Books 12This Round-Up keeps you updated on works reflecting the imagination and creativity, and the problems and potential, of Black writers, artists, philosophers and activists, entrepreneurs, media leaders and politicians. Black facts and Black fiction
British whites loved their "niggers" � nice and docile, whether on the plantations or as playthings and souvenirs. Clinton Derricks' book Buy Golly: The History of the Golliwog makes that abundantly clear. Part of the proof lies deep in history.
Ally of Empire
Reflections of social and economic attitudes "Blacks are lazy, vicious, and incapable of any serious improvement", said the popular writer Rudyard Kipling in his School History of England (1911). "Niggers are like monkeys� [with] their subnormal sloping foreheads and large protruding lips", said G W Stevens in The Land of the Dollar (1897). Children's minds affected
Persistence in decline Demand soon declined and by August 1981 a correspondent to The Times diary page noted that "only 2,500 golliwogs a year are sold compared with up to 200,000 when the species was in demand after the war". Today most reasonable people would say: "Golliwogs are gross caricatures of black people and are offensive to them; this is unacceptable in a multiracial society". Praiseworthy book Clinton Derricks, Buy Golly: the History of the Golliwog; ISBN 1 872727 28 X; New Cavendish Books, Tel: 020-7229 6765, http://www.newcavendishbooks.co.uk/ How the West underdeveloped the Caribbean
Black people's journey to the West through forced enslavement and race prejudice is not without consequences for their homelands. In the Caribbean, for example, the pillage of resources left the region and its people impoverished to an alarming degree. Hard times
Tough issues Sanders, a Guyanese-born former policy maker for Caribbean governments, warns that "The Caribbean is in crisis". He then unleashes a litany of devastating problems. The markets for traditional products, bananas and sugar, are gone. Debt and paybacks to world banking agencies are crippling the region's economies. In addition, servicing US government demands to safeguard America's borders from drug trafficking are rising. Tourism is endangered by holiday boats and marinas that wreck the natural coral reefs. You can add to this list the fear that the Caribbean will fall prey to international terrorism, money laundering and financial crimes. What to do? Speaking with authority, Sanders, former Antigua and Barbuda High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, outlines the path to solutions. Political union heads his list. Caribbean Governments must face-up to the fact that each alone is powerless. No single country in the Caribbean can cope with regional and global economic and social crises. And he criticises the western countries that are the main markets for drugs for failing to offer regional assistance. Collective action is necessary Without speedy action, Sanders says, "this idyllic Region � playground of holidaymakers from Europe and North America and a haven of democracy and economic and social stability" � will be lost. Sir Ronald Sanders, Crumbled Small: The Commonwealth Caribbean in World Politics is published by Hansib Books, 264 pages, £16.99, ISBN: 1 8070518861, Email: Info@hansib-books.com Dark strangers
Metropolitan chronicles form a central core of Black literary tradition in modern Britain. Almost every author with roots in the former West Indian and African colonies has written about being Black in London. Their staple themes are of empire, of transcontinental migration, of culture conflict and accommodation, and of race prejudice, love and lost illusions. Sam Selvon's, The Lonely Londoners, George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin and Wole Soyinka's Telephone Conversation are examples that spring to mind. Now, there is a new band of writers who are, in one way or another, part of Britain but who bring with them experience and creativity from many different backgrounds and parts of the world. One can point to the works of writers such as Caryl Phillips, Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy. Fictional stories of first generation immigrants and their lives in Britain are their preferred means of expression. Empire's children Coping with prejudice and lost illusions is a persistent theme. Gilbert, one of thousands of Jamaican men who joined the Royal Air Force to "save Britain from fascism", returns to England as a civilian. It is 1948, and the prevailing colour bar in jobs and housing affects him harshly as it does Black immigrants to Britain on the SS Empire Windrush. In desperation he remembers a wartime friendship with Queenie and knocks at her door. Gilbert's wife, Hortense, soon joins him. She had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. Slim-waisted and light-skinned, she is given to sporting white gloves, and knows Keats' poems by heart � so typical of many Jamaicans who accepted the styles and manners of Britain, the "Mother Country". But to her horror she finds London shabby, the homes decrepit, the people filthy and racially hostile. This was far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert seemed different. Times were changing Written by probably Britain's most lovable Black female writer, the book was welcomed by a chorus of media approval. Christie Hickman in the Independent says "Andrea Levy has transformed the story of the Windrush generation of immigrants into a portrait of post-war Britain, black and white". Where Levy excels is in the presentation of that portrait, says Alexander Kelly-Loewenthal, Trinidadian-born and Calypsonian-in-residence for the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC. "Those readers who are prepared to let themselves be led through a landscape which oscillates between Jamaica, the Home Counties of England, and India, where you can taste and smell the atmosphere, will love it."
Afro-British Voices In this age of global change and migration millions of people of African and Caribbean descent grow up outside their parents' countries of origin. Awareness of this physical and spiritual dislocation has had its effects. Writers in the diasporic outposts of Britain, Europe, America and Canada are crafting a new addition to Black literary traditions. Furthermore, in Britain, the dual and often plural heritages of writers � of being Black, British and from somewhere else � will produce books that add new dimensions to British literature. Spirited contributions to diasporic literature have come from Ekow Eshun, director of the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Arts, and Hannah Pool, columnist for the Guardian newspaper. The two Afro-British media figures have uniquely set out to discover their African roots, one in Ghana and the other in Eritrea.
Search for identity in Ghana Plagued by the unease of dual identity, he travels to Africa to look for an idea of home � only to discover he feels as much a stranger there as in Britain. As he retraces the steps of his ancestors, Eshun's journey becomes an increasingly disorienting search to locate a sense of self that's not reliant on place. On the coast he recreates in his mind the tragic scenes of enslaved Africans stripped naked and marched through the "Door of No Return" for transport to the plantations of the New World. Africa and England contrasts Not quite sure where he belongs, Eshun's Black Gold of the Sun is a sweeping tale of continents and generations � all in pursuit of the answer to the question: where are you from; and who are you? Eshun seems no wiser or self-assured at the end of his journey. He asks forlornly: "What does it feel like to be Black? In part it means always being a stranger. Being Black means staning inside and outside society: seeing the world as white people do while reaching out to touch it as a Black person". Search for family in Eritrea
Hannah Pool's story is one of a search for family and belonging. Born Azieb Asrat, and orphaned at birth, she was adopted by a British academic (a "friend of Eritrea") and grew up in a white family in Manchester. My Fathers' Daughter is the story of what happened next. Of what it is like to go from middle-class England to the mud and stone hidmos of Eritrea to meet the birth family she never knew existed. Of what it is like to be 29-years-old before you embrace a blood relative, and what it is like to have two fathers. What Hannah found But she is convinced that: "For the duration of my stay here, I have felt most at home�I have felt the most me. And as I prepare to say my goodbyes, I wonder if it is this feeling that I have been searching for all along, and what it will be like, having finally found it, to leave that feeling behind." An end and beginning Eshun and Pool, in their different ways, have shone light on an important postmodern literary genre. It is the literature of the African Caribbean transnational experience mediated through ties of family and kinship. These linkages down the generations and connected across continents are the meaty themes of many books to come. Ekow Eshun, Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa. Jacket design and illustrations by the Black British artist Chris Ofili. Hamish Hamilton 2004 ISBN 0 241 14192 3 Hannah Pool, My Fathers' Daughter: A story of family and belonging. Hamish Hamilton, 2005 ISBN o 241 14260 1 Partisans, artists and writers
Is there no defence against the cultural powers that marginalise Blacks intellectually and socially in Britain? Yes there is say Sarah White and her colleagues in the "New Beacon Circle". It is the promotion of a socialist-inspired Black Cultural Politics.The exemplary case is the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, held from 1982 to 1995 in London and British cities. The Circle is an offshoot of New Beacon Books, perhaps the best example of writers, workers and activists reconstructing the Black image. New Beacon was founded by Trinidadian-born writer and cultural campaigner John La Rose in London in 1966 as a publishing house, bookshop and international book service. It also serves a North London multicultural district with a community education programme and supports a research institute named for George Padmore the radical labour stalwart and panAfricanist. La Rose and Sarah White, his English partner for more than 30 years, were equally gifted in organising an ambitious "meeting of the continents" in the form of the book fairs. This utopian project encompassing twelve fairs attracted participants from across the globe.
The political underpinning for the book fairs was visible from the start. The venerable C L R James, Marxist critic and theorist and symbol of the continuity between the past and the present in Britain, opened the first fair in 1982. Over the years, a number of themes emerged. One was a shared concern to give power to radical political and cultural voices in society. Partisans of this view included Claribel Alegria on the politics of Nicaragua and El Salvador, Ali Hussein on politics and culture in Britain, Amir Baraka and Abdul Alkalimat on Black cultural and political studies and Wole Soyinka on challenging autocratic governments in Nigeria. Another theme was a growing recognition of the need to exchange information and ideas across language and geographical boundaries.
The demise of the Book Fair was met with regrets. The fairs could no longer count on their main supporters: mainstream publishers, volunteers and schools, says Roxy Harris, co-editor of the volume. We are indebted to Sarah and her collaborators for this exceptional compendium. The "Meeting of the Continents" book fairs were effective mirrors of radical Black cultural and political thought during the 1980s and 1990s. The compiled texts, speeches and directory of movements for change make this publication a welcome addition to family bookshelves as well as public libraries. Researchers will find it to be a goldmine of information. It is an important collection and a truly historic document. A Meeting of the Continents: History, Memories, Organisation, and Programmes 1982-1995 edited by Sarah White, Roxy Harris & Sharmilla Beezmohun is published by New Beacon Books & George Padmore Institute, London 2005. 1873201184 Hardback Further information from: Tel: +44 (0) 20 7272 4889 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7281 4662. E-mail: newbeaconbooks@btconnect.com The future of "transcultural futures"
The modern search for identity and belonging outside of one's origins and across once alien cultural groups has been touted as the new reality of western society. It is called transculturalism. In the multicultural future, it is said, it will become increasingly difficult to identify and separate people according to previously accepted delineations of race, class, religion and sexuality, and every sort of classification known to sociologists and marketers. A recent volume published by European academics seeks to shed some light on its meaning and importance. Sources and influences
Themes and effects Contributors discuss a range of theoretical concepts familiar with experts in cultural studies. Taiweo Adetunji Osinubi on the Black Atlantic, Petra Tournay on postmodernism and metafiction, Mari Peepre on hybridity, and Gordon Collier on creolisation.
The worth of this volume is that it places the works of authors of Caribbean and diasporic descent firmly in the context of world literature. In the last fifty years Caribbean writers have won countless awards, among them two Nobel Prize winners, Naipaul and Walcott, and gained a wide and devoted readership. Bénédicte Ledent, ed., Bridges across Chasms: Towards a Transcultural Future in Caribbean Literature published by L3 � Liège Language and Literature, the English Department, Université de Liège.
Brian W Alleyne, Radicals Against Race: Black Radicals and Cultural Politics. Berg, London 2002. This Trinidadian-born sociologist offers an account of Black cultural politics in Britain. His focus is on the New Beacon Books circle of parents, teachers, lawyers, social workers, writers and artists, Black and white. The book is an important source of information on how the socialist-inspired circle worked to combat, resist and transform cultural institutions. The general and serious reader will both benefit from this scholarly and grounding-breaking book. Bill Schwarz, ed., West Indian Intellectuals in Britain. Manchester University Pres 2003. Caribbean migration to Britain brought many new things � new music, new foods, new styles. It introduced new ways of thinking, too. This book offers a fine example of the intellectual and radical ideas West Indians brought with them to Britain in the early 20th century. Among those who implanted black in Britain's literary Union Jack were writers such as Claude McKay, Una Marson, and the Caribbean Artists Movement. The political figures included Harold Moody and the League of Coloured Peoples, George Padmore and C L R James. Written in an accessible manner for students and the general reader, the collection showcases a dazzling intellectual critique of imperial Britain
This is Where I Live : the past, present and future of multi-ethnic Britain Details from: Runnymede Trust Tel 020-7377-9222, e-mail: info@runnymedetrust.org. It is commonplace now to say that the social exclusion of Black Britons undermines their progress and that of the nation as a whole. There is proof however that successive governments have failed this challenge, and few educators have asked Black youth about their thoughts and hopes. One private, voluntary group has started a project to do just that. This is Where I Live is an innovative citizenship project providing young people with a platform to express their views through the arts on heritage, belonging, prejudice and discrimination, and the future. The CD-ROM is designed to act as a virtual exhibition and teaching resource. It is the latest stage of a continuing Runnymede Trust citizenship project.
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