DOCSLIB.ORG

{PDF EPUB} It Falls Into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey It Falls Into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
{PDF EPUB} It Falls Into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey It Falls Into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Phyllis Shand Allfrey was born in 1908 into a family of white colonial officials in the British colony of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. Like her compatriot and onetime friend, the writer Jean Rhys - Phyllis has a particular significance in the region as a political as well as a literary figure. Her acclaimed novel, The Orchid House paved the way for a successful writing career in Britain but instead she returned to the Caribbean in 1954 and entered politics. Since her death in 1986, Phyllis's literary work has been neglected. However this month sees the publication of It Falls into Place - her previously unpublished short fiction - which highlights her contribution to the development of West Indian literature. Angela Robson has been finding out more about Phyllis Shand Allfrey's life. She spoke first to Lenox Honeychurch, Phyllis's friend and literary executor in Dominica. It Falls Into Place: the stories of Phyllis Shand Allfrey By: Phyllis Shand Allfrey Published by: Papillote Press ISBN: 0953222411. Disclaimer The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Allfrey, who was born in 1908 into a family of white colonial officials, is the author of the acclaimed novel, The Orchid House which was made into a movie for British television by Trinidadian film maker Horace Ove in 1991. She was also a political activist, and was famous for her role in the founding of Dominica’s first political party, the Dominica Labour Party in 1955. Her inspiration to form a political party in Dominica came after she returned home from London where she was a member of the Fabien Party. "When she returned there, there was a transformation," said Allfrey's biographer Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. "There were no political parties in Dominica. She saw the need for people's participation in politics. It was a very period in the history of party formation in the Caribbean and she essentially abandoned her writing career to go from town to town by foot. It was an amazing effort she made to try to put together a party along the Fabien-Socialist lines." Lennox Honeychurch, Allfrey’s friend and literary executor, told the BBC that Allfrey’s involvement in politics was frowned upon by the White elites in Dominica. Political legacy. "It was a peculiar situation; here is this white West Indian, a petit woman coming out among the working class people to launch this first political party in Dominica," he said. "This made her in the eyes of her class a traitor, and she was a traitor not only to the few white people who still existed, she was a traitor to the very powerful mulatto or coloured elite who felt she was actually turning against her class and helping to destroy their interests." Paravisini-Gebert said although Allfrey saw her involvement in Dominican politics as a way of contributing to the development of the nation, it was driven by her ambition to leave a legacy. "Phyllis always had a deep desire for recognition of one sort or another. She was ambitious but she also had a sense of destiny," Paravisini-Gebert said. "She talked about connections, she talked about the whole sense of 'noblesse oblige' and that it was her social role and obligation to work towards the benefit of the people. There was a sense in her perhaps of legacy. There was an ambition to leave a legacy, to leave something behind." Allfrey also served as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs for the West Indian Federation in Trinidad, but when the Federation came to an abrupt end in 1962, Allfrey returned to Dominica. On her return to Dominica, she was expelled from the party she had formed, and her involvement in politics was limited to running and editing a newspaper, The Star. Although Allfrey's novel was quite successful, her work never received the critical acclaim of her compatriot Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea. 'Delicate balance' The Orchid House tells the story of the return of three white sisters to their Caribbean birthplace, through the eyes of Lally, their Black nurse and chronicles the decline of a once-wealthy planter family. Critics have said The Orchid House also illustrates the growth of a truly Caribbean sensibility within that class, as personified by Allfrey's own life. With the publication of It Falls Into Place, a collection of short stories set in Dominica, New York and London, Allfrey is set to be discovered by a new generation of readers. Her biographer Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert called the collection "a kind of mosaic of this life that she led" and shows the "delicate balance" she had to strike during her life. "The short stories are … a mixture of nostalgia for Dominica and what also comes through too is this sort of humour that she had. She enjoyed life even in its most depressing and perplexing moments," she said. "It's a reflection of life in Dominica and also of the balance that she as a white West Indian, like all white West Indians they had to find between the fact of being caught up with love for the islands and being reviled in a way because their white ancestry is associated with the plantations and slavery and yet (they were) passionate about the culture of the people." It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey was a Dominican writer, social activist, and a former parliamentarian in the West Indies Federal Parliament. She is best known for her first novel, The Orchid House (1953), based on her own early life, which in 1991 was turned into a Channel 4 television miniseries in the United Kingdom. Early life and education. Phyllis Byam was born on 24 October 1915 in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies. She was the daughter of Francis Byam Berkeley Shand and Elfreda (née Nicholls). Her father's settler family was long established in Roseau. With roots in the West Indies going back to the 17th century, Phyllis later described herself as "a West Indian of over 300 years' standing, despite my pale face." Her earliest ancestor in the West Indies was Lieutenant General William Byam, a Royalist officer who in 1644 defended Bridgwater against a parliamentary force. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was permitted to migrate to the West Indies. After the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, he was granted estates in Antigua. Career. In politics, Allfrey founded the Dominica Labour Party. On the formation of the West Indies Federation, this was affiliated to the West Indies Federal Labour Party, and in 1958 she was elected to the new West Indies legislature, representing Dominica. Within weeks she was serving in the government of Sir Grantley Adams as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs and was the only woman minister of the new Federation. In 1941 Allfrey established a connection with Tribune, the newspaper of the left wing of the British Labour Party where from 1941 to 1944 her reviews, poems and short stories appeared regularly alongside those of regular contributors like Naomi Mitchison, Stevie Smith, Julian Symons, Elizabeth Taylor, Inez Holden and George Orwell who became its literary editor in 1943. Phyllis Shand came second place in an international poetry competition judged by Vita Sackville-West. She edited the Dominica Herald and also published and wrote for another newspaper, The Dominica Star , which was in being between 1965 and 1982. Personal life. Phyllis Shand married Robert Allfrey, an English Oxford engineer, and they had five children, including their adopted sons, Robbie and David, from a Carib reservation. Their daughter Phina, another Oxford University graduate was killed in a motor accident in Botswana. Death and legacy. Allfrey died in Dominica on 4 February 1986, aged 77. A posthumous collection of her short stories, It Falls Into Place , was published in 2004. She left behind an unpublished novel, In the Cabinet . A collection of her poems, Love for an Island: the Collected Poems of Phyllis Shand Allfrey , was published in 2014. Island dreams. R ead Phyllis Shand Allfrey's short story "A Real Person", and you are immediately convinced that you are in the presence of a literary talent. It's a magnificent tale of a white West Indian teenager, two bizarre cats, a black watchman, a goat-girl and her black Buddhist master, the mystery and enchantment of their encounters set in a landscape of crotons, tropical fruit and crick-crick beetles. Its ending is vintage Allfrey, a Lawrentian assertion of the triumph of beauty over death. "Walter might never resolve the doubt, but at least he was certain that he was blissfully alive, that he was capable of practically anything, and that in spite of the mysterious and inexplicable conflict of faiths and races in the world, it was still a world in which miracles happen." So why is Allfrey virtually unknown or ignored in Dominica and in the wider literary world? What went wrong with her life and writing career? The answer has partly to do with Hurricane David, which in 1979 devastated her home and left her destitute. It is also because two years earlier, her beloved daughter Phina had been killed in a car crash. Her friend Lennox Honeychurch wrote: "I can never forget the howl of anguish as I arrived at her house after hearing of the death of Phina." However, the substantial reason for her invisibility is her whiteness. Allfrey was born in 1908 into a white elite family which had dominated Dominica for centuries.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 8 Dwight Street
    LIZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT 8 Dwight Street Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 845 471-7998 (Home) 845 264-7541 (Mobile) http://repeatingislands.com/ (blog) http://lizabethparavisinigebert.com/ (website) OFFICE ADDRESS Vassar College, Box 541 Poughkeepsie, New York 12604 845 437-5611 (voice) 845 437-7025 (fax) [email protected] (e-mail) ACADEMIC DEGREES Ph.D. Comparative Literature. New York University (1982). [Diss. "The Novel as Parody of Popular Narrative Forms in the United States and Latin America: 1963-1980"] M.Phil. Comparative Literature. New York University (1981). M.A. Comparative Literature. New York University (1976). B.A. Comparative Literature. Magna cum laude. University of Puerto Rico (1973). TEACHING EXPERIENCE Professor, on the Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair, Multidisciplinary Programs/ Department of Hispanic Studies, Vassar College, 2004- Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies/Program in Africana Studies, Vassar College, 1997-2004. Visiting Professor, Depts. of English and Hispanic Studies, University of Puerto Rico, February 2007. Visiting Professor, Facultad de Humanidades. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spring 2005. Associate Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies, Vassar College, 1991-1997. Associate Professor, Department of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, Lehman College (City University of New York), 1987-1991. Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Latin American Studies, City College, Fall 1990. Assistant Professor, Department of Puerto Rican Studies, Lehman College (CUNY),
    [Show full text]
  • Paravisini-Gebert CV August 2018
    LIZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT 454 Manhattan Avenue (Apt. 6M) New York, New York 10026 845 264-7541 (Mobile) [email protected] (e-mail) http://lizabethparavisinigebert.com/ (website) OFFICE ADDRESS Vassar College, Box 541 Poughkeepsie, New York 12604 845 437-5611 (voice) 845 437-7025 (fax) EDUCATION Ph.D. Comparative Literature. New York University. [Diss. "The Novel as Parody of Popular Narrative Forms in the United States and Latin America: 1963-1980"] M.Phil. Comparative Literature. New York University M.A. Comparative Literature. New York University B.A. Comparative Literature. Magna cum laude. University of Puerto Rico TEACHING EXPERIENCE Professor, on the Sarah Tod Fitz Randolph Distinguished Professor Chair, Multidisciplinary Programs/ Department of Hispanic Studies, Vassar College, 2004- Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies/Program in Africana Studies, Vassar College, 1997-2004. Visiting Professor, Facultad de Humanidades. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spring 2005. Associate Professor, Department of Hispanic Studies, Vassar College, 1991-1997. Associate Professor, Department of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American Studies, Lehman College (City University of New York), 1987-1991. Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Latin American Studies, City College. Assistant Professor, Department of Puerto Rican Studies, Lehman College (CUNY). Lecturer, Department of Puerto Rican Studies, Lehman College (CUNY). ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE Director, Vassar’s Program in Media and Culture at Goldsmiths College, London (Spring
    [Show full text]
  • The Blown Definitions: Towards a Poetics of the Multi-Vocal Poetic
    Kate Potts: 100 605046 PhD Thesis The Blown Definitions: Towards a Poetics of the Multi-Vocal Poetic Radio Play Kate Potts Royal Holloway, University of London Creative and Critical Writing (Poetry) PhD Thesis 1 Kate Potts: 100 605046 PhD Thesis Declaration of Authorship I Kate Potts hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ______________________ Date: _____________________ 2 Kate Potts: 100 605046 PhD Thesis Abstract The introduction of radio broadcasting in the early twentieth century, at a time of rapid development in global communications and travel technologies, prompted a radical re- imagining of the poet – and poetry’s – role in this new public, communal space. This thesis seeks to explore and define, critically and creatively, the poetics of the multi-vocal poetic radio play, a sub-genre fundamentally shaped by this reconfiguration.1 The thesis examines the development, form, and functioning of the multi-vocal poetic radio play which, I argue, is a sub-genre distinct from both the prose radio play and single-voice works of radio poetry. This thesis proposes that the multi-vocal poetic radio play is a reworking of western oral poetry traditions – originating in the oral heroic epic as authoritative, mnemonic, pre- literate repository of collective cultural memory – in the context of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s increasingly globalised, pluralistic and documentary modes of representation. Through the
    [Show full text]
  • Part III a Guide to Fiction by Caribbean Women Writers a to Z of Authors and Works by Country of Origin
    Part III A Guide to Fiction by Caribbean Women Writers A to Z of Authors and Works by Country of Origin Antigua Jamaica Kincaid Annie John (1983) At the Bottom of the River (stories) (1983) A Small Place (essay) (1988) Lucy (1990) The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) Barbados June Henfrey Coming home and other stories (1994) Paule Marshall Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1968) Merle: a novella and other stories (1983) Praisesong for the Widow (1983) Daughters (1991) Hazelle Palmer Tales from the Gardens and Beyond (1995) Belize Zee Edgell Beka Lamb (1982) In Times Like These (1991) The Festival of San joaquin (1997) Carriacou Audre Lorde Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) Cuba Cristina Garcia Dreaming in Cuban (1992) Dominica Phyllis Shand Allfrey The Orchid House (1953) 219 220 Caribbean Women Writers Jean Rhys The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927) Quartet (1928) (first published as Postures) After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930) Voyage in the Dark (1934) Good Morning, Midnight (1939) Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) Tigers Are Better-Looking (1968) Sleep It Off Lady (1976) Tales of the Wide Caribbean: a New Collection of Short Stories (1985) Grenada Jean Buffong Under the Silk Cotton Tree (1992) Snowflakes in the Sun (1996) Merle Collins Angel (1987) Rain Darling (stories) (1990) The Colour of Forgetting (1995) Nellie Payne and Jean Buffong Jump-Up-and-Kiss-Me: Two stories from Grenada (1990) Guyana Joan Cambridge Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home (1987) Norma De Haarte Guyana Betrayal (1991) Beryl
    [Show full text]
  • Lonely Planet Publications 150 Linden St, Oakland, California 94607 USA Telephone: 510-893-8556; Facsimile: 510-893-8563; Web
    Lonely Planet Publications 150 Linden St, Oakland, California 94607 USA Telephone: 510-893-8556; Facsimile: 510-893-8563; Web: www.lonelyplanet.com ‘READ’ list from THE TRAVEL BOOK by country: Afghanistan Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana or Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, both all-time travel classics; Idris Shah’s Afghan Caravan – a compendium of spellbinding Afghan tales, full of heroism, adventure and wisdom Albania Broken April by Albania’s best-known contemporary writer, Ismail Kadare, which deals with the blood vendettas of the northern highlands before the 1939 Italian invasion. Biografi by Lloyd Jones is a fanciful story set in the immediate post-communist era, involving the search for Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha’s alleged double Algeria Between Sea and Sahara: An Algerian Journal by Eugene Fromentin, Blake Robinson and Valeria Crlando, a mix of travel writing and history; or Nedjma by the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine, an autobiographical account of childhood, love and Algerian history Andorra Andorra by Peter Cameron, a darkly comic novel set in a fictitious Andorran mountain town. Approach to the History of Andorra by Lídia Armengol Vila is a solid work published by the Institut d’Estudis Andorrans. Angola Angola Beloved by T Ernest Wilson, the story of a pioneering Christian missionary’s struggle to bring the gospel to an Angola steeped in witchcraft Anguilla Green Cane and Juicy Flotsam: Short Stories by Caribbean Women, or check out the island’s history in Donald E Westlake’s Under an English Heaven Antarctica Ernest Shackleton’s Aurora Australis, the only book ever published in Antarctica, and a personal account of Shackleton’s 1907-09 Nimrod expedition; Nikki Gemmell’s Shiver, the story of a young journalist who finds love and tragedy on an Antarctic journey Antigua & Barbuda Jamaica Kincaid’s novel Annie John, which recounts growing up in Antigua.
    [Show full text]
  • Cross-Border Film Production: the Neoliberal Recolonization of an Exotic Island by Hollywood Pirates
    CROSS-BORDER FILM PRODUCTION: THE NEOLIBERAL RECOLONIZATION OF AN EXOTIC ISLAND BY HOLLYWOOD PIRATES Anthony Frampton A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2014 Committee: Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Advisor Federico A. Chalupa Graduate Faculty Representative Ewart Skinner Radhika Gajjala © 2014 Anthony Frampton All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Advisor This qualitative study explores the relationship between Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Hollywood’s cross-border film productions by examining the strategies that these islands use to facilitate the filming of big-budget foreign films within their borders. The dissertation also analyzes the inherent implications of transnational film production practices from the perspective of the host location and reviews extant theories of international film production to explore whether they adequately explain the peculiar dynamics and experiences of filmmaking in SIDS countries by heavily financed, non-resident film producers. The study blends relevant strands of political economy of media and critical cultural studies to construct a customized theoretical backbone. From this critical standpoint, it engages theories of globalization, development, cultural industries, post- colonialism, and policymaking to analyze the interaction between SIDS nations and international satellite film productions. Adopting a grounded theory methodological framework, it uses interviewees, focus groups, participant observation and document analysis to collect data from the island of Dominica in the Caribbean, which hosted two films in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The study found that these foreign film producers received unprecedented levels of concessions and amassed huge savings from their ability to manipulate governmental authorities and local elites and exploit the weak institutional capacity of the state and its poor systems of accountability.
    [Show full text]
  • Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey: the Tale of a Friendship
    § § § JEAN RHYS AND PHYLLIS SHAND ALLFREY: THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey are unquestionably Dominica 's foremost twentieth-century writers. The island - small and densely forested, sparsely populated, and relatively isolated throughout most of its history - has nonetheless produced a number of writers of note, among them the critically­ neglected poet Daniel Thaly. Of these, only Rhys and Allfrey have enjoyed careers - literary in the case of Rhys , political and literary in Allfrey's ­ that have warranted the attention of an international audience. The coincidence of Rhys and Allfrey's birth in the same remote colonial outpost has led scholars to focus on comparisons between the two. This comparative emphasis, however, has led to some notable misunderstandings about the links between these two very different women. The misconceptions stem from an emphasis on the superficial similarities between the two: the fact that they were both white Dominicans separated by barely a generation who established themselves as writers in England in the middle decades of the twentieth century and who are best known as authors of two novels - The Orchid House and Wide Sargasso Sea - which explore the interconnections between gender, race, and the remnants of plantation society in the West Indies. These resemblances, promising as they appear at first sight, yield little when measured "against the r eallife."l Rhys and Allfrey, despite surface similarities, were as different in their approaches to writing, their political stances, their understanding of the complexities of race and colonialism in their home island, and their formulations of their West Indian identities as any two writers could be .
    [Show full text]
  • IN PERSON & PREVIEWS Talent Q&As and Rare Appearances
    IN PERSON & PREVIEWS Talent Q&As and rare appearances, plus a chance for you to catch the latest film and TV before anyone else Preview: Vita & Virginia UK-Ireland 2018. Dir Chanya Button. With Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isabella Rossellini. 110min. Format tbc. 12A. Courtesy of Thunderbird Releasing Chanya Button’s (Burn Burn Burn) second feature brings to the screen the true story of the intense romantic relationship between author Virginia Woolf (Debicki) and enigmatic aristocrat Vita Sackville-West (Arterton). With exquisite production design, the film, which opened this year’s BFI Flare festival, is a vivid account of the physical and intellectual attraction between two extraordinary women. Tickets £15, concs £12 (Members pay £2 less) MON 1 JUL 18:15 NFT1 TV Preview: This Way Up + Q&A with Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan (work permitting) Channel 4 2019. Dir Alex Winckler. With Aisling Bea, Sharon Horgan, Tobias Menzies, Indira Varma Aasif Mandvi. Eps 1 & 2, 54min Comedian, writer and actor Aisling Bea pens and stars in This Way Up, a pin-sharp and poignant new six-part comedy series about the social, mental and personal obstacles that people face in their own pursuit of happiness. Bea plays Aine, a woman trying to pull her life back together after a ‘teeny little nervous breakdown’, as her fretful sister Shona (Catastrophe’s Sharon Horgan) worries not only about her sibling, but also about her own life choices. Join us for a preview of the first two episodes and hear from cast and crew. TUE 2 JUL 18:15 NFT1 Preview: The Dead Don’t Die USA-Sweden 2019.
    [Show full text]
  • Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith
    humanities Article Intertextuality, Christianity and Death: Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith Judith Woolf Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; [email protected] Received: 8 September 2019; Accepted: 30 October 2019; Published: 1 November 2019 Abstract: Stevie Smith, one of the most productive of twentieth-century poets, is too often remembered simply as the coiner of the four-word punch line of a single short poem. This paper argues that her claim to be seen as a great writer depends on the major themes which—in addition to “death by water”—she shares with T.S. Eliot: Anglicanism and the modern reworking of classical literature, with a strong, and in her case sometimes autobiographical, emphasis on female protagonists. Where the female figures in Eliot’s The Waste Land are seen as parodic and diminished contemporary versions of their classical originals, Smith enters and reimagines her classical sources, testing the strength of the narrative material which binds Phèdre, Antigone, Persephone and Helen of Troy to their fates. In contrast to Eliot’s adult conversion to Anglo-Catholicism, Smith became a convert to agnosticism, engaging in a passionate poetic argument with the faith of her childhood, which led her to challenge Eliot himself. She brings both of these themes together in the most personal of her poems, which celebrate, and ultimately invoke, Thanatos, “the only god/Who comes as a servant”, and who puts a merciful end to all stories by “scattering... the human pattern altogether”. Keywords: Stevie Smith; T.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith
    This is a repository copy of Intertextuality, Christianity and Death : Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/153027/ Version: Published Version Article: Woolf, Judith (2019) Intertextuality, Christianity and Death : Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith. Humanities. 174. ISSN 2076-0787 https://doi.org/10.3390/h8040174 Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This licence allows you to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as you credit the authors for the original work. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ humanities Article Intertextuality, Christianity and Death: Major Themes in the Poetry of Stevie Smith Judith Woolf Department of English and Related Literature, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK; [email protected] Received: 8 September 2019; Accepted: 30 October 2019; Published: 1 November 2019 Abstract: Stevie Smith, one of the most productive of twentieth-century poets, is too often remembered simply as the coiner of the four-word punch line of a single short poem. This paper argues that her claim to be seen as a great writer depends on the major themes which—in addition to “death by water”—she shares with T.S.
    [Show full text]
  • CULTURE and DECOLONIZATION in the BRITISH WEST INDIES LITERATURE and POLITICS, 1930-1980 by SHARON CATHERINE SEWELL Bachelor Of
    CULTURE AND DECOLONIZATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES LITERATURE AND POLITICS, 1930-1980 By SHARON CATHERINE SEWELL Bachelor of Arts Bridgewater State College Bridgewater, Massachusetts 1978 Master of Arts Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma 1997 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 2007 CULTURE AND DECOLONIZATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES LITERATURE AND POLITICS, 1930-1980 Dissertation Approved: Dr. Elizabeth Williams __________________________________________ Dissertation Adviser Dr. Joseph Byrnes __________________________________________ Dr. Ronald Petrin __________________________________________ Dr. Donald Brown __________________________________________ Dr. A. Gordon Emslie __________________________________________ Dean of the Graduate College ii PREFACE In 1949 Vic Reid’s novel New Day became the first to be labeled West Indian Literature. Many more books and authors would follow. The novels were about the islands of he British Caribbean: Trinidad and Tobago; Jamaica; the Leeward Islands of Dominica, Montserrat, St. Kitts/Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, and Anguilla; and the Windward Islands of Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and St. Lucia. Although each country maintains a unique identity, their populations also define themselves regionally as West Indians and today acknowledge some similarities, especially in history and culture. This study is about the novelists and the impact they had on the West Indies between 1950, the date associated with the advent of West Indian literature, and 1980, the date by which literary works began to focus on the problems of specific islands and moved away from a West Indian perspective. This work contributes to the fields of British colonial history and West Indian history in that it seeks to present the novels in relation to social and political developments in the British West Indies in the last years of colonial rule and the first years of independence.
    [Show full text]
  • ESTABLISHED 1955 | SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, A7 1962 PRICE 102 ALLFREY EXPULSION | up UPHELD
    RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF MAN 162 EAST 78 STREET, - NEW YORK 21, N. Ya We stand behind the U.N. Charter . ‘which uphotds ; FREEDOM OF THE:PRESS FREE? OM OF WORSHIP ‘FRE OM FROM WANT | FREEDOM FROM FEAR | (For the General Welfare of the People of Dominica, the further aivancemen’ of the West Indies and the Caribbean Area as a whole) ESTABLISHED 1955 | SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, a7 1962 PRICE 102 ALLFREY EXPULSION | UP UPHELD “a Appeal , Points a Rejected a | Meredith Enrolis At University Ot Mississippi OR AN HOUR and a’ quarter yesterday afternoon, the Labout ~~ Paty Executive discussed the expulsion of their Founder and _. Oxford, Miss. , Oct..1 U.S.LS. — James H. Meredith enrolled Monday ex-President, Mrs. Phyllis Shand Allfrey, before her appearance morning as the first Negro student at the University of Mississippi. to make her appeal. This was heard and dismissed by sine . His registration climaxed another controversy in the long contest over the iS* votes to one and 3 abstentions.. One member walked out in p:o- sue of public education facilities for Negroes and whites in the southern area of th¢ test against the undemocratic voting procedure. United States. , “Mississippi state law calls for separate schools for whites and Negroes Labour: Party Conderins — sta- Among the paints made by Mrs.| British tutes which the U.S, Supreme Court has ruled are unconstitutional. State au~ that she had cri-| = CM And Nuclear Tests Allfrey against charges thotities, headed by Governor Ross Barnett, refused to admit Mr. Meredith to the ticised the policy of “Government, and At Brighton this week the British La- all-white university, despite federal court orders that he be enrolled, ae it into disrepate were the fol-] pour Party Conference confirmed by an brought When Mississippi Officials continued adamant in refusing to.admit Mr.
    [Show full text]