History has produced a myriad of cultural overlays in the Caribbean and the adjacent region of South America, a legacy of centuries of intrusion by rival European empires and the consequent sporadic exchange between the European invaders of the various local territories and peoples they claimed to control. The result is a mixture of peoples, languages, religions, and all other aspects of human culture, reflected in enrichment of the respective European and African languages involved, as well as in creation of new hybrid languages. It is in this context that one can speak of "Caribbean" literature and art from Suriname and the Netherlands.
"The rise of the Afro-Cuban musical genre commonly known as son is representative
of Cuban society’s ability to affirm through art its primary cultural influences: Europe and Africa. Despite the successful transculturation within the music, however, the events surrounding the creation and acceptance of son reiterate the struggle between Cuban elites and the masses to define lo cubano. In this essay, I will show how the social and political conditions under which son became a representation of popular culture in Cuba served as a catalyst for the affirmation
of Cuba’s African roots, despite attempts on the part of the elite to exclude Afro-Cubans from establishing any connection to Cuban national identity." --The Author
"Any attempt to trace the many resonances that historically have been attached to the creole figure in Caribbean literature and culture will be inflected by the long and pervading presence of colonialism in the region and its attendant corollary of hierarchical social separation and difference based on perceptions of race. Indeed, the ambivalent desire and subjective misrecognition that lay at the heart of historical writing about colonialism and racism have tended to frame the issues of monstrosity and exclusion that produced the creole as part and parcel of wider colonial discourses. Thus, the shifting and increasingly unstable inscription of the creole figure echoes, in a certain sense, certain critical ambiguities of politics and temporality that color the colonial encounter and its aftermath. Specifically, in the contemporary English- and French-speaking Caribbean, the multiplicity, displacement, and creative instability that undergird creole-driven theories of postcolonial performance have supplanted this category's suspect beginnings as colonialism's model for the fearfully unnameable and unplaceable hybrid monstrosity, and now increasingly shape the substance of much of the artistic and creative work emerging from the region." --The Author
"Dutch Caribbean literature--that is literature written by Caribbean authors in Dutch--is written in Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba and the Netherlands. So far, this literature has been reviewed from separate, national points of view. It is true that the countries differ. For centuries, Suriname was an agricultural and plantation economy; the Antilles flourished through trade. Suriname became independent in 1975, while the islands chose to remain part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This article seeks to transcend borders and opposites to approach this four century-old literature as the expression of a common Caribbean culture, a unity." --The Author
This anthology celebrates these authors as Caribbean authors, who through their translated writing enable us to become "third listeners," eavesdropping on a Caribbean conversation." (Hilda van Neck-Yoder)
Arion explores various issues related to Caribbean culture and what he calls 'Caribbeanness,' a stage which he feels the whole region has not reached yet
