African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
149 p, "This interdisciplinary study combines concepts of symbolic anthropology with traditional literary criticism to survey six novels by the Caribbean authors George Lamming and Wilson Harris." (Publisher)
Balutansky reviews C. L. R. James, the Artist as Revolutionary by Paul Buhle, C. L. R. James's Caribbean edited by Paget Henry and Paul Buhle, The C. L. R. James Reader edited by Anna Grimshaw, Special Delivery: The Letters of C. L. R. James to Constance Webb, 1939-1948 edited by Anna Grimshaw and C. L. R. James: His Intellectual Legacies edited by Selwyn R. Cudjoe and William E. Cain.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
256 p., This book explores the common links and differences between the works of two modern Caribbean poets, Kamau Braithwaite and Dereck Walcott. The study focuses on the engagement of the two with the mythology of the Caribbean's African experience, defining each poet's contribution to the development of modern Caribbean poetics.
The author examines race, language, and identity in Derek Walcott's poetry, reading Walcott's poetry as an extended meditation on the question of whether it is possible to exist within the English language and an Afro-Caribbean tradition, drawing poetic nourishment from each, or whether the attempt is a betrayal of both. Of mixed racial ancestry, a native speaker of French Creole who was formally educated in British colonial schools, raised Methodist on the Catholic island of St. Lucia, Derek Walcott occupies a peripheral place with respect to both English and Caribbean culture, it is noted. Throughout the course of his poetic career he has been criticized from both perspectives, either for "appropriating the Other" and putting it to use in the service of the dominant culture or for not assimilating that dominant (English) culture fully enough.;
Discusses C.L.R. James's chronicle of the history of the Haitian revolution of 1843 in his book 'The Black Jacobins.' Contrast between the behavior of the Haitian slaves during the working day and their conversations around the supper fire; Conscious organization of the Caribbean nation; Processes of communication that took place in the midst of conflicts.
