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Volume 1 Volume Volume 1 LUCAYOS School of English Studies Spring 2008 The College of The Bahamas P.O. Box N-4912 Nassau, Bahamas 9 789768 170903 LLucayosCoverucayosCover toto pprint.inddrint.indd 1 55/21/08/21/08 111:33:591:33:59 AAMM LUCAYOS 2008 Media Enterprises Ltd Nassau, Bahamas LUCAYOS Volume 1, Spring 2008 EDITORS Marjorie Brooks-Jones Daphne M. Grace Ian G. Strachan EDITORIAL ADVISORS Victor Chang Mark McWatt Jennifer Rahim CORRESPONDENCE AND SUBSCRIPTION REQUESTS All correspondence and subscription requests should be addressed to: Lucayos School of English Studies Th e College of Th e Bahamas P.O. Box N4912 Nassau, Bahamas Telephone: (242) 302-4381/5 Email: [email protected] SUBSCRIPTIONS Individual copies $15.00 (Bahamian or US dollars) Cheque/money order payable to Th e College of Th e Bahamas Copyright ©2008 Th e College of Th e Bahamas ISBN 10: 976-8170-90-5 ISBN 13: 978-976-8170-90-3 EAN: 9789768170903 COVER “Old Man” by John Cox (2002) Layout design by Media Enterprises Ltd, PO Box N-9240, 31 Shirley Park Avenue, Nassau, Bahamas Tel: 242 325 8210 Fax: 242 325 8065 - Contents - Editors v Editorial Advisors vi Editors’ Introduction to Lucayos vii 1 Th e Silent Scream in Selected Texts by West Indian Writers 9 Jean Antoine-Dunne 2 Th e Tourist and the Native: Rereading Myths of Conquest in Lucy and Last Virgin in Paradise 21 Carolyn Cooper 3 Mapping Patriotic Pain: Caribbean novels of D’Aguiar and Danticat 33 Daphne M. Grace 4 Laying the Past to Rest: Revising History by Resisting Death in Fred D’Aguiar’s Feeding the Ghosts 44 Brandi Bingham Kellett 5 Re-membering Our Scattered Skeletons: Inscribing the Zong Massacre in Caribbean Literature 60 Paula Morgan 6 “Making Life”: Displacement (and its antidote) in the work of Lorna Goodison 78 Anthea Morrison 7 What Racial Hybridity? – Sexual Politics of Mixed-Race Identities in the Caribbean and the Performance of Blackness 90 Angelique Nixon 8 Naipaul’s legacy: “Created in the West Indies” – for Export 106 Evelyn O’Callaghan 9 Derek Walcott’s Th e Prodigal: Th e Traveling Man Blues 118 Sandra Pouchet Paquet iii Lucayos 10 Legitimate resistance: A survival story – the crisis of Jamaican political ideology and the quest for resolution in some recent Jamaican novels 128 Kim Robinson-Walcott 11 Th e Fuguing Fictions of Erna Brodber and Elizabeth Nunez: Responses to Trauma in Louisiana and Beyond the Limbo Silence 139 Carmen Maria Ruiz-Castenada 12 “Rites of Spring” 155 Mark McWatt Contributors 158 iv Editors Marjorie Brooks-Jones PhD (Miami) teaches in the School of English Studies at Th e College of Th e Bahamas. Recent publications are the essays, “Telling a ‘Nativist’ Story: Patricia Glinton-Meicholas’s A Shift in the Light” (College of Th e Bahamas Research Journal Vol. 13, 2005) and “Rewriting Empire: from Colonialism Incorporated in Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures in Many Lands to Michelle Cliff ’s Project of Decolonisation in No Telephone to Heaven” in Swinging her Breasts at History: Language, Body and the Caribbean Woman’s Text (Mango Publishing, 2006). Current projects include a comparative study of contemporary Bahamian and Caribbean Women’s Writing. She is a member of the editorial board of Anthurium, A Caribbean Studies Journal. Daphne Grace DPhil (Sussex) teaches in the School of English Studies, Th e College of Th e Bahamas (Northern Campus). She holds a doctorate in English Literature; an MA in English and American Literature with a specialization in creative writing; and a BA in English and Anthropology. She has also taught at the University of Sussex, England, and at Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus. She has researched and published widely in anthologies, and has authored two monographs: Th e Woman in the Muslin Mask: Veiling and Identity in Postcolonial Literature (2004) and Relocating Consciousness: Diasporic Writers and the Dynamics of Literary Experience (2007). She is a member of the editorial board for the e-journal, Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, and a reader for Wasafi ri: Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures in English. Ian Strachan PhD (Pennsylvania) is Assistant Professor of English at Th e College of Th e Bahamas. He is author of God’s Angry Babies (Lynne Rienner, 1997) and Paradise and Plantation: Tourism and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean (Virginia, 2002). His play “No Seeds in Babylon” appears in Contemporary Drama of the Caribbean (2002). His poetry is included in New Caribbean Poetry (Carcanet, 2007) and his creative work has appeared in the journals Poui, Th e Caribbean Writer and Small Axe. v Lucayos Editorial Advisors Victor Chang PhD (Queen’s University, Canada). Is a Senior Lecturer, Literatures in English, Faculty of Humanities and Education) at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. Publications include Th ree Caribbean Poets on Th eir Work: Brathwaite, Morris, Goodison (Institute of Caribbean Studies UWI, 1993); “Th e Coming of the Chinese to the West Indies: Living the Heritage in a New Homeland: the Jamaican Experience” (2004); and “Select Bibliography of the Literature of the English-speaking Caribbean” (Journal of West Indian Literature 2000). Mark McWatt PhD (Leeds) read English Language and Literature at the University of Toronto, graduating with honours in 1970. His fi rst volume of poetry Interiors appeared in 1989, followed in 1994 by Th e Language of Eldorado, which won the Guyana Prize for poetry that year. In 2005 he published his fi rst collection of short stories entitled Suspended Sentences which won the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book of fi ction, the Overall Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the Casa de las Americas prize in the category of Best Caribbean Book Written in English or Creole. He co-edited with Stewart Brown Th e Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (2005). Formerly he was professor in West Indian literature at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. He was founding editor in 1986 of the Journal of West Indian Literature and still serves as joint editor. Jennifer Rahim PhD (University of the West Indies) is a lecturer in Literatures in English in the Department of Liberal Arts at UWI, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. She has published essays on Caribbean literature and is also a poet and writer of short fi ction. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, Mothers Are Not the Only Linguists (1992), Between the Fence and the Forest (2002) and Approaching Sabbaths: Poems (publication date October 2008). She has recently published the short fi ction collection Songster and Other Stories (2007). vi Editors’ Introduction to LUCAYOS It is with great pleasure that the editors welcome you to Lucayos, a biennial peer reviewed journal of literature, culture and the arts, produced by the School of English Studies, College of Th e Bahamas. “Luyacos” is the name of both the original peoples of Th e Bahamas and the islands them- selves, indicating a harmonious coexistence of cultural and natural envi- ronments, the link of the mental and physical worlds. As editors, we hope to preserve the concord inherent in the connecting of creative and artistic expressions of cultural and social life that the name “Lucayos” suggests while at the same time inculcating a critical regional cultural awareness. Lucayos is intended to be a forum for academic exchange and schol- arship, intellectual debate, informed dialogue, critical thought, and crea- tive expressions of the liberal and fi ne arts. Th is fi rst issue celebrates Th e College of Th e Bahamas’ hosting for the fi rst time the West Indian Literature Conference, and it comprises ar- ticles originally given as presentations and papers at the 26th West Indian Literature Conference, March 08-10 2007. Participants representing vari- ous Caribbean nations and islands, Great Britain and the United States gathered to discuss the theme of “Horizons”, a symbol of imagination, as- piration and freedom, as envisaged by scholars and creative writers. In the words of COB’s President, Janyne Hodder, the theme of “Horizons” chal- lenged the conference “to see a world of possibilities and promise, suggest- ing that perceived borders do not limit the fi eld of our endeavours”. Th e alternative visions and innovative possibilities addressed by the conference included the themes of: journeying, displacements and dis- junctions, memory and trauma, national poetics and politics, and diverse representations of Caribbean identities. Th e papers published here repre- sent a cross-section of the topics. Future editions of Lucayos will highlight works by and discussion of Bahamian and Caribbean writers and artists. Th ey will also incorporate contributions from the larger west-Atlantic intellectual community. Th ey will therefore maintain an appreciation of local, regional and world culture. Contributions to future editions may be sent at any time to the editors. Th e College of Th e Bahamas—as evidenced by this publication—is increasingly involved in scholarly work and research as it moves rapidly towards university status. We expect, therefore, that the next issue of this journal will be a University of Th e Bahamas production. Marjorie Brooks-Jones Daphne M. Grace Ian G. Strachan March 2008 vii 1• The Silent Scream in Selected Texts by West Indian Writers Jean Antoine-Dunne Th e leaping Caribs whiten, in one fl ash, the instant Th e race leapt at Sauteurs, A cataract! One scream of bounding lace (Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 213) According to Gordon Rohlehr in his gloss of what follows next, this scream precedes the poetic act of burying the dead as an act of exorcism, and Walcott uses the mattock for this purpose: Th e mattock, his tool of choice, is more normally used to loosen the soil for a digging, or to unearth tough roots and stones.