Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1989 To Be West Indian: Autobiography and West Indian Literature. Margaret Kent Bass Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Bass, Margaret Kent, "To Be West Indian: Autobiography and West Indian Literature." (1989). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4831. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4831 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough,margins, substandard and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Universily Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9025291 To be West Indian: Autobiography and West Indian literature Bass, Margaret Kent, Ph.D. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col., 1989 Copyright ©1990 by Bass, Margaret Kent. All rights reserved. UMI 300N.ZeebRd, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 TO BE WEST INDIAN: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND WEST INDIAN LITERATURE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Department of English by Margaret Kent Bass B.A., Wilmington College, 1973 M .Ed ., University of Mississippi, 1980 December 1989 TABLE OF CONTENTS A CASE FOR WEST INDIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 AUTOBIOGRAPHIES/AUTOBIOGRAPHERS The Precursors 29 The Makers of West Indian Literature 64 "'IS WHO SEND WE UP IN THIS PLACE?'" Autobiographies and Stories About the Experience of Exile 101 NEW VOICES FROM THE WEST INDIES: WOMEN WRITING WOMEN'S LIVES 131 COMMENCEMENT: "IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD..." 172 ii ABSTRACT Although some critics claim that autobiography is not a West Indian literary mode, I maintain that autobiography, of a special West Indian variety, is necessarily present, for it provides a way of defining the self and bringing the parts of the self together into a unified and coherent whole. Autobiography is the genre that oppressed and colonized populations have traditionally used to write themselves into history and to proclaim their humanity to the world. The writing of autobiography is essential to the process of decolonization, for the colonized must define themselves and recreate themselves in their own images thereby resisting and rejecting images of themselves that have been put forth in English and other European literatures. Thus West Indian writers reject traditional European forms of autobiography in favor of a form that is creatively adapted to their own specific experiences. Host of the works which I examine are called novels, and they may be novels; however, they are also autobiographies which are distinctly and absolutely West Indian in form, content and style. iii A CASE FOR WEST INDIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY It never occurred to me that there might be something called West Indian literature until I heard Derek Walcott read his poetry a few years ago. After the reading, I felt somewhat as Columbus must have felt when he arrived in the West Indies and thought he had discovered something new. My keen interest in Walcott and the desire to come to know the West Indies led me to St. Lucia, and it was there, in a little bookshop on the corner of Chaussee Road and Victoria Street, that I entered the world of West Indian literature. As I read the poetry and novels written by men and women from various islands in the Caribbean Sea, I realized that I did not know specifically which islands comprised the West Indies or to whom the term West Indian referred. I was curious about these people to whom I had some obvious historical connection. I wanted to know how they lived, how their experiences differed from mine, and how they defined themselves. Autobiography seemed to be an appropriate place to begin my exploration of the literature of the West Indies, which for the purposes of this study will be defined as the British islands in the Caribbean Sea and the South American mainland territory now known as Guyana" (Ramchand, Novel 3) and Belize. Autobiography has a special quality in that it "renders in a peculiarly direct and faithful way the experience and vision of a people, which is the same experience and the same vision lying behind and informing all the literature of that people" (Olney, "Cultural Moment" 13). In addition to this, autobiography reveals the meaning of such concepts as identity, being and self in a particular culture. Since I wanted to know what it means to be West Indian, I began to look for the autobiographies of West Indian writers. To my surprise, I discovered in the vast body of work produced by these writers only five autobiographies, or shall I say, only five deliberate autobiographies, those works in which the author's stated intent was to write his or her own life story: Austin Clarke's Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack, Claude McKay's A Long Way From Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica, which was published posthumously, and Edgar Mittelholzer's A Swarthy Boy. Jean Rhys, the only woman in the group, began the writing of Smile Please, subtitled An "Unfinished Autobiography," a few years before her death in 1979. I found this dearth of autobiography curious, for I believe that the desire or perhaps the compulsion to tell one's own story exists in all cultures. "Autobiography is a universal impulse, as universal as self-pity," Laurence Breiner claims ("Lyric" 3). If this is true, why had not more West Indian writers felt what Mark McWatt calls "some kind of inner pressure to confront the self as subject" (18) once they discovered that they were more than mere appendages to Britain? Poet, historian, and critic Edward Brathwaite, in "Timehri," says that West Indian artists and intellectuals "start out in the world without a sense of 'wholeness'" because they have been born and educated within a fragmented culture (30). Colonialism was responsible for the fragmentation of West Indian culture and the subsequent feeling of cultural schizophrenia that existed among many West Indian writers. The colonial system of education had a more personal effect on the colonized people in that it fostered the fragmentation or division of the West Indian self or psyche, and this, as Helen Tiffin suggests, stifled "the possibility of a Caribbean autobiography" ("Rites" 42). The British education West Indian writers received taught them not to think of themselves or their countries at all. "Secondary school education had its own purpose: to foster a sense of belonging to Britain and to perpetuate that country's cultural traditions... (Saakana 12). In Beyond a Boundary, C.L.R. James remembers his school days in Trinidad and in remembering understands the way his education undermined his West Indian culture and his West Indian self: It was only long years after that I understood the limitation on spirit, vision and self-respect which was imposed on us by the fact that our master, our curriculum, our code of morals, everything began from the basis that Britain was the source of all light and leading, and our business was to admire, wonder, imitate, learn; our criterion of success was to have succeeded in approaching that distant ideal— to attain it was, of course impossible (38- 39). West Indians were taught that all history and culture came from Britain and were encouraged to feel it a privilege to share in this great heritage. It was made clear to them, however, that they had contributed nothing to this culture, for West Indians were simply British subjects; yet they could not identify themselves as British: It is not the instinct of the British to share their identity with the societies they either take over or invent. The British impose a degree of moderately efficient bureaucracy, instil some convictions about law, and leave it at that. They do not attempt to persuade the colonial that he has a place, that he has a significant membership within the metropolitan culture (Carr 82). Who, then, were these people who inhabited these islands in the Caribbean Sea? West Indian literature has, especially in its autobiographical aspect, largely been an attempt to answer this question.