys being from the region and writing about the region are taken as characteristics of Rhys Caribbean identity. In addition, there is the real issue of the shunning of the black in favour of the glorification of the white. Nellie’s aunt does this as she believes that the constant lightening of the complexion of her children will bear social mobility and status. Brodber’s novel opens with the listing of the generational attempt to lighten the complexion to produce “khaki” children. “So we were brown, intellectual, better and apart, two generations of lightening blue-blacks and gracing elementary schools with brightness” (Brodber, 7). The characteristics of high status are identified as colour which is directly proportional to education. To address the fragmented self of the Caribbean person, some authors have sought to create a hybridity of the multiple histories that have shaped the region. The aim is to forge a new Caribbean identity out of a history of migration, exploitive labour systems, colonialism and neo imperialism. Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s X/Self explores the possibility of forming an identity out of the region’s common ancestry, which demographically is African. Brathwaith subdues the fixation on the multiple ethnic composition of the region and seeks to create an identity out of the existing situation of the region. The title itself suggests a process of formation that the region itself is at a junction in which it must choose a path. This junction represents the different history and culture of the region. “By recognising a shared past, Brathwaite sets the ground for a collective Caribbean present and future” (Josephs). X/Self is autobiographical as the author approaches the question of his identity he realises that he is investigating the

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Caribbean identity. However, the shared history is from the African and Neo Indian cultures. A hybrid society existing in the region draws criticism as it is looked as at forcing a concept unto the people and a denial of the Caribbean’s ethnic demographic reality. Hybridity is viewed in two ways by different authors. Brathwaite seeks to create a shared history based on common ancestry while Walcott seeks a superficial one, in which it occurs to create an individual that comprised the entire region. This yearning to melt is described by Shalini Puri as forced poetics. The attempt to force a hybrid identity on the Caribbean is described by Puri as “an attempt to create a space in which to explore and reinvent aesthetics of equality” (85). In Walcott’s The Antilles, the author describes an ideal Caribbean city having inhabitants that “intermarry as they choose from instinct, not tradition, until their children find it increasingly futile to trace their genealogy” (18). The vision of Walcott is idealised and arguably impractical given the Caribbean’s history of attempts of national and regional unity. Puri accuses Walcott of using his aesthetics to fulfil a political dream. “Walcott’s strategy is to use the erotic power of language to make his readers willingly enter the poetic dream when they have been abandoned by the political dream, applying to politics the balm of beauty” (Puri, 89). What is sought is a creolisation rather than assimilation. The creolisation process would have the various groups in the region adopt common values from the region; thereby enriching the culture brought with them to the New World or in the case of the indigenous people is establishing a rootedness in a region that has become strange. One process of creolisation is the creation of “nation language”, which Brathwaite does with Creole.

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The history of the region, as written by the colonisers, continues to affect the notion of identity. Some authors reject the imposed version and aim to re write history encompassing the entire region’s people and highlighting the abuses that have silenced many into acceptance of imposed values. The romanticised version of the colonisation of the region is sought to be dispelled by authors. In Walcott’s “Another Life” the protagonist, now mature, begins to see the indigenous inhabitants who resisted the Europeans as “iconic heroic ancestors” (Rohlehr, 464). Brathwaite too re writes history through the description of the conquistadores in X/Self. The European conquerors are shown a cracked by the need and desire to conquer; it is represented through a crack in the verse itself: makes me vomit out destroy never chantments like those

destroy though they were heard or told in cadiz

The new perspective of history and aestheticisms described by Brathwaite as: Dear mumma uh writin yu dis letter wha? guess what! Pun a computer O kay?

The rewriting of history is a means to combat the amnesia that the Caribbean person faces. According to Walcott, “amnesia is the true history of the New World. That is out true inheritance” (Walcott, 40). This is why Brathwaite constantly retells history, giving the perspective to those silences by time. He focuses on the neo Indian and African whose primordial culture has remains despite enslavement and genocide, “was this the fleet my pride unfurl? / pirates in smiling ships. They rob the world I rule” (31). Senior describes the native inhabitants’ interaction with the European:

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but we were peaceful then child-like in the yellow dawn of out innocence

so in exchange for a string of islands and two continents

you gave us a string of beads an some hawk’s bells “Meditation on Yellow” (Senior, 11) Senior also encompasses a larger region than the Caribbean, for her the history of exploitation is not bound geographically or temporally. For Walcott history itself is divided into the official learnt one and the natural one that is causal and bears the repercussions of past events. Walcott distinguishes both by the use of the capital and common “h”, the capital one is learnt, the common one happens: ... under the arcades The beggars slept, unshifting as History. There was the city, then there was the magical echo of the city’s name and the same sulphurous mirage of its double created history, (“The Prodigal”, 47)

Brathwaite also vilifies the oral over the scribal. The oral tradition is the root of the Caribbean literary tradition; however, the European fixation with record keeping has glorified the scribal as truth. The oral is eternal and resilient, “we make this narrow thread of silver spin the long time of sand” (Brathwaite, 101). The oral however, is “narrow” in

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“sand”; it may be suppressed but not erased. The making of the scribal oral allows the reader to grasp all the meaning of the word. This oral tradition has the Anancy archetype which is used by the authors. Anancy is associated with the kumbla, he is “a maker of finely crafted kumblas” (Brodber, 124). The Anancy figure’s use of language that is humorous to the extent that is disarms the reader’s inhibitions is utilised by Senior in “Pineapple”: we welcomed you to our shores, not knowing in your language “house warming” meant “to take possession of” and “host” could easily turn hostage. (Senior, 64).

History alone must not be re written but the presentation of the aesthetic must be re formatted to accommodate the new expression. This is seen in Brathwaite’s attempts to make the words of X/Self concrete by casting tem in a new form and rhythm. “In X/Self the shapes seek to mirror the actualities of history” (Antoine-Dunne, 145). In addition to the audio-visual aesthetic that must be re written the language of expression must be used deliberately to confer the new historical reality. This language is Creole, which was viewed as “unaesthetic, limited and limiting in its expressive and ideational range, and restrictive in its communicability with an international readership” (Warner-Lewis, 26).

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In the works of all the authors discussed in the paper, Creole is integral to identity as a means of resistance to oppressive influences. The international reader is nevertheless accommodated as the Creole utilises popular spellings to aide pronunciation. Brathwaite is more concerned with the regional audience. “The writer in fact, has a special relationship with his own people, his own native public, and they should have a special kind of attention for him: because it is together that they create the work of art” (Brathwaite, 201). Brathwaite’s montage method shows that he rejects prescription to a particular style or genre. His compilation of the different images and cultural references creates what Paul Naylor calls a “creolisation of those traditions” (Josephs). Creole is viewed as being true to the Caribbean. Senior says, “I use Creole to be true to my characters and the place I come from” (“Interview”). Self discovery is in the rediscovery of the past. This is seen in Nellie’s re discovery of her African heritage. In addition the indigenous church with its regional influences must not be seen as evil, as the Baptist one is in Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home. The musical nature of Brathwaite’s and Senior’s poetry affirms a break with the European form. Even when the protagonist in X/Self uses Prospero’s or the Western tools of expression, he still questions its validity:

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But is like what I try in to sen/seh & seh about musein computer & mouse & learnin prospero ling age & ting not fe dem/not fe dem de way caliban done but fe we fe a-we The need for an authentic language that represents the region is also echoed by Wilson Harris who believes that the language that truly represents the people substitutes the splendour and history the inherited literary tradition has but does not bestow upon the region. “The real hope for man lies not in promises of splendour or in virtuosity but in the revelation of original and authentic rhythms within the gloomy paradox of a world” (Harris, 15). Walcott on the other hand asserts that “by openly fighting tradition we perpetuate it” (38). Hence the language of The Prodigal is closer to the Standard English. The re writing of history involves the rejection of the Western linear concept of time, it must be made cyclical. “In X/Self the past and the present co-exist because in the shaping of the image, the past and the present flow into each other” (Antoine-Dunne, 138). This is seen in the juxtaposition of the historical with the contemporary “but Claudius her husband never is at home/ at grapetime tv supper time or when she takes her

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pills” (Brathwaite, 12). To deal with fragmentation, some authors have sought to create an identity not bound by spatio-temporal constraints. Olive Senior when interviewed said, “I live inside my head” (“Interview”, 25). Walcott writes “Dates multiplied by events, by consequences, are what add up to history” (“The Prodigal”, 83). He focuses on the causal nature of history that focuses on the lasting impressions of man’s actions. In addition to what constitutes the Caribbean identity, there is the debate whether identity itself can be clearly defined as shared by all in the region or that the Caribbean is so diverse that identity is fluid and constantly evolving. The protagonist in X/Self is fluid, is shifting through time and person, however the fundamental aspect of the character is an African one, that journeys through history. The case for a common identity is found in Brathwaite’s concept of “Nam”; it is associated with resistance and rebellion. It is this inner self of the Caribbean person that is forged from the common history of the region. The aspects of a coherent Caribbean culture are explored by Brathwaite. He attempts to do this as the common culture “may not be conscious, but the idea is to make it conscious, to protect it by stating/naming it” (Josephs). At the same time Brathwaite’s poem illustrates the ongoing process of defining identity. X/Self is described a s tidalectic in which the movement of the poem moves, this is deliberate as Brathwaite’s Sycorax text seeks to concretises and convey meaning of the words themselves other than the semantic meanings. Though it may be desired to have an identity in which all Caribbean people share, that will be superficial and result in an array of groups suppressing individual histories. Stuart Hall points out that “cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation” (394). Brodber embraces a fluid identity, Nellie undergoes a process of

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identification and indigenisation, and this can only occur if the individual is willing to be moulded in the process. The voice of truth in the novel, Baba tells Nellie “that our solutions lay in our liquidity. He had spent a good long time in teaching me that,” (Brodber, 69). Both Senior and Brathwaite embrace the African spirit. Senior invokes the African gods for inspiration in her poems. Walcott’s The Prodigal is a case for the superficial hybridity. The journey through the poem involves travel to Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Identity is being forged out the historical commonalities and interactions of the regions. A balance is important to Walcott, “O Altitudino, And my fear of heights” (“The Prodigal”, 96), shows his fear of ignoring any influence in the region. The Caribbean identity can therefore be described as still in a process of definition, however this definition will constantly chance as the inhabitants do. What can be gathered from the question of identity is the desire by the artists to find its most comprehensive expression so as to create an aesthetic to match. From the works discussed several concepts are derived. Firstly, the Caribbean person is fluid , consisting of different fragmented selves, also hybridity occurs in the region, though not through ethnic mixing but a creolisation of the different cultures. And finally, to truly grasp the Caribbean identity, the individual must be ready to release the historical baggage carried and form a new history