Caribbean Travel and the "Realistic Shock": Lamming, Naipaul, Condé

The claim that African cultural forms survived in Caribbean societies was interrogated when Caribbean writers traveled to West Africa. A common trope, "realistic shock," is found in many travelogues and memoirs that describe this journey. In this trope, an encounter with the "real" Africa dispels earlier "romantic" notions of the continent as source-culture or homeland for Caribbean people. During the years of decolonization and independence, George Lamming and V. S. Naipaul used this trope to express skepticism toward claims for African-Caribbean connection. But Maryse Condé used the trope differently, to articulate a new understanding of the relationship between the Caribbean and Africa.