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Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Alexander, Camille S (2017) Giving Backchat: Gendered Social Critiques in Anglo-Caribbean, Migrant Female Literature. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,. DOI Link to record in KAR https://kar.kent.ac.uk/63874/ Document Version UNSPECIFIED Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html GIVING BACKCHAT: GENDERED SOCIAL CRITIQUES IN ANGLO-CARIBBEAN, MIGRANT FEMALE LITERATURE Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in English by Camille S. Alexander Department of English, University of Kent Canterbury August 2017 i ABSTRACT Giving backchat is a popular term in the Anglophone Caribbean and is locally considered a form of gendered speech. This form of discourse is like the African American concept of talking back with the exception of intent; giving backchat is not intended to convey disrespect whereas backtalk is impertinent. Typically applied to girls and young women, giving backchat is a way of challenging, interrogating, and upsetting social, cultural, and familial gender-biased norms in closed and sometimes unyielding groups that seek to impose forced silences on female group members. This project examines the appearances giving backchat makes throughout the texts of Anglophone Caribbean female writers—particularly those who are migrant, immigrant, and resident in Britain beginning in the 19th century and extending to the 21st century. Female authors with Caribbean roots residing in the UK such as Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Jean Rhys, Una Marson, Beryl Gilroy, Joyce Gladwell, Andrea Levy, Jean Binta Breeze, and Eintou Pearl Springer utilise giving backchat in their texts, which include slave narratives, travelogues, novels, and poetry, to question the often stagnant roles women occupy in societies; to challenge false immigrant narratives or immigrant narratives exclusive of girls and women of colour; and to create dialogues more inclusive of the colonised or formerly colonised, female Other living in the Imperial, host society. This project examines several examples of immigrant narratives by these authors, fiction and nonfiction, to determine how giving backchat functions in these texts to promote a discourse focused on issues relevant to Anglophone Caribbean immigrant women living in the UK. Key words: Caribbean literature, giving backchat, gender, migration ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend warm thanks to Abdulrazak Gurnah, who has been an adviser, a guide, a helpful critic, and without whom I would not have achieved this goal. I cannot proceed without thanking my sisters Gwen Lavert, Bernadette Russo, Alfreda Haggard, Leila Aouadi, Freida Kinney, Deborah Singh, Bernice Ferdinand, and Erica Hubbard. There is not enough room in this text to list the many ways that you supported, encouraged, and consoled me along this journey. All that I can offer are these meagre words of undying gratitude appreciation. Most important on this list of acknowledgements is Almeera X, a staunch supporter, a harsh critic, and an exceptional research assistant during this process. Without you, there would be no text. iii For Ya Almeera X iv We Have Always Been There… by Eulalia Bernard We have always been there… We have always been there. We are the miracle of survival. We have taken care of lands of people. We have dug up foolishness. We have warred disguised poverty. We are indomitable. Yes, you are beauty crossed with energy. Yes, you are queens, warriors, higglers, teachers, prostitutes and preachers. Yes, you are daughters of Isis. Yes, you captured the sprouts of evil cooked, and crushed them to ashes. Yes, you are the architect of good gold. I have the infula to infuse justice. I am the archivolt of my spear, I erect it and demand its inoculation to be powerful. v CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii “WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THERE” v INTRODUCTION vii CHAPTER I: GIVING BACKCHAT 1 A Definition Long Overdue 2 CHAPTER II: TO BE HEARD: GIVING BACKCHAT IN CARIBBEAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 30 A Few Words from the Two Marys: Autobiography during Slavery and Post Emancipation in 19th Century Black British Writing 31 Joyce Gladwell: Searching for Spirituality Away from Home 79 CHAPTER III: THE NOVELTY OF GIVING BACKCHAT: THE CARRIBEAN ROOTS OF BLACK BRITISH LITERATURE 123 The Burden of Insouciance in Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark 124 Arriving on the Windrush but Missing the Boat: Beryl Gilroy’s Lost Novel 146 Andrea Levy’s Windrush Children: Writing Uneasily, but Writing from 171 Home CHAPTER IV: EXPOSING BABYLON: DIASPORIC CARRIBBEAN POETRY AND THE POLITICS OF GIVING BACKCHAT 217 Una Marson’s Immigrant Narrative: Poetry Before the Windrush 218 Calypso, Reggae, and Giving Backchat: Eintou Pearl Springer’s and Jean Binta Breeze’s Rebel Poetry 239 CONCLUSION 281 WORKS CITED 291 vi Introduction Gender theorist Dianne Hall’s research on medieval Ireland notes that words can easily be cast as weapons; women who speak out act as instigators in public acts of male violence (123). Hall recounts a 1312 court case in which Adam, son of John de Midia murdered William Drak; was fined; and received some prison time (122). A closer review of the case reveals that Adam’s wife initiated the altercation by calling William’s brother an apostate in a public tavern, leading to a brawl and William’s stabbing (123). Hall notes that in this instance, “words delivered by a woman had the power to plunge a group of men into violence and led to the death of one of them” (123). This call to violent action by a woman’s words seems unlikely given the relatively secondary societal roles women have occupied in favour of men, yet women have demonstrated historically that their words can elicit a response. For example, in early 2017, the woman who accused 14-year-old Emmett Till of grabbing, menacing, and being sexually crude to her in 1955 admitted that she fabricated the entire incident (Pérez-Peña par. 4). Although her statement represents hearsay and was the result of a script—the innocent, White, female victim of Black male hyper-sexuality—it led to Till’s brutal murder by two adult White males. It cannot escape notice that these incidents, 600 years apart, demonstrate the power women’s words can yield. What is the nature of this power and is it related to the strategies families and societies use to silence women? Perhaps the possibility behind words spoken by females—the ability to either incite violence without prompting as with Adam’s wife or to use one’s voice to enact a violent script as with Till’s female accuser—that motivates families and societies to use cultural codes to silence them. In response, girls, adolescent females, and women learned to give backchat—to challenge, interrogate, and subvert gender-based, imposed silences. This text examines giving backchat in written form although this act is typically verbal. It will undertake a survey of vii nonfiction and fiction texts by Caribbean female immigrant, migrant, and resident writers in Britain, focusing on the 20th century but also touching on the 19th and 21st centuries, to examine a tendency to challenge imposed silences, intended to police and censor their speech. For Black Caribbean immigrants moving to the UK from the 20th century and later, the expectations about life in Britain were similar while their experiences were slightly different. Caribbean immigrants left societies in which they represented a population majority that held only a minor share of that society's power and immigrated to Britain where they became a population minority in an unwelcoming environment and were, for the most part, powerless. The consensus was that they were going ‘home’ to Mother England, and that because they were British, they would be welcomed. However, the issues they faced resulting from their ‘immigrant’ status and perceived difference were like the experiences of Caribbean immigrants of the 19th century. Sociologist Paul Gilroy notes that West Indians immigrating up to the onset of regional independence should have been included in the idea of British national identity but were often “seen as bastard people occupying an intermediate space” between Britishness, “which is their colonial legacy and an amorphous, ahistorical relationship with the dark continent” (Ain’t No Black 45). The exclusion of Anglophone Caribbeans from British national identity resulted from the linking of “conceptions of national belonging and [racial] homogeneity” (Ain’t No Black 45). Immigrant women faced an addition issue with settling into the new environment as they were typically viewed with suspicion by governments, which hesitated to allow single women to immigrate because the women might be prostitutes; by resident women, who saw immigrant women as sexual threats; and by societies, which marginalised immigrant women because they represented an unnameable difference. This suspicion was marked if the women came from tropical or unknown areas such as the Caribbean. viii This image of women from tropical climates as more sexual extends back in the White, European imagination to the display of Sarah Baartman, the so-called Hottentot Venus, throughout the continent.