Trinidad and Tobago has long been home to talent, particularly so when it comes to the arts. With a Nobel Prize win from 2001 under his belt for his gifts bestowed upon the world of West Indian literature, V.S Naipaul boasts impressive thirty or so novels published. Despite the number of books written, I have only had the pleasure of reading one, Miguel Street, which explores his time spent on the assumed Nepal Street of St. James, Trinidad, during his adolescent years. The novel itself is quite different than the traditional as it consists of interconnecting chapters each focusing on a different character as the narrator, the young boy, grows up on the street. Like many other East Indians in Trinidad who lived in rural areas, Naipaul and his …show more content…
This now shines the light on the very noticeable likeness between Naipaul and his young narrator as they both leave Trinidad and Tobago and their own streets as a kind of rejection to the society and culture that perpetuated them both. From reading Miguel Street we see that Naipaul understood the creole culture, even though most of his characters are stereotypical in their nature, well enough to create a number of characters with their own set of unique habits. This was not just through the use of creole culture but also the imposing colonialism as seen in how some characters behave. When it was said that Naipaul was “gentle” with his characters he made no move to deny it but went on to state he “would not have them home to tea.” Using Miguel Street, I will present evidence not only supporting his gentleness but also assessing why he would not have afternoon tea with the characters from Miguel …show more content…
This practice was first observed by Hat who gave him a room when he came around searching for one. This habit had apparently impressed Hat. Bogart is merely playing a card game, he is not setting out to fulfil some great purpose nor is he doing something unbelievable and deserving of anything more but yet is still impressed. This goes to show just what is appreciated in the street community. His ability to stick to one thing continuously was an accomplishment in this backwards street. Like many others, it is stated that, “he made a pretence of making a living by tailoring,” as the boy goes on to say, “I cannot remember him making suit.” He undertook the label of a tailor but not once did her ever stitch or hem or create a garment for anyone. He did absolutely nothing to earn the label but just adopted it so he can have something to say about himself knowing there was nothing he had truly attained in his life. Without any responsibilities holding him to Miguel Street, Bogart disappears one day without a single word and was missed regardless of his lack of social skills. When he returned he was a changed man who spoke more and “was just like an
In the first section, Monroy describes the Indian and the Iberian cultures and illustrates the role each played during missionization, as the Indians adapted ?to the demands of Iberian imperialism.?(5) He stresses the differen...
Enrique’s Journey is a book that I would never read for fun. It is completely different from most of the books I have read, and intrigued me because the story was about a boy. Most of the books I have read in school are about a girl who goes through many hardships, and difficulties but I felt I could relate more to this one because it is about a boy who struggles. While I may not have been left thousands of miles away by mother so she could send money back, it was great to see what life was like on the other side. In this paper I will be talking about the micro and macro cultures of Enrique’s town Tegucigalpa. The situation and context of the characters decision making and how they adapted.
Danticat begins her essay with a tragic and bitter tone. She tells of the first people who were murdered when the Spaniards came to Haiti including Queen Anacaona, an Arawak Indian who ruled over the western part of the island. With bitterness she states, “Anacaona was one of their first victims. She was raped and killed and her village pillaged” (137).
Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth chapter, namely the domestic abuse scene, functions as a pivotal point in the Mother Tongue as it helps her to define herself.
Nazario begins her literacy non-fiction by describing the journey of Enrique through Tegucigalpa, Honduras to Laredo, Texas. He faces lots of obstacles throughout the journey like getting robbed by bandits, beaten up by gangs, running away
of the native tongue is lost , certain holidays may not be celebrated the same , and American born generations feel that they might have lost their identity , making it hard to fit in either cultures . Was is significant about this book is the fact it’s like telling a story to someone about something that happened when they were kid . Anyone can relate because we all have stories from when we were kids . Alvarez presents this method of writing by making it so that it doesn’t feel like it’s a story about Latin Americans , when
The ocean is what connects the people of the Caribbean to their African descendants in and out of time. Through the water they made it to their respective islands, and they, personally, crafted it to be temporal and made it a point of reference. The ocean is without time, and a speaker of many languages, with respect to Natasha Omise’eke Tinsley’s Black Atlantic, Queer Atlantic. The multilingualism of the ocean is reminiscent that there is no one Caribbean experience. The importance of it indicates that the Afro-Caribbean identity is most salient through spirituality. It should come to no surprise that Erzulie, a Haitian loa, is a significant part of the migration of bodies in Ana Maurine Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt. Ana Maurine Lara’s depiction
Junot Diaz's short story “Fiesta, 1980” gives an insight into the everyday life of a lower class family, a family with a troubled young boy, Yunior and a strong, abusive father, Papi. The conflict, man vs. man is one of the central themes of this story. This theme is portrayed through the conflicts between Papi and his son. Papi asserts his dominance in what can be considered unfashionable ways. Unconsciously, every action Papi makes yields negative reactions for his family. Yunior simply yearns for a tighter bond with his father, but knows-just like many other members of his family-Papi’s outlandish ways hurts him. As the story unfolds it becomes obvious that the conflicts between Papi and himself-along with conflicts between Yunior and himself-affect not only them as individuals, but their family as a whole.
With assertive shouts and short tempers, the prominent character, Ricardo, is characterized as a feisty townsman, doing nothing except trying to protect his town and its members from the judgments of the western world. For example, the characterization of the “‘…quaint’” man is exemplified through the simplicity of his life and the fact that he is “‘…employed’” and is full of knowledge, not a “‘cow in the forest’” (55, 29, 32). Ricardo desperately wants to establish the notion that he is not a heartless, feebleminded man, only an indigent, simple man striving to protect his friends and family from the criticisms of callous cultures. Incessantly Ricardo attempts to make it clear to the photographer the irritation elicited by his prese...
...d issues of post-colonialism in Crossing the Mangrove. It is clear that Conde favors multiplicity when it comes to ideas of language, narrative, culture, and identity. The notion that anything can be understood through one, objective lens is destroyed through her practice of intertextuality, her crafting of one character's story through multiple perspectives, and her use of the motif of trees and roots. In the end, everything – the literary canon, Creole identity, narrative – is jumbled, chaotic, and rhizomic; in general, any attempts at decryption require the employment of multiple (aforementioned) methodologies.
...spoke a Spanish Creole. This made a clear distinction between the two and made it easy for the government to identify the difference. The reader sees how such themes of Birth and Death show so prominently throughout the characters that one must focus on how birth and deaths affect the concept of the individual relating to their own Negritude. It is culture, not skin tones but rather the beliefs and values that each country be it Haiti or Dominican Republic relate to. Danticat’s novel helps us understand the strengths and limits that Rene Depestre states in The Birth of Caribbean Civilisation “there is a progressive ‘negritude’ that expounds the need to rise above all the alienations of man . . . and there is “an irrational reactionary and mystic version of ‘negritude’ which serves . . . as a cultural base for neo-colonialist penetration into our countries” (244).
Myths organize the way we perceive and understand our reality. Myths grant stability to a culture, and in this respect; serve to explain the unexplainable. From Barbra Sproul’s perspective, creation myths reveal basic religious concerns pertaining to how the universe was formed, and how people or societies are fashioned. Myths speak of the transcendent and unknowable aspects in a drama that attempt to reveal and give reason to human existence and where man stands in the cosmos. Through myth, the dimensions of space, nature and time are expressed in symbolisms that show how the holy can be experienced or conveyed if understood properly.
...her and reveals the complex process of suppression and projection, which attempted to impose the “Old World” view on the “New World” in the sixteenth century Caribbean.
As a Cuban writer, Carpentier has an in-depth understanding about the development of the entire Latin American Literature as a result of his experience working in journalism as well as being exiled and prisoned several times in his life. The Kingdom of This World and perhaps many other Carpentier’s works have demonstrated the influence of Western civilization, while Carpentier is aware of its limited effect on real Latin American culture in essence. For example, there is this depiction of a pastoral ball held in Santiago by the Cubans who try to imitate outdated French fashion style. “An air of license, of fantasy, of disorder swept the city. The young Cubans began to copy the fashions of the émigrés…Cuban ladies took lessons in French etiquette and practiced the art of turning out their feet to show off the elegance of their slippers.” On the other h...
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.