A Caribbean Visionary and His Literary Collection, Karlene Saundria Nelson

2022 ◽  
pp. 095574902110604
Author(s):  
Karlene Saundria Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Political History ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Indian History

The voices of West Indian writers in the 1950s changed the landscape for Literature emerging out of the West Indies. These powerful literary voices were a means of creating and recording a facet of West Indian history and cultural heritage. West Indian writers wrote their stories through their own eyes. John Hearne was one of the most eloquent voices among them. He became a known voice in the West Indian literary world, using his recognition to facilitate the indigenous West Indian Literature genre’s development. He was also a prominent Jamaican political and social commentator. The John Hearne archive not only produced an important historical picture of the development of the West Indian Literature genre, but West Indian political history, and changes in the cultural and social fabric of the West Indian society, with special emphasis on Jamaica. This paper aims to present this archive as a fundamental body of primary resources for historical research.

Caribbean Voices and the Communicative Failure of the West Indies Federation

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
Glyne Griffith
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
Editorial Commentary ◽  
Radio Program ◽  
Critical Commentary

This essay argues that the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958–62) was not only undermined by the failure of the regional intelligentsia to comprehensively communicate a narrative of regionalism to the majority of the archipelago’s peoples but also further compromised by the BBC Caribbean Voices literary radio program broadcast to the region between 1943 and 1958. During this fifteen-year period leading up to federation, Caribbean Voices broadcast West Indian literature, as well as critical commentary by the program’s longest serving editor, Henry Swanzy, that generally emphasized territorial rather than regional nationalism. Consequently, the program’s content had the inadvertent effect of undermining the narrative of regionalism, at the popular level, that BBC officialdom and the region’s intelligentsia seemed to have taken for granted. The essay therefore concludes that the narrative failure of federation was prefigured in the widely and more persuasively articulated story of territorial nationalism that was presented in much of the literature and editorial commentary broadcast to the region via Caribbean Voices in the decade and a half leading up to federation.

scholarly journals West Indian Literature and Federation: Imaginative Accord and Uneven Realities

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-86
Author(s):  
Alison Donnell
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Community Building ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Economic Markets

This essay explores the particular importance conferred on literary expression within a wide range of writings dedicated to understanding and responding to the project of the West Indies Federation. Although federation was conceived, and briefly achieved, as a political expression of community building and people making, the consistent practice of referencing and invoking literary works across these writings reveals the project’s central and necessary investment in the reimagination of identities and belongings. Yet while the literary expression of a West Indian sensibility helped to articulate the political consciousness necessary for change, it could not finally overcome the sources of tension in the region. Importantly, too, the same West Indian writers who symbolized the collective belonging to the region, so cherished by federation, were themselves embroiled in the discordant realities of economic markets and measures and caught between national and international belongings.

THE (SLAVE) NARRATIVE OF JANE EYRE

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Sun-Joo Lee
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The West ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Indian Slavery ◽  
At Home

InImperialism at Home, Susan Meyer explores Charlotte Brontë's metaphorical use of race and empire in Jane Eyre. In particular, she is struck by Brontë's repeated allusions to bondage and slavery and wonders, “Why would Brontë write a novel permeated with the imagery of slavery, and suggesting the possibility of a slave uprising, in 1846, after the emancipation of the British slaves had already taken place?” (71). Meyer speculates, “Perhaps the eight years since emancipation provided enough historical distance for Brontë to make a serious and public, although implicit, critique of British slavery and British imperialism in the West Indies” (71). Perhaps. More likely, I would argue, is the possibility that Brontë was thinking not of West Indian slavery, but of American slavery.

Caribbean Commission

1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-166
Keyword(s):  
Dominican Republic ◽  
United Nations ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
French West Indies ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The United Nations

The third session of the West Indian Conference opened at Guadeloupe, French West Indies on December 1, 1948 and closed on December 14, after considering policy to be followed by the Caribbean Commission for the next two years. The Conference was attended by two delegates from each of the fifteen territories within the jurisdiction of the commission and observers invited by the commission from Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the United Nations and its specialized agencies.

The high frequency P and S phases from the West Indies

1962 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 957-962
Author(s):  
D. H. Shurbet
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
Probable Presence ◽  
Minimum Velocity ◽  
Velocity Channel

abstract The long duration and high frequency of P and S phases from earthquakes along the West Indian island are are deseribed. These phases have been described previously in the literature without explanation. It is shown that the long duration, high frequency, and velocity of both phases can be explained as due to a minimum velocity channel slightly below the M-discontinuity. Other observations are shown to indicate the probable presence of the minimum velocity channel.

scholarly journals Negotiating Alienation and marginality in the Selected Verses of Indo-Guyanese Poet Mahadai Das

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renuka Laxminarayan Roy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Physical Abuse ◽  
South Asian ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Female Writers ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
Female Poets

Indo-Caribbean literature opens a new vista of study of successful female poets and writers who have contested a literary space for themselves in the arena of West Indian literary discourse. These female writers have boldly denounced any legacy of Eurocentric literature and established their independent school of writing. The emancipation from ‘colonial possessiveness’, (July,1993, p. 80) (a term used by Ramabai Espinet in her writing) and a frantic effort to find new roots in the land of exile are the unique features of Indo-Caribbean literature. A rich cultural heritage, ancestral art, exotic cuisine, customs and costumes are the marks of exclusive oriental culture that is distinctly imprinted in their literature. Indo-Guyanese poetess, Mahadai Das (1954-2003), a prolific poetess of South- Asian descent in her collection of poetry I want to be a Poetess of my People (1977) presents an unparalleled account of the Guyanese people’s journey from immigration to independence. The episodes of violence, mutilation and physical abuse gave Indo-Caribbean female writers a new ability to articulate their woes of immigration and annihilation. The images like sailing back to India, the torments of indentureship and exile as well as racial and political turmoil in the land are interwoven together to form the prime content of their work. These female writers battle the fear of female authorship, since their voice had been long suppressed owing to the monopoly of male literary artists in the mainstream West Indian literature. The present paper proposes to study the theme of alienation and marginality as reflected in the selected verses of Indo-Guyanese writer Mahadai Das.

III. Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy, 1838–1842

1950 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Sugar Production ◽  
The West ◽  
British Caribbean ◽  
Long Run

‘The Black in the West Indies will.… receive his Emancipation at the expense of his Brethren in Africa.’ So the Lieutenant-Governor of the Gambia had forecast before the 1833 Act, and he was right, although for the wrong reasons. Emancipation cramped the sugar production of the British Caribbean, but it did not affect the sweet tooth of the sugar consumer, and as West Indian output fell, sugar production in Cuba and (less noticeably) in Brazil rose sharply. Outproduced, undersold and overcultivated, the West Indian plantations began to lag as competitors, a result inevitable in the long run, but accelerated by the freeing of the slaves.

Antislavery

2018 ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Deirdre Coleman
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
West Indies ◽  
White Woman ◽  
African State ◽  
West Indian ◽  
The West ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Plantation Slavery

Smeathman arrives in the West Indies mid-1775, just as the American revolution begins. He makes numerous comparisons between tropical nature in its ‘rude’ (African) state and its ‘cultivated’ (West Indian) version, He also observes the various societies of the different islands and, appalled by the cruelty of plantation slavery, starts to reconsider Quaker Fothergill’s plans for ‘legitimate’ African commerce. The flogging of slaves in public places shocks him into sketching two of these scenes, one of which is particularly chilling because it is conducted by a white woman. Smeathman decides to return to England and compile his ‘Voyages and Travels’, a book which would reveal the truth about ‘those little known and much misrepresented people the Negroes’.

scholarly journals Historical Biogeography of the New World Solitaires (Myadestes SPP)

The Auk ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 868-885 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Miller ◽  
Eldredge Bermingham ◽  
Robert E. Ricklefs
Keyword(s):  
Range Expansion ◽  
West Indies ◽  
New World ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Historical Biogeography ◽  
Greater Antilles ◽  
Long Distance Dispersal ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The West ◽  
Sister Relationship

Abstract Solitaires (Myadestes spp.) are montane-forest birds that are widely distributed throughout the New World, ranging from Alaska to northern Bolivia and including both Hawaii and the West Indies. To understand the origins of this impressive distribution, we used five mitochondrial gene sequences to reconstruct the historical biogeography of the genus. The resulting phylogeny indicates a rapid initial spread of the genus to occupy most of its contemporary continental range at least as far south as lower Mesoamerica, plus Hawaii and the Greater Antilles. The North American M. townsendi appears to be the sister taxon of the rest of Myadestes. Myadestes obscurus of Hawaii is more closely allied to Mesoamerican lineages than to M. townsendi. The strongly supported sister relationship of the two West Indian taxa, M. elisabeth and M. genibarbis, indicates a single colonization of the West Indies. A more recent node links the Andean M. ralloides to the Mesoamerican M. melanops and M. coloratus. A standard molecular clock calibration of 2% sequence divergence per million years for avian mitochondrial DNA suggests that the initial diversification of Myadestes occurred near the end of the Miocene (between 5 and 7.5 mya). Cooler temperatures and lower sea levels at that time would have increased the extent of montane forests and reduced overwater dispersal distances, possibly favoring range expansion and colonization of the West Indies. The split between South American and southern Mesoamerican lineages dates to ∼3 mya, which suggests that Myadestes expanded its range to South America soon after the Pliocene rise of the Isthmus of Panama. Despite the demonstrated capacity of Myadestes for long-distance dispersal, several species of Myadestes are highly differentiated geographically. Phylogeographic structure was greatest in the West Indian M. genibarbis, which occurs on several islands in the Greater Antilles and Lesser Antilles, and in the Andean M. ralloides. The phylogeographic differentiation within M. ralloides was not anticipated by previous taxonomic treatments and provides a further example of the importance of the Andes in the diversification of Neotropical birds. Overall, the historical biogeography of Myadestes suggests that range expansion and long-distance dispersal are transient population phases followed by persistent phases of population differentiation and limited dispersal. Biogeografía Histórica de los Zorzales del Género Myadestes

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