Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Preacher And Missionary War: The Political Role Of Race And Christianity In The 1831 Baptist War, Emilee Dale

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abolitionists from the Eighteenth Century to the mid-Nineteenth Century tended to be remembered by William Wilberforce, Joseph Soul, Thomas Clarkson, Samuel Bowly, and William Lloyd Garrison. All of these men have been extremely well represented throughout scholarship and the archives. The voices that are often left out of the archives are the men and women who fought on the frontlines for their freedom. Enslaved men and women fought to the death for their freedom and are often overshadowed by White missionaries and abolitionists in the archives. Black leaders often have less representation throughout history and scholarship due to the lack …

"Everything Remains The Same And Yet Nothing Is The Same": Neocolonialism In The Caribbean Diaspora Through The Language Of Family And Servitude, Laura Barrio-Vilar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay examines Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, a novel that tackles the process of decolonization from old and new forms of colonialism through the language of servitude and family (specifically, mother-daughter relationships). The novel’s protagonist is not only an example of the wave of West Indian migration and the feminization of labor, but her agency also provides Kincaid with the necessary platform to deploy her views on U.S. imperialism. I propose reading Lucy’s evolution toward self-determination as not only an individual but also a collective experience. I interpret the novel as an allegory that can help us better understand the …

El Narrador En La Ciudad Dentro De La Temática De Los Cuentos De Emigración Y Transición Puertorriqueña (1948-1968), Sandra Margarita Stern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a result of the political and economic upheavals in Puerto Rico’s governing structures during the mid-twentieth century, changes occurred in the social and cultural contexts as well. Rapid industrialization and installation of modernity became the goals for the island, which resulted in mass movement of people from agricultural rural communities to cities, namely, San Juan and New York. A reflection of this phenomenon appears in different genres of literary production during this time. This new form of writing, with its innovative approaches, grew and found preference mostly in the short story.

This dissertation focuses on the stories of this …

Le Projet Judéo-Noir D’André Schwarz-Bart : Saga Réversible, Francine Kaufmann

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

André Schwarz-Bart’s literary call was born from his will to immortalize in writing the memory of the culture of his Jewish ancestors which was eradicated from the map of Europe during the Shoa. A pioneer of the “memory work” with The Last of the Justs, a novel awarded the Goncourt in 1959, he invented the genre of the “identity saga” whose heroes gather within themselves the centuriesold experience of their people. A similar ambition guided him while he composed a cycle – that remained mostly unpublished – about Black slavery and the culture issued from it: A Woman Named Solitude.

African American Literature By Writers Of Caribbean Descent, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

They dubbed it the Port of No Return. When their ancestors left that port at Elmira Beach, Ghana – or Goree Island, Senegal, or any of a number of similar African ports – and set out on the perilous journey over the ocean to the Americas, there was no going back for the New World Negroes. That is what for most Africans in the Americas was the beginning of their history. Whether resident in a small island nation or in the American colonies, whether under the domain of a British, Spanish, French, or Dutch colonial power, and whether shuttled back …

"I Going Away. I Going Home.": Austin Clarke's "Leaving This Island Place", Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Austin Clarke’s “Leaving This Island Place” is one of scores of Caribbean autobiographical works that focus on a bright, young, lower-class islander leaving his/her small island place and setting out on “Eldorado voyages.” The narrative of that journey away from home to Europe or Canada or the United States and the later efforts to return may be said to be the Caribbean story, as suggested in the subtitle of Wilfred Cartey’s study of Caribbean literature, Whispers from the Caribbean: I Going Away, I Going Home, which argues that while in Caribbean literature there is much movement away, there is …

'Grung Tell Me Wud': An Introduction To Karl, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Olive Senior informs us in 'The Poem as Gardening, the Story as Su-Su: Finding a Literary Voice' that Jamaican elders believe the ground is the place where ancestral wisdom is located and they will explain and validate their warning or advice by saying, 'Grung tell me wud' (36). Jamaican linguist/literary critic/poet/and novelist Velma Pollard has put her ear to the ground of Jamaica and shared many important words of ancestral wisdom with us. This was a natural development for the talented girlchild born into an artistic family in Woodside, Jamaica, a rural community rich in folk traditions: her father was …

Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, And Survival By Meredith M. Gadsby (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

The folk will tell you that salt can either save you or destroy you. Toni Cade Bambara's Velma of The Salteaters realized that her survival depended on learning "the difference between eating salt as an antidote to snakebite and turning into salt, succumbing to the serpent." The lesson of similar folk wisdom is the subject of Meredith M. Gasby's Sucking Salt, where she propses as a new framework for the examination of Caribbean women's writing the survival techiniques implied in "sucking salt," techiniques suggested in her aunt's reflections on people she knew. Tantie expounded: "Little salt won't kill …

Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives And The Second Generation By Lisa D. Mcgill (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Using second generation Americans Harry Belafonte, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Piri Thomas, and the meringue hip hop group Proyecto Uno, Lisa D. McGill considers in Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives and the Second Generation the issues of identity formation of those whose heritage ultimately includes Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, most often New York City. Though her subjects come from different national, racial, and language backgrounds; though they have made their names in different media; and though they have different views of race, identity, and culture, she convincingly makes the argument that "African America becomes powerful site …

Ismith Khan (1925-2002), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Trinidadian novelist who explored the conflicts experienced by East Indians in the Caribbean as well as the racial diversity that characterizes the region. A brilliant storyteller, he created memorable characters through whom the sights and cadences of Trinidad will forever live.

A Conversation With Velma Pollard, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Noted poet, novelist, linguist, and educator, Velma Pollard was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, during the fall semester of 2001 when I conducted the following interview. John Martin, my graduate assistant at the time, assisted me in videotaping and transcribing our conversation, which took place in her cottage at the University on December 3, 2001.

Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life By Bruce King (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In Another Life Derek Walcott wrote, "I had entered the house of literature as a houseboy"; Jamaican poet Mervyn Morris signified on this image in his The Pond when he declared, "And these are my rooms now." The journey that Walcott makes from "houseboy" to master/ruler/owner of the house of literature (the Nobel Laureate is frequently acclaimed the greatest poet writing in the English language) is painstakingly detailed in Bruce King's tome Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life.

The Colored Girl In The Ring: A Guyanese Woman Remembers By Brenda Chester Doharris (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Brenda Chester DoHarris's The Colored Girl in the Ring: A Guyanese Woman Remembers joins the company of some of the most memorable works of Caribbean literature, those classic accounts of coming-of-age, such as George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Michael Anthony's The Year in San Fernando, Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey, Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Zea Edgell's Beka Lamb, Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, and Beryl Gilroy's Sunlight on Sweet Water. Like most of the bildungsromans - and …

My Brother By Jamaica Kincaid (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In Jamaica Kincaid's six previous autobiographical novels and essays (At the Bottom of the River, 1984; Annie John, 1985; A Small Place, 1988; Annie, Gwen, Lily, Pam and Julie, 1989; Lucy, 1990; and The Autobiography of My Mother, 1996), her readers have the feeling that she has told all about her troubled life in Antigua and her painful emotional conflicts with her family (especially her mother). We discover with her new memoir, My Brother, however, that some things have been just too painful to tell - until now. Clearly the most obvious …

Beryl Gilroy: A Bio-Literary Overview, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In 1992 when I joined the faculty at the University of Richmond, I taught a class in black women's literature to a group of mainly white students who had previously read little or nothing in this body of literature. One young senior--a white male--did a paper comparing the sympathetic portrayal of the white male character in Beryl Gilroy's Stedman and Joanna and Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. His enthusiasm for the rich body of literature to which I had introduced him continued after he graduated, and he often wrote to me about books he was reading …

Matriarchs, Doves, And Nymphos: Prevalent Images Of Black, Indian, And White Women In Caribbean Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Universally, male writers have tended to create images of women which reveal the familiar male tendency to view women merely as functionaries whose role basically is determined by male needs, male motivations, male fears, and male fantasies. When woman is submissive, docile and pure, she is to be protected and revered; then, she is the virgin/goddess. When she is assertive and strong, she is to be avoided and despised; then, she is the bitch/shrew. When she is passionate and active, she is to be resisted and feared; she is the whore/temptress. While this genera] categorizing of women characters carries over …

Go Eena Kumbla: A Comparison Of Erna Brodber's Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home And Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

When I returned to Jamaica in July 1982, I took as gifts for friends some recent novels by black American writers, including Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters. Upon my arrival, Erna Brodber gave me a copy of her new book, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home. As I read it, I was struck by another instance of how similar experiences (in this case, being black and female in the Americas of the civil rights, black awareness, Rastafarian, and feminist movements) had inspired such strikingly similar expressions in books published the same year (1980) by an American …