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Literary Encounters and the Making of the West Indies

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Literary Encounters and the Making of the West Indies ABSTRACT Title of Document: OCCASIONS FOR READING: LITERARY ENCOUNTERS AND THE MAKING OF THE WEST INDIES Schuyler K Esprit, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Directed by: Professor Sangeeta Ray, Department of English ―Occasions for Reading‖ argues for a new methodology of postcolonial reading that traces the origins of Anglophone Caribbean literary history and redirects the routes of West Indian literary production and canon formation. Historically, West Indian writers have sought an ―ideal‖ reader of their work, though the definition and depiction of that ideal reader have varied. Anglophone Caribbean authors‘ own relationships to the act of reading and to the influence of reading on their own and on their characters‘ identity formation also direct or re-direct nation and canon formation. By engaging postcolonial theory, reader-response theory, post-structuralism, and reception studies, the dissertation investigates the production of the reader in and of Caribbean literary texts and of the social spaces in which they circulate. This dissertation situates the act of reading at the core of colonial and postcolonial representations of the Anglophone Caribbean and offers the culture of reception as a mode through which the geography of the West Indies is implicated in connecting West Indian people and identities across the diaspora. Acts and scenes of reading in West Indian novels produce a critique of Imperial knowledge production and illustrate how Caribbean subjects transform the intellectual, psychological or political meanings derived from reading colonial texts into a postcolonial epistemology. Such transformations provoke a range of consequences for these character-readers who must either leave the Caribbean region or continue to stake out their legitimacy and rootedness. Reading prompts characters‘ transgressions or resistance against persistent political, aesthetic or cultural narratives of colonialism historically informing Caribbean identity. By extension, characters‘ engagements with reading reveal twentieth-century West Indian authors‘ preoccupations with and resistance to colonial ontology. Issues of race, class, and gender influence the acts and scenes of reading in canonical West Indian novels analyzed in this study, including C.L.R. James‘s Minty Alley, V.S. Naipaul‘s The Mystic Masseur, Phyllis Shand Allfrey‘s The Orchid House, Michelle Cliff‘s Abeng and Jamaica Kincaid‘s Annie John. Following the historiography of the function of the reader in West Indian novels, the dissertation contends with contemporary concerns, in the late twentieth and into the twenty-first century, about where and how novels on the Caribbean experience are read, particularly by non-academic reading publics. Significant moments of literary reception in the U.K. and reception culture of Caribbean literature in the United States allow for a focus on contemporary novels and memoirs including Andrea Levy‘s Small Island and Jamaica Kincaid‘s My Brother. In an examination of how writers such as Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat have responded to the readers who encounter and assess their work, I critique apparent conflations of Caribbean literature, Caribbean geography or landscape, and Caribbean identity. Slippages in understanding the differences and boundaries between these concepts – literature, geography, and identity – in reading practices warrant a more methodological view of the impact of reading and reception on Caribbean literary history and its global reach. While representations of readers within the Caribbean space reveal a desire for a distinct origin and rootedness in the Caribbean landscape, migrant writers redefine the legacy and relevance of Caribbean literature through a discourse of emotion without boundaries or frontiers. As a whole, this dissertation challenges the dominant view of primarily political origins of postcolonial Caribbean literature, upholding its less recognized genealogy in intellectual and aesthetic discourses. OCCASIONS FOR READING LITERARY ENCOUNTERS AND THE MAKING OF THE WEST INDIES By Schuyler Kirshten Esprit Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Advisory Committee: Professor Sangeeta Ray, Chair Professor Zita Nunes Professor Merle Collins Professor Brian Richardson Professor Valerie Orlando Copyright Schuyler Kirshten Esprit 2011 Acknowledgements I am humbled and amazed by the diverse community that my dissertation has brought together in my life. I am grateful for Dr. Sangeeta Ray‘s steadfast direction and mentorship. She has challenged me to find and assert my critical voice in the most salient debates of Caribbean and postcolonial studies. Drs. Zita Nunes, Brian Richardson, and Merle Collins have been gracious with their time and have provoked my thinking about the dissertation to points across fields and histories. I also thank Dr. Kandice Chuh who guided me to streamline my dissertation ideas and define my professional identity in the early phases of this dissertation. Dr. Mary Helen Washington provided intellectual nourishment with necessary truths and warm cups of tea. I value the wisdom of her scholarship and experiences that she selflessly imparts. I thank the members of my dissertation-writing group, Drs. Heather Brown and Katy D‘Angelo, Jennifer Wellman, Mary Frances Jimenez and Nina Candia. They were sounding boards for my ideas, generous and careful critics of my chapters, and sources of strength in the most vulnerable moments. Additionally, fellowships and travel grants from the English Department at University of Maryland, College Park made it possible for me to dedicate much needed time to my research and writing. I am also grateful to the faculty and administration at Trinity Washington University for their professional support. Particularly, Dr. Jacqueline Padgett‘s enthusiastic and vigilant reading of my dissertation helped me transform it from a mere collection of ideas into a powerful story about Caribbean literary history. I thank her for her keen eye and her warm heart. I thank my parents for their encouragement and undying confidence in my ability. They are my loudest, fiercest cheerleaders, their screams of pride echoing across the ii Atlantic. I am nothing without the other parts of my self, my siblings: Michelle, Adélé, Yuanne, Meandez and Toscatee, Dexter and Dyllon. My brothers and sisters protect me from the dangers of anxiety and self-doubt and keep me firmly planted in the security of their love, respect and admiration. I thank them for reminding me I am always already extraordinary. Most importantly, I thank my aunts – Dawn, Amah and Rose-Ann – for keeping me afloat amidst waves of challenges that threatened to drown my faith in this endeavor. This dissertation is the culmination of their labors, determination, and unwavering commitment to the whole person that I am. Friends and colleagues from near and far have showered abundant counsel and encouragement. Dr. Rhea Olivaccé has held my hand for the last twenty years, steering me in the direction of my dreams. I‘m honored to share this and every experience with her. With her endless compassion, Rewa Burnham has been the emotional pillar of my dissertation and my life in graduate school, and it is my privilege to call her friend. LuAnn Williams exemplifies the kind of family we want to choose. I thank her for injecting energy and enthusiasm into my writing process and my attitude. I also thank Robert Scott, Drs. Alwin A.D. Jones and Delores Phillips, Lauren Hammond, Adom Getachew, Autumn Womack, Kellyn George and Yvanette George for believing in me. I recognize a special few who kept leisure and laughter ever-present in my world as I navigated this often-lonely journey. Andy Nicholls, Denise Blanc, Nkaa Esprit, Maquida Hanley and Alyssia Ferrol, I‘m a better person for having you in my life. Finally, this dissertation is dedicated to my late grandparents, Mary Murphy and Austan Esprit, who fed my appetite for reading and imagining, and who convinced me that no dream is too big for a little girl from a small island. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….…ii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….............v Chapter One: Introduction: Reading in the West Indies...………………………………...1 Chapter Two: Reading England, Reading England Away……………………………….48 Chapter Three: Reading Race and Gender…………………..………………………….105 Chapter Four: Migrating Bodies, Migrating Texts………..……………………………170 Chapter Five: Reading and Responsibility……..………………………………………215 Notes……………………………………………………………………………………244 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..…..…258 iv Chapter One Introduction: Reading in the West Indies ―These men had to leave if they were going to function as writers, since books, in that particular colonial conception of literature, were not – meaning, too, are not supposed to be – written by natives. Those among the natives who read also believed that; for all the books they read, their whole introduction to something called culture, all of it, in the form of words, came from outside: Dickens, Jane Austen, Kipling and that sacred gang.‖ ---George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile West Indian literature became a phenomenon for West Indians through the radio, an ironic medium twist with serendipitous effects. An Irishman named Henry Swanzy, along with executives at BBC radio in London, introduced the world to a group of young men whose talent, rich with promise, figured
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