Discuss Merle Hodge’S Crick Crack Monkey As a Novel

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Discuss Merle Hodge’S Crick Crack Monkey As a Novel

DISCUSS MERLE HODGE’S CRICK CRACK MONKEY AS A NOVEL DEALING WITH THE

CONFLICT OF CULTURES.

Merle Hodge born in 1944, in Trinidad is the daughter of an

immigration officer. After studying at the Bishop Anstey’s high school

of Trinidad, she obtained the Trinidad and Tobago Girls Island

Scholarship in 1962 which led her to the university college of London.

She obtained a degree in French and later in 1967 a Master Philosophy

degree. Merle Hodge traveled a lot in Eastern and Western Europe and

when she returned to Trinidad she started teaching French in junior

schools. Later she obtained a post of lecturer at the University of

the West Indies. In 1979, she started to work for the bishop regime

and she was appointed director of the development of curriculum. In

1983, she left Grenada because the bishop was assassinated and she is

now working for the Women and Development Studies at the University of

the West Indies in Trinidad.

She wrote the novel Crick Crack Monkey in 1970 where she deals with

the theme of childhood in the West Indies. The main protagonist called

Tee lives with Tantie who is a working class woman. She later goes to

live with her aunt Beatrice and she faces a new and different world

from that of her Caribbean world: “Hodge's story is presented through

the eyes of a black, lower class girl of Trinidad in the 1950s.” The

whole story is one presented from one point of view: Tee’s. She is

left alone by her father who goes abroad after the death of her mother

and she has to live with her lower class Tantie where she learns about

being independent. Later in the story her aunt Beatrice takes her and

she then has to adapt herself to the ‘white’...

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... sites:

- BILL CLEMENTE: The A, B, C's of Alienation and Re-Integration :

Merle Hodge'S Crick Crack Monkey

- httpClemente.htm

- httpcrick crack monkey study guide.htm

- The Two Worlds of the Child: A study of the novels of three West

Indian writers; Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Hodge, and George Lamming

- httpJamaica Kincaid, Merle Hodge, George Lamming.htm

- Two Postcolonial Childhoods:Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey

and Simi Bedford's Yoruba Girl Dan

- http Jouvert 6_1 - 2 Martin Japtok, Two Postcolonial Childhoods

Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey and Simi Bedford's Yoruba Girl

Dancing.htm

- http merle.htm

books:

- HODGE ,MERLE. Crick Crack, Monkey. Andre Deutsch, 1970; London:

Heinemann, 1981; Paris: Karthala, 1982 (trans. Alice

Asselos-Cherdieu).

Lectures:

- Lectures by Mrs. MAHADAWO on Island Literatures.

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