Historical Continuum in Bahamian Literary Thought

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15362/ijbs.v24i0.311

Keywords:

Bahamian literature - History and criticism

Abstract

The works examined in this paper include Patrick Rahming’s “Slave Name”, written in the Bahamian post-independence era; Obediah Michael Smith’s “Wax Paper People” (2003), and Patricia Glinton-Meicholas’s “No Vacancy in Paradise” (2001). I place these works on a continuum of discursive engagement with weighty questions of ontology, existentiality, and the still profound deliberations on the issue of freedom, arguing that these works reflect an ongoing engagement with how history has shaped, and continues to shape the Bahamian identity, and the Afro-Bahamian identity more specifically.

Author Biography

A. Marie Sairsingh, University of The Bahamas

English Studies Associate Professor

References

Baugh, E. (2012). The West Indian writer and his quarrel with history. Small Axe, 38, 60-74. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-1665677

Bogues, A. (2010). Empire of liberty: power, desire and freedom. University Press of New England.

Ellison, R. (1952). Invisible man. Random House.

Glinton-Meicholas, P. (2001). No vacancy in paradise: A collection of poems. Guanima Press.

Nettleford, R. (2013). Cultural identity and the arts: New horizons for Caribbean social sciences? In Y. Hume & A. Kamugisha (Eds.), Caribbean cultural thought: From plantation to diaspora (pp. 275-289). Ian Randle Press.

Nixon, A. (2015). Resisting paradise: Tourism, diaspora and sexuality in Caribbean culture. University of Mississippi Press.

Rahming, P. (1993). Slave name. In I. S. Cabrera (Ed.), From the shallow seas: Bahamian creative writing today. Casa de las Americas.

Smith, O. M. (2003). Wax paper people. In Poems to sit on to shell peas (pp. 68-69). Verse Place Press.

Strachan, I. G. (2002). Paradise and plantation: Tourism and culture in the anglophone Caribbean. University of Virginia Press.

Walcott, D. (1993). The Antilles. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Published

2018-10-16

Issue

Section

Original Articles