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APOCRYPHA of NANNY's Secfiets: the REETORIC of RECOVERY DANNABANG Mabong Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial

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APOCRYPHA of NANNY's Secfiets: the REETORIC of RECOVERY DANNABANG Mabong Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial APOCRYPHA OF NANNY'S SECFiETS: THE REETORIC OF RECOVERY IN AF'RICARIBBEAN WOMEN'S POETRY. DANNABANG mABONG Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy MCMASTER UNIVERSITY O Copyright by Dannabang Kuwabong Septembar 1997. National Library Bibliothéque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada CaMda The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou su.format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be p~tedor otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. APOCRYPHA OF NANNY'S SECRETS DOCTOR OF PHLLOSOPHY (1997) MCMASTER UNIVERSITY (ENGLISH) HAMILTON, ONTARIO APOCRYPHA OF NANNY'S SECRETS: THE REFETORIC OF RECOVERY IN AFRiCARIBBEAN WOMEN'S POETRY. AUTHOR: DANNABANG KUWABONG, B.A. (GHANA) M.LITT (STIRLING) SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR LORRAINE YORK NUMBER OF PAGES: viii, 295. AMISECRC/ (DEDICATION) N boarang na de a gban nga N nang di dogee scgi baare ko Ng poga Hawa, aning te biiri: Mwinidiayeh, Angtuongmwini, Delemwini, aning ba nabaale nang ba la kyebe-Matiesi Kuwabong. Ka ba anang da ba are N puoreng a puoro kpiangaa yaga kora ma, N ba teBre ka N danaang tuong baare a toma nga. Le zuing, N de la a tiizis nga puore ning ba bareka. (1 wish to deàicaïe this wors to rny ~Ffe,Hawa, azd our z9~ldrer: Mwiniàiayeh, Anqtuongmwini, ana Delernwi~i, and cheir grandfacher who Fs no ionger alive--Matthais Kuwabonq. If rney nad not stood solidly 8y me, ând cor.scantly prayea for me, I wculd not have been dble :O romplere this thesis. On accgunt of that, I cffer the chesis to chem). iii Eau do 1 talk when there are no words say it again spicy words ride on spicy sounds Say it again and there are times for such feasts but not today for aow 1 surrender to what X have done but 60 have we this thesis treats unsalted words boiled on stones of herstory given on the day of sound etarvation amidst drums of power this thesis feeds on bleeding words of sisters of the Sun without whose pain i bave no re-mambering negatione to them 1 offer thanksgiving for lending me their sighs but uria mot bear wit mi. no tire yet, For ai wan tek wan marti salut wit bokuu respekt trowey for una, Plofesa Lorraine York- Na yu corn save mi from bakyad wahala, wei i no sabi find leg put for ground in de tizzis. And den yu naaaa, yu liid mi to dis brait spot. 1 no shame at al1 at al1 mek yeye al1 de taim about hau yu gib mi korage, darektion, and ekseelent supervion al1 de way. To yu also, Plofesa Donald Goellnichtl Na yu mek reada namba 1 kpatakpata. For de wey yu tek taim corn read al1 drafts of de tiizis wit nice nais nais commentary, na yu 1 de salut woo. Mek 1 no kuku forget Plofesa James Dale. Hal ha1 how yu run comot retirement sign papers mek 1 finie, 1 say barka yaga. Last but not little, Plofesa Jefferey Donaldeon, 1 tank yu for taking mi tru de ealy stages of dis wahala tiizis. Nuns and Priest, Trinidad, Brickdam Cathedral, Guyana, Plofeseaa Jaae Bryce, Edward Baugh, Mervyn Morris, Mark McWatt, etc etc, al1 dem UWI librarians, writers, in de Caribbean, RedCloth Sisters, 1 salut una yu all. McMaster University and Ghana Government, tank yu for supporting mi financially. To al1 de rest, 1 trowey wan maiti salut woo..... September 1997. Dannabang Kuwabong. ABSTRACT This thesis is a comparatoive study of four Africaribbean women's poetry: Marlene Nourbese Philip, Claire Harris, Lorna Goodison, Cynthia James. It is also a study of what it means to be a minority writer who happens to be fernale and Black in Canada. 1 look at how various factors affect the way these poets use language to develop an Africaribbean/Canadiari feminist rhetoric of recovery, not only for themselves as individuals, but also for Africaribbean group healing and growth. The thesis is divided into five chapters and a tentative conclusion. In Chapter One, 1 address the various theoretical locations or un-locations and paradigms of Caribbean literary and critical history in order to contextuatlize my reading of the work of these poets. 1 discuss the salient issues of silence, voice, marginality, language, and audience. Chapter Two takes me through an exploration of the evolution of voice in Marlene Nourbese Philip's poetry within antagonistic yet receptive Canadian literaryscape. 1 explore her work through theories and practices of decontructing and deterritorializing the imperial father tongue--English--insearch of a lost mother tongue. Claire Harris developments through high modernist, feminist/postcoloniaf territories become the framework for my examination of her poetry. But this examination is also done within the background of prairie culture and Canadian political of multiculturalisrn. Her treatment of Africaribbean femininity, gender relations, race, mother- daughter relations through a collage of linguistic paraphenalia and literary models is traced and explained. In Chapter Four, 1 compare the politics of cultural location that produce the discourse of contestation in both Philip and Harris with Lorna Gaodison's exploration of Africaribbean culture, and religions from her Jamaican location. 1 opined that Goodison unlike Philip and Harris to some ecxtent is not very concerned with conLesting any domionant group for space and audeince, but searching for an ideology of healing the wounded souls of her people. In Chapter Five, 1 study Cynthia James's poetic of healing in a Trinbagonian society. My central concern t here is how James makes use of innovative collages of Trinbagonian traditional belief systems, cultural musical productions, and religious and literary traditions to get her people to move from moaning ground to heartease. 1 arrive finally at a tentative conclusion which stresses a transnational, inter- and intra-theoretical, paralinguistic, and multicultural reading of any of these poets. vii CONTENTS DEDICATION iii ACKNOFTïGEMENTS iv JUSTRACT CONTENTS viii INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE "Silence / welcomes / the hungry word": Marlene Nourbese Philipls Rhetoric of Recovery 53 CHAPTER TWO Claire Harris and the Rhetoric of Detoxification 106 CHAPTER THREE Lorna Goodison's Rhetoric of Heartsease 157 CHAPTER FOüR Cynthia James: From Moaning Ground to Wholeness Songs 222 CONCLUSION Conclusion in Transit ... 269 Bibliography : viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCING AFRICARIBBEAN~ RElETORIC OF RgCOVgRY: OPENING CONCBPIpAfrIZATIONS . Africaribbean literature originates from a desire CO recover the Africaribbean personhood from the history of slavery and colonization. 1 see in Africaribbean literature a search for a rhetoric that can facilitate that recovery. In saying this, 1 do not imply that tne concept of recovery originated among Africaribbean people, nor do 1 wish to suggest that it is the only preoccupation of Africaribbean writers. Let me state here then that the concept of recovery is fundamental to al1 communities that have undergone dramatic or cataclysrnic changes in history. The rhetoric of recovery can take several forms, including literature, language, politics, cultural revivalism, religion, and remigration to a homeland from exile. The urgency of the rhetoric is proportional to the magnitude of the interruption of the communityls history and patterns of life. Thus a displaced people, such as Africaribbeans, who have lost a significant part of the original mother tongue(s), cultural ethos, cosmological space, religion and land, have a greater urgency in developing a rhetoric of recovery. Africaribbean people have had their histories distorted, denigrated or denied for so ' 1 use the terms Africaribbean, Afrisporic, Africentric, in the thesis because they are more gender neutral terms than Afro-Caribbean, African- Caribbean, Afra-Caribbean, Afrocentric, and Afrosporic. My terms remove the sense of hyphenation and male biases that the other terms suggest. 2 long that there is an urgency in their desire to develop a rhetoric of recovery without the agency of an original mother tongue. In this thesis, 1 analyse the various paradigms that have been used by four Africaribbean women poets--Mariene Nourbese Philip, Claire Barris, Lorna Goodison, and Cynthia James--to contribute to an Africaribbean rhetoric of recovery. Starting with figures such as Claude McKay, A. J. Seymour, Vic Reid, Paul L. Dunbar, Una Marson, and Louise Bennett, through to Philip, Harris, Goodison, and James, linguistic creolization has been the most important asset for Africaribbeans in their resistance to European cultural domination on slave plantations. The preoccupation of Africaribbean writers with the question of language should not, however, be read as a new age post-colonial strategy for recuperation. It is not the same type of nostalgie poetics engaged in by settler colonists, but a continuation, consolidation, and expansion of a historical legacy of struggles against Euro-American domination. George Lamming brilliantly explicates this position in his review of Caliban's situation in The Tempest in his book The Pleasures of Exile. Taking a poststructuralist stand on language, Laming contends that language, for the Africaribbean individual and community, extends beyond the colonizing European tongue into an act of "speech and concept as a way, a method, a necessary avenue towards areas of the self which could not be reached in any other waym (109).
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