Let me begin by addressing the elephant in the room. I have used the term
West Indian instead of the more inclusive and historically correct term Caribbean.
I will explain why.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, my siblings (there are eleven of us) had a group chat. The appropriateness of the term West Indian to describe our cultural identity was passionately debated. Some argued West Indian was a convenient term to direct postal deliveries. After all, there are other places called Trinidad. If we did not add West Indies to our address, our mail might land up in Texas or Mexico, for example. Some saw no reason to change a designation that had been used for centuries to suit the modern demands for political correctness. Then there were others who blamed the ignorance of Christopher Columbus. Heading west and believing his route would lead him to India, Columbus decided that the chain of islands he so-called “discovered” must be the West Indies. When the English won the wars with Spain, the term was already firmly established so it seemed inconvenient to correct Columbus’s error. But some of my siblings were vehement in their objection to the name. It has all the historical resonance of the brutality of slavery inflicted on us by the English colonizers, they said. There were concessions: The name is simply a marker to identify our place as the English-speaking group in the chain of Caribbean islands. I suppose I fall partly into the latter group. I use the term West Indian novel in this essay to distinguish the novels written by writers from the English-speaking Caribbean islands.
So what is a classic, more specifically, how do we determine that a West Indian novel is a classic?
My question is borrowed from the very question JM Coetzee asked in his lecture entitled “What is a Classic?” published in his book Stranger Shores: Literary Essays (Viking, 2001). And Coetzee borrowed his question from the similarly entitled lecture, “What is a Classic?” given by TS Eliot in 1944 at the Virgil Society in London. For Coetzee, three criteria are essential for determining a classic. Referring to the music of Bach, Coetzee writes that in sense one, the classic is that “which is not time bound, which retains meaning for succeeding ages, which ‘lives’” (10). Secondly, again with reference to Bach, he says a classic belongs to a “canon that is still widely played, if not particularly often or before particularly large audiences”. And third, like the music of Bach, a classic does not follow popular trends or seek to belong to “romanticized” revivals; it is rooted in the historical past (10).
Convenience is not my only reason for using Coetzee’s criteria to frame my discussion on why certain West Indian novels can be considered classics. Coetzee, as well as Eliot, had to grapple with the similar difficulties I encountered in attempting to define an English-language classic that strictly speaking is outside of the English literary tradition. Eliot’s solution was to sort of disown his American homeland for England, a decision which Coetzee attributes to “a certain embarrassment about American barbarousness” (3). For his part, Coetzee acknowledges the complication of “inheriting” a tradition that did not arise from his culture.
With reference, then, to Coetzee’s first criteria, no one would contest the contention that a classic is a work that transcends time and place, that continues to be played (in the instance of music) and read (in the instance of fiction) throughout the generations. The question is why do some works succeed in escaping the vicissitudes of the ages and others do not. Coetzee points out that in spite of its brilliance, the music of Bach was not widely played in his lifetime and thus would not have been considered a classic. He credits Felix Mendelssohn for rescuing Bach from oblivion. It was Mendelssohn, he claims, who resurrected Bach from eighty years of obscurity when he directed Bach’s St. Matthews Passion in Berlin in 1829 (12).
Is there then a Felix Mendelsohn for the West Indian novel? Do West Indian novelists have a godparent who can bring their works to the attention of the public, especially works, which, though extraordinary, have fallen out of the public eye? Is there someone or some organization that can ensure the survival of a brilliant West Indian novel so that it becomes a classic?
It seems to me that Caribbean literary festivals have taken on this role of godparents for the West Indian novel. In the last decade they have mushroomed on almost all the Caribbean islands, the largest and most influential being the Calabash Literary festival in Jamaica and the Bocas festival in Trinidad, and, in the US, the recent Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival in New York These festivals garner not merely local audiences, but also large international audiences, and, more significantly, members of the influential foreign publishing industry who take their cues from these festivals as to which West Indian writers to promote and market and which new writers to publish. The decisions made by the organizers of these festivals as to which writers they invite to serve on panels, to read from their work, or to be awarded prizes, strongly influence the choices publishers make. The organizers of these festivals do not shy away from their influence. New writers and even writers with a long record of works recognize the power of participating in these festivals. Indeed, part of the marketing of these festivals is their boast of the publication and sales record of the writers they invite.
But in what sense are these festivals godparents for the promotion and recognition of the West Indian novel? What part do they play (can they play?) in giving visibility to an extraordinary novel that is otherwise ignored, thus assuring the novel’s place as a classic in the Caribbean literary canon?
I have attended or participated in many Caribbean literary festivals. What struck me most about the festivals held on the islands was the clamor of local writers to get recognition on the stage of these festivals. I understand the need and hope of these local writers; perhaps they think they will get the opportunity to be heard by someone from the foreign publishing industry; perhaps they will get the chance for their work to get a wide reading audience. Too often, however, they are disappointed for the headliners at most, if not all, of these festivals are Caribbean writers promoted and marketed by foreign publishers, who understand that though the talent may be in the Caribbean, the market is not.
The publishing industry is a business, which, like all businesses, is dependent on the market. And, unfortunately, the market for fiction by West Indian writers is reliant on readers abroad. There are publishers on the islands, but without a sufficiently large market, the publishing industry in the Caribbean is relegated to a sort of boutique, dependent on a small enthusiastic group of readers, that is to say, readers who are not only readers, but buyers willing to pay money for the work of writers.
Not much has not changed since the years that West Indian writers in the 1950s and 60s realized that they must leave their homelands if they wished to find outlets for their work. Even today, there are more Caribbean writers who live outside of the Caribbean than are in the Caribbean. A writer needs space; a writer needs time to give the imagination free rein unencumbered by the pressures to seek the means to sustain their livelihood. Foreign universities play the role of patrons for many of these writers; they employ them, that is, they give them income so that the writers can put a roof over their heads, and food in their stomach while they take the necessary time to write. Foreign publishers also help to sustain the Caribbean writer. A mere cursory look at the spines of almost all novels by Caribbean writers will confirm the dependence of Caribbean writers on foreign publishers, particularly in the US, Canada and the UK.
If Caribbean literary festivals simply mirror decisions already made by foreign publishers, then who, or what institutions, can play the role of “discoverer,” bringing to light works that have floundered in the shadows?
Coetzee credits the musical profession for keeping the music of Bach alive. “The musical profession,” he says, “has ways of keeping what it values alive that are qualitatively different from the ways in which institutions of literature keep submerged but valued writers alive” (14). He points to the music training and apprenticeships that are necessary for the would-be musician which require practice and memorization of the works of the masters. Respectfully, however, I do not agree that there is such a qualitative difference between the two institutions. Writers also need training and apprenticeships. One can argue that that is the function of creative writing programs which have sprung up in the last couple of decades. It would seem that in these programs, the novice writer would cut her teeth by studying the master works of our great writers not merely for their ideas and literary artistry, but also for their craft. Such study of the master writers would seem essential for learning to create stories that can become classics, transcending cultures, time and place. Regretfully, the popularity of too many creative writing programs is built on the promise (if not made directly, but certainly implied by the students who compete vigorously to get into them), that there is money to be made from writing fiction. So these students study bestsellers, that is, popular novels that have made lots of money. They keep their ears pinned to popular discourse so that the subject matter of these novels often regurgitate the headlines of current newspapers. Coetzee observes that the music of Bach was propelled to the status of classic for this very reason: his work responded to a “cause” of the time. The Germans needed something to boast about to counteract the influence of Napoleon. Bach fit the bill to restore German cultural pride (11). But certainly “cause” or the topicality of a work does not define a classic. It is not popularity, but rather the quality of a work that sustains its existence through the inevitable march of time and changing literary tastes. “Cause” may have brought the music of Bach to the attention of the public, but “cause” could not sustain its longevity in the hearts and minds of the people. As valuable as many of these creative writing programs can be, too often they produce writers whose work is easily recognizable, work that follows the same trajectory, with the same focus on current news, the same attention-getting impact at beginning, middle and end. The characters are predictable, the conflict predictable, the ending reassuring. The novels sell, but that is the point.
I believe that there are institutions of literature that can function for the West Indian writer the way music institutions function for the musician. Literature degree programs in the university offer this opportunity. They keep works alive that may be forgotten or disregarded by requiring them on their syllabi, teaching them semester after semester, year after year, to generations of students. So just in the same way the music student is required to study the masterworks of music composers, literature students are required to study the masterworks of writers, thus advancing the creation of a canon, works, consistent with Coetzee’s criteria for the definition of a classic, that continue to be read and studied, even if not by large audiences. What are those works? A cursory review of the syllabi of Caribbean literature courses would generally include most of these specific works of fiction by the following writers from the English-speaking Caribbean, listed here in alphabetical order:
Alfrey, Phyllis Shand, Orchid House Dominica
Brodber, Erna, Louisiana Jamaica
Cliff, Michelle, Abeng Jamaica
Edgell, Zee, Beka Lamb Belize
Harris, Wilson, In the Palace of the Peacock Guiana
Hodge, Merle, Crick, Crack Monkey Trinidad and Tobago
Hopkinson, Nalo, Midnight Robber Jamaica
Kincaid, Jamaica, Annie John Antigua
Lamming, George, In the Castle of My Skin Barbados
*Levy, Andrea, Small Island Jamaica/England
*Marshall, Paule, Brown Girl, Brownstones Barbados/USA
Naipaul, VS, A House for Mr. Biswas Trinidad and Tobago
Nourbese, M. Philip, Harriet’s Daughter Trinidad and Tobago
Nunez, Elizabeth, Prospero’s Daughter Trinidad and Tobago
Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea Dominica
Selvon, Samuel, Lonely Londoners Trinidad and Tobago
Senior, Olive, The Pain Tree Jamaica
Wynter, Sylvia, The Hills of Hebron Jamaica
*Writers born abroad but raised by West Indian immigrant parents.
Obviously, I have left out a number of West Indian writers, but in attempting to answer the question I posed from the beginning, I am using Coetzee’s criteria that a classic work of literature is one that continues to be kept alive even if not in the popular reading of the public. It is here then that we see the role of the academy where the works listed above are taught, thus forcing the hands of publishers to reprint them.
There is another role that the academy can play, and does, though not often enough, in defining a classic. It is the role of the scholar, the literary critic. Unfortunately, I have only my memory to document Toni Morrison’s dismay and regret that there is too little literary criticism of the works of black writers. In a lecture I cannot trace, she impressed on me the need for critical analysis that interrogates and highlights the artistic merits of a literary work by a black writer. On this point, Coetzee says that “the classic…is what emerges intact from [the] process of day-by-day testing.” He goes further to add that “criticism is that which is duty-bound to interrogate the classic.” The classic then, he says “defines itself by surviving” (15).
I am heartened that graduate school departments now accept, even encourage, theses on some of the works mentioned in my list above. Many years ago, when I was working on a dissertation querying whether criteria used for evaluating the great works of English literature were appropriate for analyzing the novels of VS Naipaul and George Lamming, there was no one in the English Department at New York University knowledgeable enough about Caribbean literature who could direct my dissertation. Eventually, the department had to rely on two professors from Columbia University. Thankfully, since those days, there have been many academic papers written on the works of Naipaul and Lamming, sufficient that we can deem their works classics, part of the West Indian literary canon.
There is a third sense that Coetzee mentions in which we can define a work as a classic. It is that the work is rooted in a tradition. This begs the question whether there is a West Indian literary tradition, a historical past of West Indian writing. After all, colonization for most of the English-speaking islands did not end until the 1960s. The literary tradition we had, or were taught, was the English literary tradition. In his collection of essays The Overcrowded Barracoon, Naipaul bemoans the consequence. He admits that though every writer is, in the long run, on his own, “it helps, in the most practical way, to have a tradition.” The English language he says, “was mine; the tradition was not” (25). He had in fact inherited a tradition that in the early years of his writing life “did not give [him] the courage to do a simple thing like mentioning the name of a Port-of-Spain Street” (25).
Yet, though there has not been sufficient historical time nor a body of work by West Indian writers to claim in the strictest sense of the word a West Indian literary tradition, in many ways the English literary tradition is also the West Indian literary tradition. After my father’s death, one of my brothers, the most radical among us, one who railed against racial injustice and was a staunch advocate for the assertion of the rights of black people, told me that he sought to assuage his grief by reading ten plays by Shakespeare. Ten!!! And by an English playwright who lived in the late 16th and early 17th century England! But my brother had simply assumed Shakespeare belonged to him, inherited or not. Shakespeare was part of his literary tradition.
And what to make of my Afro-Caribbean neighbours in Brooklyn who hosted a well-attended formal evening event for other Afro-Caribbeans celebrating the British soap opera Downton Abbey? Guests came costumed like the lords and ladies of late 19th-early 20th century England. No satire intended.
I think too of how I have dealt with periods of anxiety when I needed to calm my nerves and restore my faith in a world where goodness triumphs. Inevitably I turn to the novels of Jane Austen. I picked up her novels again during the COVID19 pandemic, reading many of them for the fourth, and, in the case of Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice, for more times than that. Austen is part of my literary tradition. I am not unaware of her relative silence about the slave trade of Africans perpetrated by her people at the time she was penning her novels. She makes slight reference to this crime against humanity in Persuasion, Emma, and more directly in Mansfield Park, where Fanny Price’s innocent question to Sir Thomas Bertram about his work in Antigua is met with “dead silence”. But I side with Austen’s criticism of the unfair treatment of women, for I recognize the same frustrations women suffered in my homeland in Trinidad. And I laugh at Austen’s portrayals of the absurdities of pompous men and women, for I have known such people too in Trinidad, the island having inherited the prejudices of the English class system. Most of all, Austen’s stories allow me to relive my West Indian childhood with reminders of the comforts of family and close relations with neighbors.
I was not surprised to read that both Merle Hodge and Jamaica Kincaid create characters, who, though they become highly aware of the pernicious consequences of British colonialism, also turn to works in the English literary canon for comfort in times of distress. Offended by her Aunt Beatrice’s capitulation to British classism, Tee, the main character in Hodge’s Crick Crack Monkey, nevertheless finds solace in books from “Abroad” and invents her “double,” an English girl, who “spent the summer holidays at the sea-side with her aunt and uncle who had a delightful orchard with apple trees and pear trees….” (61). Annie John in Kincaid’s eponymously titled novel gets in trouble for ridiculing a picture of Columbus in chains in her schoolbook, but, in a period of depression, she also seeks respite in Jane Eyre, her “favorite novel,” inventing for herself a friend in Belgium because she learned that Charlotte Brontë had spent a year or so in Belgium (92).
The West Indian cultural heritage is complex, as Derek Walcott famously acknowledged in his long poem “The Schooner Flight”:
I’m just a red nigger who love the sea,
I had a sound colonial education,
I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,
And either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.
Years later, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, “The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory,” Walcott would embrace the complexity of writing in a language that diminishes, as Naipaul implies, the Caribbean way of seeing. Evoking the analogy of a broken vase that has been repaired with glue, Walcott asserts that the paradox of Caribbean identity is the perfection and wholeness arrived out of contradiction and fragmentation. He states: “I am only one-eighth the writer I might have been had I contained all the fragmented languages of Trinidad” (9). In Tradition, the Writer and Society, Wilson Harris admits that such a perspective does not yield “to consolidation of character” (28). The Caribbean writer faces the problem of writing out of a tradition where the broken parts of an enormous heritage “appear very often like a grotesque series of adventure, volcanic in its precipitate effects as well as human in its vulnerable settlement” (31). Like Walcott, however, he concludes that this sancoche soup, the gluing and joining of the disparate parts of West Indian identity, is what is “remarkable about West Indian personality in depth” (28).
Finally, there is another way that meritorious works by West Indian writers in danger of obscurity can be saved to take their place deservedly as part the West Indian literary canon and thus acknowledged as West Indian literary classics. I am referring to an apparent practice among English writers of mentioning the names and works of English writers as part of the plots for their fiction. One cannot read Austen, for example, without being reminded of Shelley, Scott, Cowper, Byron, Shakespeare, Pope, and many others. I notice that Coetzee, though a South African, asserts his claim to the English literary tradition, albeit inherited, by doing the same in his novels. In his famous novel Disgrace, for example, the reader is treated to explications of Wordsworth and Byron, whose works are not incidental to the main themes of the novel. In my own work, I am conscious of the importance of weaving into my narratives the works of West Indian writers. I consciously mention writers such as Lamming, Walcott, Naipaul, Kincaid, Hodge, Cliff, Harris, whose novels I have listed as classics earlier in this essay.
The West Indian novel is relatively new, and it may seem audacious to speak of a classic in the traditional sense of that word. Still, based on the criteria I have outlined in this essay, there are certainly works, indeed many more than I have indicated, that could make that claim. Hopefully, scholars inside and outside of the academy will continue to do the critical work necessary to bring to the attention of the public works of literary merit so that they remain meaningful to generations across time and changes in social tastes, and thus can rightly be called classics of West Indian fiction. Fiction writers can do the same, following the practice of English writers, with references in their works to West Indian writers.
Elizabeth Nunez, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, the City University of New York, and an award-winning author of nine novels and a memoir. She emigrated from Trinidad after high school to the U.S.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. What is a Classic? Faber, 1945
Coetzee, J. M. Stranger Shores. Viking, 2001.
Harris, Wilson, Tradition, the Writer and Society. London: New Beacon, 1967.
Hodge, Merle. Crick Crack Monkey. Andre Deutsch, 1970, rpt. Heinemann, 1987.
Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1983.
Naipaul, V.S. The Overcrowded Barracoon. New York: Knopf, 1972.
Walcott, Derek. The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993.
-----------. “Schooner Flight.” The Star-Apple Kingdom.
New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979.