Vol 23 / No. 1 & 2 / April/November 2015
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1 Vol 23 / No. 1 & 2 / April/November 2015 Volume 23 Nos. 1 & 2 April/November 2015 Published by the discipline of Literatures in English, University of the West Indies CREDITS Original image: Nadia Huggins Anu Lakhan (copy editor) Nadia Huggins (graphic designer) JWIL is published with the financial support of the Departments of Literatures in English of The University of the West Indies Enquiries should be sent to THE EDITORS Journal of West Indian Literature Department of Literatures in English, UWI Mona Kingston 7, JAMAICA, W.I. Tel. (876) 927-2217; Fax (876) 970-4232 e-mail: [email protected] OR Ms. Angela Trotman Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature Faculty of Humanities, UWI Cave Hill Campus P.O. Box 64, Bridgetown, BARBADOS, W.I. e-mail: [email protected] SUBSCRIPTION RATE US$20 per annum (two issues) or US$10 per issue Copyright © 2015 Journal of West Indian Literature ISSN (online): 2414-3030 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Evelyn O’Callaghan (Editor in Chief) Michael A. Bucknor (Senior Editor) Glyne Griffith Rachel L. Mordecai Lisa Outar Ian Strachan BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Antonia MacDonald EDITORIAL BOARD Edward Baugh Victor Chang Alison Donnell Mark McWatt Maureen Warner-Lewis EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Laurence A. Breiner Rhonda Cobham-Sander Daniel Coleman Anne Collett Raphael Dalleo Denise deCaires Narain Curdella Forbes Aaron Kamugisha Geraldine Skeete Faith Smith Emily Taylor THE JOURNAL OF WEST INDIAN LITERATURE has been published twice-yearly by the Departments of Literatures in English of the University of the West Indies since October 1986. Edited by full time academics and with minimal funding or institutional support, the Journal originated at the same time as the first annual conference on West Indian Literature, the brainchild of Edward Baugh, Mervyn Morris and Mark McWatt. It reflects the continued commitment of those who followed their lead to provide a forum in the region for the dissemination and discussion of our literary culture. Initially featuring contributions from scholars in the West Indies, it has become an internationally recognized peer-reviewed academic journal. The Editors invite the submission of articles in English that are the result of scholarly research in literary textuality (fiction, prose, drama, film, theory and criticism) of the English-speaking Caribbean. We also welcome comparative assessments of non- Anglophone Caribbean texts provided translations into English of the relevant parts of such texts are incorporated into the submission. JWIL will also publish book reviews. Submission guidelines are available at www.jwilonline.org. Table of Contents “I Married My Mother”: Jamaica Kincaid’s See Now Then 8 Daryl Cumber Dance On Scanning Louise Bennett Seriously 19 Ben Etherington The Interplay of Political and Existential Freedom in Earl 35 Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance Tohru Nakamura Pamela Mordecai’s Poetry: Some Questions for Further 47 Consideration Stephanie McKenzie “Your journey, even when bumpy,/will be sweet”: Jamaica 73 in Kei Miller’s A Light Song of Light Bartosz Wójcik “Our words spoken among us, in fragments”: Austin 89 Clarke’s Aesthetics of Crossing Paul Barrett Sounding Out Spirit Thievery in Erna Brodber’s Myal 106 Anne Margaret Castro Reading the Critical Pastoral in Lovelace’s Salt and 121 Roffey’s White Woman on the Green Bicycle Erin Fehskens Book reviews Jean Goulbourne 136 Parable of the Mangoes Aisha T. Spencer Marlon James 139 A Brief History of Seven Killings Philip Nanton Vladimir Lucien 142 Sounding Ground Laurence A. Breiner 145 Notes on Contributors 8 “I Married My Mother”: Jamaica Kincaid’s See Now Then* Daryl Cumber Dance Jamaica Kincaid, courtesy of Creative Commons Images. I am always thinking of my mother; I believe every action of a certain kind that I make is completely influenced by her. —Kincaid, “The Estrangement” 43 In 2013, fourteen years after the death of her mother, Annie Victoria Richardson Drew, eleven years after her divorce from Allen Shawn, and eight years after her last major publication (Among Flowers), Jamaica Kincaid published See Now Then: A Novel.1 The text relates the story of the vicious cruelty of a short, ugly, unfaithful, impotent, unsuccessful, insecure, cowardly rodent of a husband towards his aging, hateful, overweight, loud, exaggerative, unsophisticated, insecure and unattractive wife. The author, who has frequently insisted that all of her work was autobiography, primarily about her and her mother (“the central figure in my life,” Mr. Potter 153); that there was no reason to be a writer without autobiography; and 9 that she did not know how to write a story about something that had not happened to her, was suddenly offended that this novel about the bitter dissolution of the marriage of an interracial Vermont couple was viewed as autobiographical. She declared that the book was “in no way my autobiography” (Haber n. pag); “See Now Then… isn’t my own life. What I was describing wasn’t my own life” (Alleyne n. pag). She expressed amazement that anyone would want to know about her life: What do they think I am? A famous person? What is it about me that makes people want to know? I’ve written a book about my mother, and I don’t remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this new book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.2 In typical Kincaid fashion (making contradictory statements) she did admit to Hannah Levintova that she “suppose[d]” she was thinking about her own marriage when she wrote the novel (n. pag.). She also told Levintova that she never thought about how her former husband might react to the book because it never occurred to her that the novel was “about anybody” (n. pag.). When asked if her former husband had read the book, she declared: “Since it’s not about him, I don’t know why he would”(“10 Questions” 60). In the same interview she insists that when she wrote the book, “I wasn’t thinking of myself ” (60). After bitterly denouncing racist critics who insist on reading the work as autobiography because she is not Norman Mailer and because she looks “different”, Kincaid tells Headlee that they miss the major focus in the novel as reflected in its title: time itself. While there is much to be said here about the significance of time (as in her other novels) it would be hard not to read the title as a parody of the title of Lillian Ross’s publication of Here but Not Here (1998). The book contains shocking revelations about Ross’s forty-year affair with William Shawn (Allen Shawn’s father), who spent part of every day with her but always went home to have dinner with his legal family.3 Alluding to that affair in See, Kincaid points to an idyllic period in the wife’s married life when her husband had not yet found “the note from his father, the note that told him how to lead his life: two households, two wives” (90). In Dwight Garner’s review of See, he suggests that the works of the two spurned women might well be issued under one cover with a combined title: “Not Here Now, But Here Then, See?” It is not unlikely that Kincaid is also signifying on the title of Allen Shawn’s memoir, Wish I Could Be There, which certainly seems to be a play on Ross’s book, Here but Not Here. The three books might make an interesting trilogy about abandonment titled I Now See You Didn’t Wish to Be Here Then.4 At any rate the Shawn and Ross memoirs (rarely referenced in Kincaid scholarship) are critical to our reading of Kincaid’s latest autobiographical work, despite the fact that she is only briefly mentioned in them. Though See Now Then addresses a part of her life not treated in her earlier works and absent from the substantial body of Kincaid scholarship critiquing her relationship with her mother and the rest of her family in Antigua, the title is just the first hint that the author here, as in the rest of her canon, is continuing to write autobiography (or at least autobiographical fiction)—but with a different antagonist.5 This is signaled early on in the fact that her protagonist’s name is Jamaica Sweet, a combination of the name Kincaid chose for herself and by which she is known (Jamaica) and a variation of Sweetie, Allen Shawn’s pet name for her.6 Always eluding easy interpretation, Kincaid explained in her interview with Haber that she chose the name to reflect the irony that the couple’s garbage man in Vermont was a Mr Sweet. Also significant is the fact that the author seemingly merges Mrs Sweet and Jamaica Kincaid in the narration or at least makes it difficult for the reader to distinguish between them. The story employs an omniscient narrator and is largely presented in the third-person with Kincaid writing 10 about Mrs Sweet, revealing her thoughts and actions, and sometimes providing a lengthy quotation of Mrs Sweet’s writing (28–32) or her thoughts (137–39, 166–67, 176–78). Occasionally, we are given Mrs Sweet’s reflections and memories from the first person without quotation marks (110–12, 152–57), but for the most part Kincaid maintains the third-person point of view narrative. In one instance when Mrs Sweet is being quoted, we are told that she read to her son a chapter from a book called See Then Now. There is also a suggestion that it is Mrs Sweet who is writing this book, See Now Then (132).