Book Review: The World Is What It Is by Patrick French

Reviewed by Cyril Dabydeen 
 
A curmudgeon, there’s no question. As far as rumours go about V. S. Naipaul, Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize winner, knighted by the Queen for being litterateur par excellence, he’s both celebrated and derided--all at the same time. But why? The recent Authorized Biography by Patrick French is still hotly discussed in literary circles. Mention the name V.S. Naipaul, and you’re bound to get a terse reaction, even with vitriol, often contrapuntal or just contrarious.
 
Many Caribbean intellectuals are fraught over him for his damning comments about race and Africa. At conferences I’ve heard the call for his books to be burned. His spat with the other Caribbean Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, is well-known (a la “V.S. Nighfall”). Yet Walcott has acknowledged Naipaul’s superb craftsmanship as a master stylist bent on changing the novel’s “bastardized form”--as Naipaul sees it.

Naipaul has said, “I became a writer to be free.” And maybe too free he is. His earliest books about India such as An Area of Darkness and A Wounded Civilization caused quite a stir. But Naipaul’s novels from the earliest, such as A House for Mr Biswas, to the later books like The Enigma of Arrival and A Bend in the River are classics, or near classics. Indeed the Nobel Prize Committee's citation of Naipaul's award was for his "incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories," and singling out The Enigma of Arrival (1987) for its "unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the demise of European neighbourhoods."

Maybe therein lies the problem or dilemma--jaundiced as Naipaul’s view may be. The Muslim fundamentalist world has come in for much of his criticism in books such as Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey and Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples. Late distinguished post-colonial critic Edward Said would describe what he calls Naipaul’s “funny moments... at the expense of Muslims, who are ‘wogs’ after all as seen by Naipaul's British and American readers, potential fanatics and terrorists, who cannot spell, be coherent, sound right to a worldly-wise, somewhat jaded judge from the West."

However, Said acknowledged in his Reith Lectures Naipaul’s "extraordinary antennae as a novelist," of his "sifting through the debris of colonialism and post-colonialism, remorselessly judging the illusions and cruelties of independent states and the new true believers." This distilled view is juxtaposed with Naipaul’s earlier expression in Middle Passage (1962): "History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West Indies,” which caused a furor among some West Indian intellectuals. Naipaul has gone on to speak of "the colonial smallness [of Trinidad] that didn't      consort with the grandeur of my ambition."

Naipaul has influenced a whole slew of writers, including this writer, as well as many modern-day Indians like Amitav Ghosh. Indeed, Ghosh has said, “it was Naipaul who first made it possible for me to think of myself as a writer,” as he grew more comfortable with the indwelling life of the mind. The most well-known Chinese-American writer, Ha Jin, told us (when I was a juror of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature at the University of Oklahoma) how he would read Naipaul all the time on his train journeys in the US.

Recent book reviewers of the French Biography have commented on Naipaul’s treatment of his wife, Pat (he met her at Oxford), and perhaps she was his best editor and confidante. French quotes Naipaul as saying “I have killed her.” Pat died of breast cancer. His unsentimental self is what we have and being unequivocal about art as well as equally satirical about politics as Naipaul assesses old and new societies, often unsparing about the latter.

About himself and India, Naipaul has said: “I cannot belong to India for the simple reason that I don’t know the language.” Naipaul, of course, is of Indian forbears: the grandson of an indentured sugar cane worker--of Brahmin caste--brought from Uttar Pradesh by the British to the Chaguanas plantations in Trinidad. And you would think that Naipaul would hate the British for this. But he has said, in l979, perhaps too forthrightly: "I do not write for Indians, who in any case do not read. My work is only possible in a liberal, civilized western country"; and the enigma echoes: "The thing about being an Indian, and it remains true of Indian writing now, is that it seems to work without history, in a vacuum."

Misanthropic, if not satirical, Naipaul continues to excite or intrigue, perhaps for just being outrageous with trenchant utterances like his egregiously famous, "The dot means my head is empty,” referring to the bindi Hindu women wear; or, on Pakistan: "The Pakistani dream is one day there'll be a Muslim resurgence and they will lead the prayers in the mosques in Delhi"; and of Britain, “It’s a country of second-rate people--bum politicians, scruffy writers and crooked aristocrats."

In French’s Biography, there are touching elements, such as Naipaul’s obsession and praising of his writer-father Seepersad Naipaul, and about the family squabbles pitting the Capildeo clan (on his mother’s side) with the Naipauls (on his father’s), all which rivets the attention, as one is also acutely aware of Naipaul seeing “mimic men” in the colonial setting with all that’s banal or incongruous.

V.S. Naipaul keeps seeking out other meanings in a diasporic new world order by setting his gaze on more than imaginary homelands (as Salman Rushdie does), always with troubling enigmas and, on occasion, mutinies, if a million or more in India, which still beckons. Indeed, he is the sum of his books; the novels always tell more than the biography. Naipaul affirms Marcel Proust’s axiom of "the secretions of one's innermost self, written in solitude and for oneself alone that one gives to the public,” seen in his own imaginative outpouring. But maybe with Naipaul controversy never ends. The latest is about his Pakistani-journalist wife Nadira Naipaul’s spat with Winnie Mandela over an interview-article in the UK’s Evening Standard touching on Nelson Mandela’s patriarchal image. Read on!

Originally published: Monday, March 15, 2010 /SouthAsia Mail

About the author:

Cyril Dabydeen’s novel, Drums of My Flesh (TSAR Publications) won the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Fiction and had been nominated for the prestigious IMPAC/Dublin Prize for Literature. His latest poetry collection is Unanimous Night (Black Moss Press, Canada).

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Author Blog Awards 2010: Nominations

I've been nominated for the Author Blog Awards 2010. The nominations process is open until 2 April – you can vote here

The author blogs with the most nominations will be put onto a shortlist and everyone who nominates that author will be eligible to win some lovely prizes.

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Accepting Submissions: Caribbean Vistas

CARIBBEAN VISTAS:

CRITIQUES OF CARIBBEAN ARTS AND CULTURES

Caribbean Vistas, a refereed journal [written in English] in electronic form, will serve both as a formal venue for scholarly discussion and as an academic and cultural resource for researchers.


Articles in Caribbean Vistas will examine Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone literatures, cultures, languages, visual arts, and performance arts from a variety of perspectives with an emphasis on works created in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.


A section for previously unpublished poetry of Caribbean writers will also be a feature of Caribbean Vistas. Dr. Kwame Dawes, noted author and cultural critic, is the Poetry Editor of Caribbean Vistas.


Reviews in Caribbean Vistas will analyze recent fiction, poetry, drama, and literary nonfiction as well as scholarly works of interest in the disciplines.


Caribbean Vistas (ISSN xxxx-xxxx) will be published twice a year (Summer and Winter) for the on-line academic, artistic, and cultural community by the Caribbean Arts and Culture Symposium.


Our first issue will appear in Summer 2010.


AVAILABILITY


Caribbean Vistas will be available on the World Wide Web at: 

http://www.caribbeansymposium.com

Our site on the World Wide Web will be active, though still under construction, as of September 15, 2009.


EDITORIAL GROUP


The Caribbean Vistas Editorial Group is representative of the international academic, artistic, and cultural community and includes artists and scholars with wide-ranging interests and experience, from emerging to well-established senior academics and artistic professionals.


Poetry Editor:
Kwame Dawes, University of South Carolina


Associate Editors:
Consuella Bennett, Morehouse College
Francisco Cabanillas, Bowling Green State University
Sandra Campbell, Carleton University, (Ottawa, Canada)
Keith B. Mitchell, UMass, Lowell
Thomas Ward, Loyola University Maryland
Christopher Winks, Queens College, CUNY


Advisory Editors:
Leah Creque, Morehouse College
Cyril Dabydeen, University of Ottawa (Canada)
Janice Fournillier, Georgia State University
Alix Pierre, Morris Brown College
Victor Ramraj, University of Calgary
Keja Valens, Salem State College


Editor:
Emily Allen Williams, SCAD-Atlanta


SUBMISSIONS


Caribbean Vistas invites contributions (primarily critical essays) on literary, artistic, and cultural topics as well as essays on interdisciplinary studies from the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone cultural traditions.


Previously unpublished poetry of Caribbean literary artists is also welcomed.
Specifications, including style sheets, are available from the editor.


Contributions, including critical essays, poetry, studies, bibliographies, notices, letters to the Editor, and other materials, may be submitted to the Editor by electronic mail at ewilliam@scad.edu or vistas@caribbeansymposium.com and by postal mail at:


Dr. Emily Williams
Professor, Professional Writing
SCAD-Atlanta
1600 Peachtree Street, NE
Atlanta, GA 30309


Brief hard-copy correspondence may be sent by fax to (770) 676-9477.


Electronic mail submissions are accepted in Microsoft Word format only.


All submissions must follow the current Modern Language Association Documentation Style.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION. . .


For additional information, or to join our mailing list, send a message to ewilliam@scad.edu or vistas@caribbeansymposium.com

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Save the Date: April 3, 2010: Jamaica For Sale

The Caribbean is the region most economically dependent on tourism and Jamaica is the 4th most indebted country in the world. Tourism is Jamaica's Sacred Cow, heavily promoted since 1891 as the way to modernization and prosperity it has tragically failed in its promises. Jamaica For Sale counters the dominant view that tourism is the savior of the Jamaican people. Lively and hard hitting, with powerful voices, arresting visuals and iconic music, Jamaica For Sale documents the environmental, economic, social and cultural impacts of unsustainable tourism development.

Jamaica for Sale

A film by Esther Figueroa & Diana McCaulay

Saturday, April 3, 2010

3 p.m.

African Heritage Cultural Arts Center,

6161 NW 22nd Avenue Miami, FL 33142

For more information:

http://www.wiffonline.org/

  http://www.wiffonline.org/synopsis-caribbean.php

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Bob Marley and the Hero's Journey

During the eighties when I was in graduate school, a friend of mine, Jeffrey Knapp, handed me a copy of Joseph Campbell’s, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and it was a godsend. Although many critics still argue about the universality of Campbell’s thesis, what intrigued me was Campbell's incorporation of Jung's archetypes of the "collective unconscious" *(masks)--those powerful unconscious forces (e.g. Trickster) that have been shaping human behavior for millenia. Besides, as a storyteller, I'm more interested in the plausibility of the pattern which has been used most recently in films such as Wanted and I am Legend. Many other artists, musicians, poets, and filmmakers, including Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and George Lucas, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead  and Christopher Vogler would seem to share this opinion. (Wikipedia: The Hero with a Thousand Faces)


In fact, Vogler was so impressed, he championed Campbell’s work:

[Vogler] wrote a memo for Disney Studios on the use of The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a guide for scriptwriters; this memo influenced the creation of such films as Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast. Vogler later expanded the memo and published it as the book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers, which became the inspiration for a number of successful Hollywood films and is believed to have been used in the development of the Matrix series.” (Wikipedia: The Hero with a Thousand Faces)

The myths captured my imagination and The Hero With a Thousand Faces became a major influence on my work. My first novel, Benjamin, my son, was patterned on Campbell’s work. In writing the novel, I could have followed the path toward Greek and Roman mythology, but after I read The Arrivants by Kamau Brathwaite, Trickster Makes This World  by Lewis Hyde and The Signifying Monkey by Henry Louis Gates, I began research on Yoruba-based archetypal figures such as Erzulie,  Ogun, Xango, Marassa Jumeaux, Oshun, and Papa Legba, the “wise old Rastaman" in Benjamin, my son. Since the novel signifies on the moral framework of Dante's Inferno, it may be also described as a syncretic Caribbean text.


And the more I read Campbell’s books, the more I also began to notice the connections between the Campbell’s monomyth and the life and work of Bob Marley. Many of Marley’s songs reflect the pattern in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and although the composition dates may not match the chronology of the Marley’s discography, we should not expect them to.


An artist’s life and the insights she gains are rarely coterminous. In many cases with artists such as Marley, whose work reflects the prophetic voice of a community, their earliest works often prefigure the “boon” that they have discovered.


Here, then,  is a brief outline from Vogler’s The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers Following Vogler’s example, I’ve adapted the list to also show the insights of Syd Field, Changing Minds,  Carol Pearson, and the Hero’s Journey: Summary of Steps to demonstrate the ubiquity of the pattern.

Bob Marley and the Hero’s Journey

1. The Ordinary World. The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable, or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma. The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history. Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.


This is the stage of the Innocent (Archetypal Child) who lives in a  prelapsarian environment. In “Sun is Shining,” Bob describes an idyllic world in which everything’s is Irie: “Sun is shining, the weather is sweet/Makes you want to move your dancing feet.” Bob would revisit this theme in "Three Little Birds."


Compare this stage with the Archetypal Orphan (Belly of the Whale).


2. The Call to Adventure. Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.


After the post-Independence festivities in Jamaica died down, the “rude boys” and their political gang warfare (Archetypal Herald) threatens the stability of the island. At that time, Bob did not have the skills nor the spiritual depth to handle the situation in Trench Town and Jamaica. He can only plead in “Simmer Down”:

Chicken merry, hawk de near
and when him de near, you must beware, so
Simmer down, oh control your temper
Simmer down, for the battle will be hotter
Simmer down, and you won't get no supper
Simmer down, and you know you bound to suffer
Simmer down, simmer, simmer, simmer right down

3. Refusal of the Call. The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly. Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.


According to Garry Steckles in Bob Marley, The Wailers were recording, but they weren’t making any money. Bob decided to seek fame and fortune in Delaware (Unwilling Hero) effectively turning his back on the music industry. Usually when the hero refuses the call, s/he suffers all kinds of setbacks. Bob laments in “Night Shift”:

Working on a forklift
In the night shift;
Working on a night shift,
With the forklift,
from A.M. (Did you say that? Why did you say that?)
to P.M. (Working all night!)
Working on a night shift, yeah!

4. Meeting With the Mentor. The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey. Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.


Bob had many mentors in his life, most notably Joe Higgs whom Marley recalls on Talkin’ Blues taught The Wailers (Bunny, Peter, and Bob) harmony. But as Garry Steckles contends in Bob Marley, it’s not until Bob meets the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry (Archetypal Mentor--one who is aware of his `ashe and Trickster/Fool) who alters the “rude boy” fad into a revolutionary stance (the corrective reorientation which all mentors provide) that Marley’s songwriting begins to have clear direction. 


Steckles also maintains that “Scratch” also taught Bob how to transform contemporary events and personal conflicts into transformative lyrics. It is from Perry that Bob learns how to write songs such as “Mr. Brown,” “Duppy Conqueror,” and “Small Axe,” his proclamation of judgmant against the big t’ree record producers (Threshold Guardians) in Jamaica:

If you are the big tree,
We are the small axe
Sharpened to cut you down, (well sharp)
Ready to cut you down, oh yeah!

5. Crossing the Threshold. At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.


a. Belly of the Whale: The hero enters the zone of danger. This may start immediately after the first threshold or may require some travel.


In the Orphan stage, the individual is subject to unrelenting victimization. If s/he does not ask the right questions such as "What can I learn from this situation?" or "How can I grow from this experience" (Archetypal Seeker) instead of "Why me?" s/he is liable to become stuck in the Victim mode (Archetypal Shadow) and will expect to be rescued by some outside power of person. Bob recognizes the danger zone in “Babylon” and his immediate surroundings of Trench Town and writes “Concrete Jungle”:

Darkness has covered my light
And has changed my day into night
Where is the love to be found?

b. When Bob embraces Rastafari (archetypal Warrior or Xango), this signals a new stage in his life and writing because in Rastafari (with the Garveyite emphasis on self-reliance and community responsibility--InI) he has found a means of defeating Babylon (Archetypal Dragon). Although many of the songs from Burnin’ show his new found commitment with his locks as his talisman or special weapon against Babylon, “Revolution” from Natty Dread speaks volumes:

It takes a revolution (revolution) to make a solution;
Too much confusion, so much frustration, eh!
I don't wanna live in the park (live in the park);
Can't trust no shadows after dark (shadows after dark)
So, my friend, I wish that you could see,
Like a bird in the tree, the prisoners must be free, yeah! (free)

End of Act One

6. Road of Trials (Tests, Allies, and Enemies): The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.


The band began as The Wailers and they saw their role as the voice of the sufferahs (Creators) to "chant down Babylon"--the forces of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism that would keep New World Africans in "slavery"--the grand lie of Babylon issued as a challenge, "Who the hell do you think you are?"  or simply in the statement: "You are nothing."The agents of Babylon would take many forms and unless the Rastaman kept his eyes open, "conscious," he could be duped into the ways of Babylon. He had to be on guard as to who was a friend and who was an enemy. Many of Bob’s songs confront these issues of the “open road” which he visits and revisits throughout his career:

Friends/Allies: “No Woman, nuh Cry”


Hypocrites: “Who the Cap Fit”


Shapeshifters: “Bad Card”


Babylon: “Crazy Baldheads” “We and Dem,” "Chant Down Babylon," and "Buffalo Soldier."

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave: More thresholds with their guardians encountered and overcome on the way to the stronghold containing the most necessary thing--a person, object, or idea needed for reestablishing balance and harmony in the world or the psyche.


a.         The Meeting with the Goddess: The meeting with the goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. It is also known as the "hieros gamos,” or sacred marriage, the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love, and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.


Bob falls in love (Archetypal Lover) and begins a whirlwind romance with Cindy Breakspeare (Sacred Union) with songs such as “Turn Your Lights Down Low”:

Turn your lights down low
And pull your window curtains;
Oh, let Jah moon come shining in -
Into our life again,
Sayin': ooh, it's been a long, long (long, long, long, long) time;
I kept this message for you, girl,
But it seems I was never on time;
Still I wanna get through to you, girl
On time - on time.
I want to give you some love (good, good lovin');

b. Woman as Temptress: At one level, this step is about those temptations that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which as with the Meeting with the Goddess does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. For Campbell, however, this step is about the revulsion that the usually male hero may feel about his own fleshy/earthy nature, and the subsequent attachment or projection of that revulsion to women. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.


“Pimper’s Paradise” in particular takes a nasty swipe at an unnamed woman and stands out conspicuously among Bob songs which are usually seductive and in praise of women. In this song, he complains:

A pimper's paradise, that's all she was now
A pimper's paradise, that's all she was
A pimper's paradise, I'm sorry for the victim now
A pimper's paradise, soon their heads, soon their
Soon their very heads will bow

8. The Ordeal: Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear. Out of the moment of death comes a new life.


a.         Before the “Smile Jamaica” concert, Bob faces death at the shoot out inside his home and begins a new stage of his life. He feels divinely protected in “Ambush in the Night”:

Ambush in the night,
All guns aiming at me;
Ambush in the night,
They opened fire on me now.
Ambush in the night,
Protected by His Majesty.

End of Act Two

9. The Reward: The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death. There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.


a.         Bob realizes that his life has been spared at the shootout (Archeypal Destroyer) and he has been protected, but he is not taking any chances. He leaves Jamaica on a self-imposed exile which will take him out of Jamaica’s fratricidal Babylon. He proclaims his intent in “Exodus”:

Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied with the life you're living?
We know where we're going;
We know where we're from.
We're leaving Babylon, y'all!
We're going to our Father's land.

b.         Atonement with the Father: In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving in to this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power. For the transformation to take place, the person as he or she has been must be "killed" so that the new self can come into being. Sometime this killing is literal, and the earthly journey for that character is either over or moves into a different realm.


Bob’s story, like the story of so many fatherless boys in Jamaica, could be likened to the Greek myth in which Telemachus, according to Joseph Campbell, is told: “Go find your father.” In Bob’s case, he found his father in the figure of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie--Jah Rastafari (Archetypal Father--the principle of Being). With the news of his cancer and possible death he can proclaim in “I Know”:

Many a time I sit and wonder why
This race so - so very hard to run,
Then I say to my soul: take courage,
Battle to be won,
Like a ship that's tossed and driven,
Battered by the angry sea, yea-eah!
Say the tide of time was raging;
Don't let the fury fall on me, no, no!


(I) 'Cause I know (know) -know:
Jah will be waiting there.

10. The Road Back: About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home. Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.


Bob realizes that his gifts need to be shared with the community and from his self-imposed exile in London, Paris, etc. and begins to make arrangements for a possible return in “Coming in From the Cold”:

In this life, in this life, in this life,
In this, oh, sweet life,
We're (coming in from the cold) from the cold!
We're coming in (coming in), coming in (coming in),
coming in (coming in), wo-o! Yea-ea-eah!
Coming in from the cold

11. The Resurrection: At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home. He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.


Bob becomes aware that he may never live in Jamaica nor in Africa, but the way that he has lived his life is an assurance of a having lived a “good life"and achieved material success (Archetypal Ruler). He has defeated the archetypal Dragon (see cover of Confrontation) and has gone through symbolic resurrection (cover of Uprising). In “Rastaman Live Up” he submits his testimony:

Saw it in the beginning, so shall it be in this iwa;
And they fallen in confusion,
well-a just a step from Babel Tower
Rastaman live up!
Congoman, no give up!
Rastaman live up, yeah!
Congoman, no give up!
Grow your dreadlocks;
Don't be afraid of the wolf-pack!

12. Return With the Elixir: The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.


Bob has fought the good fight and he has seen how his life now fits into a grander pattern of Black liberation (Archetypal Sage) in “Redemption Song”:

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfill the book.

Bob Marley’s life and work present a rich field of inquiry for any storyteller. It’s also one of the reasons for his continued popularity because his songs, which use quotes from the Bible and Black Atlantic folk wisdom, imparts metaphorical answers to the challenges on the “road of trials." Bob’s life truly was a “hero’s journey.”

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* The "collective unconscious" is an unfortunate term because it resembles what J. G. Frazier in The Golden Bough calls "Sympathetic Magic." In my view, the "collective unconscious" may be no more than those  primitive impulses deriving from the reptilian brain of our evolutionary past.

In My Own Words: Heather D. Russell (2010)

As with any book, I arrived at Legba’s Crossing:  Narratology in the African Atlantic (2009) through a journey marked by crossroads (life’s experience), pathways (routes/roots), intuition (intrinsic commitment to justice and light) and divine inspiration (strictly a calling).  The following reminiscences reflect some of these:


- I remember the first time I met Damballah, powerful Haitian loa of the sky.  I met him as an undergraduate at Rutgers, reading a John Edgar Wideman novel.  I felt an instant spiritual/ideological connection, BUT I was also just meeting Sambo, Mammy, Jezebel, I mean I had seen them all over…but understood them now.  I wrestled with these counter-narratives:  the debased, dehumanizing, distorted representations of black people and how these images have been used to oppress us…and then, in stark contrast, this god…African, New World, powerful, philosophical, resistant, hidden.  Could/would the one be used/useful to subvert the other?  I could not answer that question definitively then…until I met Legba…


- As a lover of literature, I have never cottoned to linearity.  Grand narratives, neat, tidy endings, building chronologically or even teleologically -- always bored me.  I remember sophomore year, the first time I read Tristam Shandy and Eliot’s The Wasteland…I would not read in quite the same way after…and still…I had not yet gleaned how chronology and linearity were political tools, how these had been used to misrepresent, to distort, to silence, to simplify my history.


- Long before the death of the author was proclaimed, I was always infinitely more intrigued by the experience of reading a novel than the actual details revealed in it! Did it surprise?  Did it refuse to conform to my expectations?  WHO WAS I, at the end of the novel?  I suppose I have always been a non-con-form-ist!


- Legba’s Crossing is an attempt to theorize the revolutionary potential of the experience of reading…


- Growing up in Jamaica as the daughter of a Baptist minister from Free Town, Clarendon, a theologian and a Garveyite, a historian and advocate for the spiritually/materially dispossessed – I was taught by both of my parents to be inquisitive -- to question the status quo, to live a life in which works on earth were the most important manifestation of spirituality.  In 1976, my father was called to the historic East Queen Street Baptist Church in downtown Kingston where I began attending.  I was viscerally struck by social class inequity as a very young child.  My father had established a free medical and dental clinic for the community, housed at the church.  One day, when I was about seven-years old, a woman came for some treatment, but was, according to the deacon that drove her out of the churchyard, improperly dressed.  It was my earliest memory of the pervasive classism that is so deeply entrenched in Jamaica…I would later understand how color, colonialism, sexism, classism, poverty, violence, invisibility were interwoven…


- Legba’s Crossing is the culmination of years of research (some formal, some informal) -- It is a study in African Atlantic form, philosophy, aesthetics, history, politics, literature and the struggle of black people to live lives of dignity, decency, equity and fairness. 

- In Legba’s Crossing, I examine literary texts, all of which engage key historical moments of black subjugation and resistance and which through their narrative structure, break with traditional forms governing time, space, narration, and conventional Western knowledge structures.  Diasporic and cross-temporal, my work includes analyses of:  the C19th Xhosa cattle killing in South Africa, US Reconstruction, the Grenada Revolution and invasion, Independence and post-Independence movement in Jamaica, Trinidad, US Civil Rights, and “globalization and race” in its African diasporic contexts. 

- Legba’s Crossing is an attempt to examine the radical, democratizing, revolutionary potential of form…

- Invoking the Haitian loa Papa Legba, who is the “god of the crossroads” --   as the sign of such African Atlantic narrative intervention -- I explore the philosophical, epistemological, and ethical concepts embodied by this god.

- I met Papa Legba, first through Henry Louis Gates’ The Signifying Monkey, who examines Legba’s West African corollary:  Eshu-Elegbara.  By the time I had read about Eshu-Elegbara, Yoruba god of the crossroads, god of divine purpose, meaning, interpretation, I was not only viscerally interrupted, BUT for the first time, after being inundated with European theory, philosophy/ers, in graduate school, I realized that so much of current African Atlantic cultural production made much more sense once I understood Legba’s principles:  indeterminacy, nuance, contradiction, flexibility, Legba’s mandate that the human being must struggle with/for understanding, apprehension, divine purpose.  Jazz made more sense with Legba.  Our propinquity towards improvisation, disruption of flow, linearity, chronology.  Hip-hop made more sense with Legba.  African diaspora literature made more sense with Legba. 

Legba’s Crossing:  Narratology in the African Atlantic is my humble attempt to pull together some of the aforementioned tangled skeins of meaning…àshe.


For ordering information see:
http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/legbas_crossing/0/1

or
http://www.amazon.com/Legbas-Crossing-Narratology-African-Atlantic/dp/0820328677

***

About the author:

Dr. Heather Russell’s research interests examine narrative form and its relationship to configurations of national/racial identities. Her latest book, Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic, was published by the University of of Georgia Press. She has also published in African American Review; Contours; The Massachusetts Review; and American Literature and has essays in a collection on John Edgar Wideman, Jacqueline Bishop’s, My Mother Who is Me, and Donna Aza Weir-Soley and Opal Palmer Adisa’s Caribbean Erotic.

At the undergraduate level, Dr. Russell regularly teaches C19th and C20th African American  Literatures; Major Caribbean Writers; Black Citizenships and Black History and the Fictive Imagination. For the graduate curriculum, she teaches African Diaspora Women Writers and Narratives of Enslavement and Resistance.

***

You are cordially invited to attend the launch of 

Legba’s Crossing:  Narratology in the African Atlantic

by Heather Russell, Ph.D

March 27, 2010

South West Regional Library (SWR)

Pines Center

16835 Sheridan Street. Pembroke Pines, FL 33331

  

1-5pm (reception from 1-2pm)

RSVP:(954)257-8731 or russellh@fiu.edu

Sponsored by:South Regional/Southwest Regional

***

Book Launch: Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic

You are cordially invited to attend the launch of 

Legba’s Crossing:  Narratology in the African Atlantic
by Heather Russell, Ph.D

March 27, 2010

South West Regional Library (SWR)

Pines Center

16835 Sheridan Street. Pembroke Pines, FL 33331
  
1-5pm (reception from 1-2pm)



RSVP:(954)257-8731 or russellh@fiu.edu

Sponsored by:South Regional/Southwest Regional

***

About the author:

Dr. Heather Russell’s research interests examine narrative form and its relationship to configurations of national/racial identities. Her latest book, Legba’s Crossing: Narratology in the African Atlantic, was published by the University of of Georgia Press. She has also published in African American Review; Contours; The Massachusetts Review; and American Literature and has essays in a collection on John Edgar Wideman, Jacqueline Bishop’s, My Mother Who is Me, and Donna Aza Weir-Soley and Opal Palmer Adisa’s Caribbean Erotic.

At the undergraduate level, Dr. Russell regularly teaches C19th and C20th African American Literatures; Major Caribbean Writers; Black Citizenships and Black History and the Fictive Imagination. For the graduate curriculum, she teaches African Diaspora Women Writers and Narratives of Enslavement and Resistance.

***

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Word Alive International Literary Festival: March 25-28, 2010

***

With the unwavering support of the 1st National Bank St. Lucia Ltd, the WORD ALIVE Performance poetry event has now evolved into the WORD ALIVE INTERNATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL.

WORD ALIVE began five years ago as a brainchild of St. Lucian poet and economist Adrian Augier. A performance poetry competition was inevitable for a poet who was also an actor, a producer of major theatre, and a carnival master. It brought to the fore several new talents working in a form that was increasingly popular wherever poets met to present their work.

Earlier this year, Mr Adrian Augier was named Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence Laureate in Arts & Letters, 2010. It is a well deserved award for this St. Lucian artist who has also become a successful pioneer of the fledgling creative arts industries. As a poet, actor, playwright, director and producer, this professional economist has made his mark on the arts and culture landscape of St. Lucia and the Caribbean. His Rituals Carnival Band attempts to return St. Lucian carnival to quality creative costume design with all the drama of this unique Caribbean street theatre. He has also created the annual Kalalu World Beat Music festival, which has brought international performers to his Samaans Park venue.

Augier’s St. Lucia Arts Festival Company has been the producer of WORD ALIVE and his many other creative arts ventures. He sees the evolution of the five year old WORD ALIVE performance poetry programme as a “logical progression” and a “tangible manifestation of movement and growth of the arts in an area that has already earned a place for St. Lucia on the Caribbean stage.”

This is St. Lucia’s first ever international literary festival. This year it will serve as a special tribute to Nobel  laureate Derek Walcott who celebrates his 80th birthday this year. Mr. Walcott endorses the festival by presenting the premiere book launch of his new publication White Egrets. 

This takes place at the opening event scheduled for Thursday March 25th at 7 pm. Mr. Walcott will be introduced by the preeminent Walcott scholar today, Professor Emeritus Edward Baugh of Jamaica. The evening will also feature a visual art exhibition by secondary school students. Their theme will be the poetry of Derek Walcott.A video installation by local film director Davina Lee will also be on show that night featuring her film interpretation of the work of several St. Lucian poets, including Walcott and Augier.

Adrian Augier sits as Co-Chair on Caricom’s Task Force on the development of cultural industries. Appropriately, he gives a focus to creative arts professionals by creating a forum opportunity at this Festival. The forum will examine the film industry.  Prominent Trinidadian film maker Frances Anne Solomon will join Mahmood Patel of Barbados, Anita Bully of Dominica and a number of local film experts on Friday March 26th for a one day conference on various aspects of the developing Caribbean film industry. Invitations have been extended to the Ministry of Tourism and other relevant interests to participate. Films by Ms Solomon will be screened at Samaans Park on Friday night and are open to the public at a nominal fee of $10.00.

On Saturday March 27th, the film makers will have the opportunity to participate in a workshop on cinematography led by Mahmood Patel of Barbados.

The signature event of the Festival, the WORD ALIVE Performance poetry competition, takes place on Saturday night at 7 pm. Two guest poets of international stature will make appearances, Kei Miller of Jamaica and Roger Bonair-Agard of Trinidad and Tobago. A number of local poetry talents are expected to compete this year.

From the opening of the Festival on Thursday, patrons will have the opportunity to visit a book fair where readings and signings by visiting and local authors will be scheduled. Food courts and musical entertainment will be part of all activities. The book fair and various exhibitions remain open during the festival.

On Sunday the 28th the major international literary stars will dominate the stages. Among those already confirmed to read their work are Kei Miller, Edward Baugh, Earl Lovelace, Lorna Goodison. George Lamming, who was expected to attend, is now unable to do so. These well known literary voices will be joined by local published writers including McDonald Dixon, John Robert Lee, Kendel Hippolyte, Adrian Augier. Former winners of the WORD ALIVE competition will make an appearance, including Lisa Dublin and Katherine Atkinson.

The organizers are hoping to present a discussion with the major writers in which they will offer their views on  the shaping  of an agenda for Caribbean Arts and Literature for a new generation.

The local arts fraternity responding to the Face Book Page for the Festival has been unanimous in its support of this new venture and in applause for the genuine interest of a corporate entity like 1st National Bank St. Lucia Ltd. “1st National has always shown a real interest in the development of the creative arts and are putting their money behind their support. I have always found them willing to listen and to help in whatever way they could,” says St. Lucian poet John Robert Lee. “In the absence of the M&C Fine Arts Awards, and the apparent lack of direction from other quarters, it is very encouraging that 1st National has stepped up to the plate at this time,” added Lee.

The Festival opens on Thursday March 25th and runs till Sunday 28th. All events are open to the public.

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