Caribbean Languages and Societies Commons^™

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 …

Interpreter Of Maladies: Analyzing Current Young Adult Indo-Caribbean Literature For Inclusion In Today's High School Canon, Reshma Ramkellawan

HIM 1990-2015

The high school English Language Arts curricula of Central Florida has faced increasing scrutiny during the past decade under often conflicting influences such as a rapidly diversifying student population, activism for and against multicultural curriculum reform, and pressure to streamline curricula and make it conform to state testing standards. Against this social backdrop, the question of how to introduce Inda-Caribbean literature at the secondary level presents unique intellectual and political challenges. On the one hand, first and second generation Inda-Caribbean migrants make up an increasingly significant percentage of Florida's student population. Like other first and second generation Caribbean migrants, Inda-Caribbean …

Réécritures Romanesques Du Mythe De Médée Chez Maryse Condé Et Marie N’Diaye, Jean-Luc Manenti

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The mythical figure of Medea, made notable by child murder, has had a significant diffusion in contemporary fiction. A comparative analysis of her apparition in some novels by Maryse Condé and by Marie N’Diaye demonstrates the transposition and the updating of the myth according to varied cultural contexts. Situated between transgression and sublimation, the renovated figure of the infanticidal genitrix associates the imaginary of the beneficent mother to the one of the harmful mother. This hybrid status allows her to reveal a different specificity, one that goes beyond manichean classifications.

Who Was Cock Robin? A New Reading Of Erna Brodber's Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Much has been written about the quest of Brodber's protagonist Nellie for identity, for wholeness, for balance, for sanity, for finding her way back home into the community. Nellie's efforts to find herself and to integrate into the community will be easier, Brodber declared in a speech in 1988, "when Jane and Louisa come home, i.e., when the women find themselves" (Notes). Brodber also observed in that same speech, "'coming' rather than 'being' is the appropriate action word with which to address the issue of integration into the community," a fact suggested by the game that gives the title to …

Noms Et Identités Dans La Migration Des Coeurs : Vers Une Affirmation De L’Identité Caribéenne, Hanétha Vété-Congolo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights, the female characters bear the same first and last names, and act in the same way as, their counterparts in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It would seem relevant, therefore, to ask about the dialectics of naming and identity set out in Windward Heights, and what this might mean for Caribbean identity. Is naming the only thing that gives Condé’s characters their identity? Or are they mirror-image projections of Brontë’s characters. Answering these questions, we may be able to determine how Condé’s work, as a new creation, establishes its own identity and whether its meaning is …

Jasper, John, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Perhaps the most famous of all the slave preachers, John Jasper was born in Fluvanna County, Virginia, on July 4, 1812, the youngest of twenty-four children born to Phillip and Tina Jasper. His father, also a slave preacher, died two months before John was born, but he prophesied that his son would become a famous preacher.

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.

In Search Of Nella Larsen: A Biography Of The Color Line By George Hutchinson (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

With In Search of Nella Larsen, George Hutchinson makes the third major attempt to provide a biography of the elusive Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen (1891-1964), the mulatto daughter of immigrants from Denmark and the Danish West Indies whose life and fiction were shaped largely by her mixed emotions about her racial heritage and her feelings of abandonment by her white mother, stepfather, and sister. In his introduction, Hutchinson makes much of the errors of prior Larsen biographers Charles R. Larson (Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen [1993]) and Thadious M. Davis (Nella Larsen, Novelist of …

Bennett, Louise, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Louise Bennett, affectionately called Miss Lou, is Jamaica's most beloved folk poet, performer, and collector; she was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on September 7, 1919. Her father, a baker, died when she was seven years old, and her mother worked as a dressmaker to provide for her only child. She was educated in Jamaica at Calabar Elementary School, Excelsior High School, and St. Simon's College, after which she received a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in England.

Haïti Et Sa Diaspora Ou Le Pays En Dehors, Marie-Hélène Koffi-Tessio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article looks at the causes of large migratory movements in Haiti. Anthropologist Gérard Barthélemy suggests that emigration from the countryside stems from aspects of rural society, namely the need to accumulate wealth to start one’s own production unit and the need to chase out those who will not stick to and perpetuate the rules of the community. However, according to Jean Métellus and Jean-Claude Icart, migration movements are tightly linked to political and historical upheavals, which force people out of the country in search of safety and survival. For many migrants, the consequence is a feeling of loss and …

Construire La Liberté Ou Le Défi Haïtien, Bernard Hadjadj

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The major challenge of Haitian society remains building liberty after emerging from slavery and acquiring independence. Two centuries after the birth of the first Black Republic, the new social contract that rose from this spirit of “living together” is still in penury. The author examines the principal obstacles on the way to building freedom: namely, the inclusion of a large number of the excluded, which implies the dismantling of misery and the promotion of learning; the institution of authority through law and responsibility which presupposes the end of the “master” figure as a symbol of power, as well as that …

Haïti Et L’Afrique Noire : De La Primauté À La Marginalité, Du Modèle Au Contre-Modèle, André Ntonfo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As we know, Haiti, the first Black republic in the world, commemorated the bicentennial of its independence in 2004. This paper examines how that unique experience has been received by the Black world in general and by independent African states in particular, as well look at the place that Haiti occupies in their imagination. This paper will examine Haiti’s role as an ideological place of structuring and as a real space for experimentation with post-colonial strategies applied to independent Black nations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The author will demonstrate how Haiti, from its position as a pioneer for these nations, …

Le Fou, Le Rebelle, L’Enfant Et La Révolution Haïtienne, Gilbert Doho

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The proliferation of fools in independent African nations’ capitals and major cities should have entailed profound analyses. The period after 1804 in Haiti and after 1960 for Africa is marked by irrationality. From this point of view, Aimé Césaire, doom prophet, uses the Haitian past to warn newly independent African nations. The attempt to understand the phenomena has so far been based on psychoanalysis and other euro-centric methods. In this paper, we will attempt to centre our approach on the gaze and thought of the lunatics themselves in order to understand the madness that has taken hold of post-colonial periods. …

Du Bateau Négrier À L’Avion Négrier : Haïti, Les Puissances Esclavagistes Et Le Monde Noir, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The main argument of this study may be outlined as follows: colonized communities in the world economy being integrated by means of “historical fatality” from slavery to colonialism and neo-colonialism. The counter-movement of decolonization, as exemplified in the Haitian revolution, was meant to propose a more humane outbreak of enslaved peoples on the world scene. The account of globalization reveals that Haiti was forced into the world economy through the modality of extortion, which denied the most vulnerable members of Haitian society their basic humanity. The failure of the Haitian revolution to reverse the course of historical fatality opened the …

Édouard Glissant : Du Dé-Lire Verbal Au Discours Maîtrisé, Katell Colin-Thébaudeau

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article questions the experience of delirium of the character of Marie Celat and places it in relation to the violence of identity and cultural alienation linked to the history of the West Indies. Using the word “Odono” as a pretext, which was transmitted to the character by a family tale, the text tackles the problem of the identity and origin of the subject. In Marie Celat’s delirium, the reference to “Odono” opens the way for diverse positions on the subject of enunciation, stretching the historical truth into an a-temporal, a-spatial, “out of chronology” event. The words juxtapose each other …

Par-Delà Le Chaos : Aube Tranquille De Jean-Claude Fignolé, Lucienne J. Serrano

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyses how Fignolé’s book puts into words an unbearable state sprung from the chaos of slavery. This is an oxymoronic writing experience, because how can the unspeakable be named? Writing is not thought here, but rather a driving force digging into an intimate movement of rebellion and using language in a glib form, free from conscious meaning and logic, in order to reveal a preconscious meaning. The writer then becomes an archaeologist of pain. He tries to transcribe the scream in splintered space and time, so that memory finds landmarks once again. Writing thus becomes an experience aiming …

Folie De L'Écriture, Écriture De La Folie Dans La Littératureféminine Des Antilles Françaises, Pascale De Souza

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

There are many female characters with sick/mutilated bodies in Guadeloupe and Martinique’s female literature. Madness, anorexia, self-mutilation, even the suicide of these female characters not only denounce a repressive social order inherited from the history of slavery, but also represent means to affect a social environment that is not responsive to the female quest for identity. Madness, crisis or acts of self-mutilation allow them to escape (“marronnage”) a system, which tries to negate their very existence.

Le Goût Des Jeunes Filles De Dany Laferrière : Du Chaos À La Reconstruction Du Sens, Nathalie Courcy

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper analyses the way politics, society and the representation of speech is structured in Le goût des jeunes filles, Dany Laferrière’s fourth novel. How do the events told and the disorganised narration itself symbolise the unspeakable? Moreover, how does the characters’ speech rebuild the meaning of existence, and how does Laferrière see the future? Chaos, madness, all that overtakes or destroys the norm, anchors fiction in an attempt to reorganize reality and the imaginary.

Portrait: Les Nombreuses Facettes De Toussaint Louverture, Jean Metellus

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Toussaint Louverture's groundbreaking revolutionary war against slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue has earned him a well-deserved place in the history of anti-colonial movements. Despite his arrest and subsequent deportation to France, he is remembered as one of the founders of the first Haitian nation. Metellus goes beyond this image of the Haitian leader and captures him in all his complexity; his limits as a human being and as a leader. However, Metellus ultimately wants us to remember Toussaint Louverture as one of the founders of the anti­colonial movement.

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.

Simone Schwarz-Bart : Quel Intérêt? Classer L’Inclassable, Christiane Ndiaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Critics do not agree on what constitutes the interest of the works of Schwarz- Bart. However, four major tendencies are apparent in the many critical studies of her works: some are interested in the "creole experience" her novels are said to portray, others in the "feminine experience", while others again in the "mythological" dimension and the question of what is borrowed from oral literature. These different approches interpret the works of Schwarz-Bart essentially in the perspective of "testimony" and, even though there is a consensus as to the originality of her writing, there is little analysis of the specific techniques …

Rhétorique De La Réception Des Oeuvres Francophones Dans Présence Africaine, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyses the Reception discourse towards African and Caribbean Literatures in French. We will analyse some articles published in Présence africaine to show how this journal played a leading part in the promotion of African and Caribbean Literatures in French since its beginning in 1947 to now.

Réceptions De L’Oeuvre D’Émile Ollivier : De La Difficulté De Nommer L’Écrivain Migrant, Joubert Satyre

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Abstract: Who is a migrant writer? That’s the question asked by Québec institutions which legitimatize literature, including journalistic critics and scholars. The aim of our paper is to make an inventory of the terms employed by these institutions to name Émile Ollivier (1940-2002), an Haitian novelist who has been exiled in Québec since the mid-sixties. These terms reveal a discontent and vagueness in the attempt to link the novelist to a nationality or a country. Between appropriation and dismissal, this multiplicity symbolizes a resistance to frankly consider this writer as a Quebecer. We also refer to the "in-between" of all …

Enseigner La Littérature Francophone : À La Recherche De La Banalisation, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The emergence of francophone literatures as a field that is increasingly taught in departments of French has led to the creation of numerous positions dedicated to this area. The natural question that specialists face is how to devise strategies to develop and entrench this new discipline in American universities, concerned as they are with budgetary issues. The present study argues that only the constant search for cooperation between Francophonie and related academic fields will facilitate its institutionalization.

Variations Sur La Langue De Molière; L’Enseignementdu Français Aux États-Unis, Thomas C. Spear

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

French has always been among the top foreign languages taught in the American university, even if Spanish occupies the first place. As a result of the social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s and the development of new fields of learning, changes were also introduced gradually into French department programs to include francophone literatures, although in a manner that some have deemed disturbing.

This openness, which is not found in France, has brought about the creation of new faculty positions, some of which are occupied by teachers and writers from Africa and the Caribbean who are making a significant contribution …

La « Littérature Francophone » En Question, Roberta Hatcher

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

While literatures from Africa, the Caribbean and Québec have been taught in U.S French programs since at least the 1970s, the widespread incorporation of «francophone» literature and culture into all levels of the curriculum is a relatively recent phenomenon. Yet the organization of these heterogeneous fields under the umbrella of Francophone Studies has generated little discussion concerning the field’s definition and its relation to French Studies as a whole. This essay examines the category of Francophone Literature, arguing that it is no longer adequate for understanding today’s complex literary and cultural terrain.

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.

Sex, Aids, Migration, And Prostitution: Human Trafficking In The Caribbean, Catherine Benoît

Anthropology Faculty Publications

Study of sexual tourism in Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, where prostitution is a widespread reality. Author argues that on this island where rapid economic development is based on the tourist industry and on offshore financial services, sexual relationships are determined by geopolitical and financial (neoliberal) interests that go beyond sexuality per se. She focuses on the precarious situation of the foreign prostitutes who have no working papers.

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 …