Caribbean Creolization: Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language, Literature, and Identity (review)

At a time when hybridity and related notions loom large in discussions of the post-colonial and the postmodern, the editors of this anthology present the specificity of the Caribbean by offering original essays that address the regionally-generated term, creolization.

Following in the footsteps of Caribbean thinkers such as C.L.R. James, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, and Edouard Glissant, contributors double as writers of poetry, plays, and fiction. Not surprisingly, their language tends away from the careful and sometimes overdetermined, "theoretical correctness" characteristic of much post-structural discourse and toward first-person narrative in the form of anecdotes from childhood, discussions of family origins, and readings of Caribbean texts ranging from children's rhymes to fiction. In their "reflections on current notions of creolization in Caribbean literature and culture," to cite the editors (vii), they steer clear of globalizing theory and provide neither a synthesis of identarian discourse nor a portable definition of creolization. As Maryse Condé points out, "The differences between such theories as miscegenation, mestizaje, creolization, créolité are due to the ethnic and sociopolitical configurations of the colonized American world in which they were born and, consequently, to the languages in which they are articulated," even if they all "aim to negate and subvert the dangerous notion of racial and cultural 'purity'" (106). Rather, because the authors originate from the range of regions, cities, islands, and languages that make up the Caribbean, their perspectives combine to "represent our current moment in the dialectical process of coexistence and interaction among the regions of the Caribbean" (9).

Perhaps the editors are ambitious in claiming that from this collection emerges "a worldview of liberation, redemption, and transcendence" (11). Nevertheless, the contributors present valuable, if at times contradictory, critiques of the Caribbean. For example, Wilson Harris calls for a dismantling of the notion that "privileged and afflicted cultures" are not in relationship. Creolization thus entails "a genuine cross-cultural apprehension. . . of the unfinished genesis of the imagination affecting past and present civilizations, an innermost apprehension of changing, cross-cultural content" (28). Similarly, Frank Martinus Arion contests the "Big-House view" that suggests that cultures filter down from the plantation estate to the slaves and instead, argues for a recognition that the Big House was dependent on the small houses surrounding it for both economic prosperity and culture (114). Other writers, however, insist on addressing the color/culture schemata that has resulted in cultural repression and internalized shame for many inhabitants of the Caribbean. Discussing the African-based Winti religion in the Dutch Antilles, Astrid H. Roemer states: "[O]ur plight as Creoles is that we do not have anything beyond what Christianity offers us. As long as some Creoles remain fearful of our African heritage and ashamed of our Winti-rooted mind, we will be unable to use our full capacity to (re)gain a coherent sense of our humanity or contribute to society in a more actualized, structural, and theoretical way" (50). Likewise, Carlos Guillermo Wilson, writing on the syncretic Arawak-Carib-African community referred to as Garifuna, deems "positive and admirable" the mixing of languages, religions, music, and food from Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans but laments that "this creolization has not defeated the absurd, repugnant, and above all, insulting attitude that is an affront to the pride and dignity of the African heritage of our Caribbean cultures" (43).

Important intersections also emerge from the contributors' search for Caribbean metaphors. "Rhythm" and "performance" are two of Antonio Benítez-Rojo's three terms for examining creolization. Following suit, Lourdes Vázquez speaks of the salsa nightclubs and hip-hop rap of New York as the place where her children seek out their identity (86). M. Nourbese Philip goes a step further by using the Caribbean demotic to capture the history of Trinidadian Carnival from its beginnings as an African slave practice to Caribana...