Caribbean literature begins with the rejection of colonial status by the West Indian islands. Influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay asserted the black viewpoint in Banana Bottom (1933); C L R James's Minty Alley (1936) led to a new realism. The post-war years brought a number of important novelists, among them Roger Mais (190555), eg Brother Man (1954); George Lamming, eg In the Cell of my Skin (1953); V S Naipaul, eg A House for Mr Biswas (1961); and Wilson Harris, eg Guyana Quartet (19603). Several of these writers moved to England in the 1950s, where they were encouraged by the BBC's Caribbean Voices programme. Meanwhile Derek Walcott published several volumes of poetry and created the Trinidad Theatre Workshop: poet/historian Edward Brathwaite set new voices to old rhythms in his trilogy The Arrivants (19679), which has been influential on the performance poetry of Bongo Jerry and Linton Kwesi Johnson (1952 ). Other writers include the poets James Berry (1924 ) and Fred d'Aguiar (1960 ), and the novelist/dramatist Caryl Phillips (1958 ).
Caribbean literature is the term generally accepted for the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language--whether written in English, Spanish, French, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.
Territories included in the category "West Indian"
The literature of Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Turks and Caicos would normally be considered to belong to the wider category of West Indian literature.
Development of the idea of West Indian literature
The term "West Indian literature" first began to achieve wide currency in the 1950s, when writers like Samuel Selvon, John Hearne, Edgar Mittelholzer, V.S. A sense of a single literature developing across the islands was also encouraged in the 1940s by the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices, which featured stories and poems written by West Indian authors, recorded in London under the direction of producer Henry Swanzy, and broadcast back to the islands.
Many--perhaps most--West Indian writers have found it necessary to leave their home territories and base themselves in the United Kingdom, the United States, or Canada in order to make a living from their work--in some cases spending the greater parts of their careers away from the territories of their birth. Naipaul ought to be considered a British writer, or Jamaica Kincaid an American writer, but most West Indian readers and critics still consider these writers "West Indian".
West Indian literature ranges over subjects and themes as wide as those of any other "national" literature, but in general many West Indian writers share a special concern with questions of identity, ethnicity, and language that rise out of the Caribbean historical experience.
Two West Indian writers have won the Nobel Prize for Literature: Derek Walcott (1992), born in St. Lucia, resident mostly in Trinidad during the 1960s and 70s, and partly in the United States since then; (Saint-John Perse, who won the Nobel Prize in 1960, was born in the French territory of Guadeloupe.)
Some significant West Indian writers
(Grouped by territory of birth or upbringing)
User Comments Add a comment…