Creolizing the Metropole: Migrant Caribbean Identities in Literature and Film

3 MIGRAION PLURALIZES THE METROPOLE: How a Small Island Revealed Its White Teeth

133 Migration Pluralizes the Metropole How a Small Island Revealed Its White Teeth The Double Dilemma The quest for new demographic ground mirrored in the geographic and cultural displacement to the European metropoles that we have traced thus far was accompanied by a search for new discursive ground as well. It is important to bear in mind the geopolitical context within which suchmoves were instantiated. Inthe late 1940s,the veryideaof independenceforhistoricallyblackcolonies (thosemarkedbyexploitationrather than settlement) was nothing but a chimera, a glimmer on the horizon at least ten years distant. Ghana became the first of these to negotiate its independence from Britain in 1957, and concomitant acts of affirmation were quickly undertaken in the Caribbean by Jamaica and Trinidad following the breakup (breakdown?) of the West Indies Federation in 1962. On the French side, the accession to Overseas Department status in 1946 seemed to obviate the very need for any similar geopolitical assertion . Culturally speaking, however, the literary corollaries to these massive migration movements were not long in coming, and a number ofCaribbeanwritersweretobecomeinternationallyrecognizedscholars in their own right. By now, of course, their names are legion: V. S. Naipaul, Samuel Selvon , George Lamming, Beryl Gilroy, E. A. Markham, David Dabydeen, and John Figueroa. This caravan of what would become a Caribbean literaryvanguardadopted asits raison d’être the literaryre-presentation of the Caribbean experience, both to their hometown audience and to a three 134 Creolizing the Metropole wider world. And their works have become classics. In the Castle of My Skin, The Lonely Londoners, and A House for Mr. Biswas have breached cultural,political,andtemporalboundariestoberecognizedasthepathbreaking literary artifacts that they are. However, the geographical and cultural referents of these three tales–Barbados, Trinidad, and Britain, to be exact–embody and enclose a symbolic triangle marking the cusp and the core of the mid-twentieth-century anglophone Caribbean literary enterprise. The twin thematic axes of this undertaking, representing Caribbeanlifeasitwas(athome)andasithadbecome(abroad),areboth inscribed within the framework of this geocultural triangle. In a sense, the challenge posed by this task of inscription was to face two primary hurdles: form and its corollary of language. The arbiter of style would soon be brought to bear on–and perhaps come to overdetermine –this developing literary movement. But even before these hurdles could be faced, achieving recognition for this writing meant a prolonged trial by fire in the UK itself. While the early 1950s saw a writing and publishing boom, potential sales results were primarily mediated by massaging a dual cultural mandate: acquiring literary prizes and pushing popular electronic dissemination. Prizes came early and fast; indeed, the mid-1950s was a period of major accomplishments. As David Dabydeen himself points out, “Lamming won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1957 and Naipaul won it in 1959. Naipaul had also received, in 1957, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. Andrew Salkey received the Thomas Helmore Prize in 1955, and Sam Selvon was given a travelling scholarship by the Society of Authors in 1958. Such honours are a measure of the favourable reception accorded to West Indian writers in the 1950s” (69–70). It is clear that such accolades did much for writers. However, the searing irony of being dependent on imperial recognition as the price of success was palpably apparent. Some of the contemporary hardships being faced by the rude welcome accorded West Indians in London were made part of this new migrant writing, but the principal themes reflected the humor and the pathos, the hardships, the ironies, and the deadening routine of everyday Caribbean life. As this literary movement gained in momentum, the relative novelty of the genre fed what quickly came to be perceived as an obsession with discursive interrogations and inscriptions of identity. The extent to which any such ob- Migration Pluralizes the Metropole 135 sessionwasepistemologicallyorthematicallygroundedwillbeexplored later in this chapter. Electronic dissemination in this era was limited to radio, and the long-running, recently retired BBC program Caribbean Voices proved to be the chief outlet of its kind, providing both prestige and popularity to the authors that it featured each week. The regard with which BBC program content is held to this day cannot be overestimated. Dabydeen gives us a succinct analysis of the renown that an appearance on the program –and its corollary of payment–could extend to the participants: The BBC’s Caribbean Voices programme was the main platform for readings by West Indian writers and for discussion of their work. Being on...