Plantation and Race in the Caribbean
The incredible history of the Caribbean is indeed, one of the most rich, and at the same time troubling, of the New World. Its incredibly heterogeneous population and its social racial base make it a very difficult place to, for instance, live and raise a family.
While some children may have a future because of their light complexion, the others are doomed to a life of poverty in the unforgiving culture and society of the Caribbean.
Three people have taken it upon themselves to portray the Caribbean in their own ways. The opinions of Sidney Mintz, Michelle Cliff and Antonio Benitez-Rojo are made clear in their works and are discussed below in relation to two main issues; race and the plantations.
The Issue of Race
Perhaps out of personal experience and perhaps out of direct experience with people of the Caribbean, Michelle Cliff makes, by far, the biggest deal out of the race issue and the role that it played (and still plays) in Jamaica. Benitez-Rojo and Mintz certainly mention race as a factor in determining social status as well, but they do not base their articles on this. Cliff dedicates both Abeng and her article to this issue. It seems to have touched her in a way that the other issues have not. Her works are far more personal than the other two, and this is certainly the most distinguishing characteristic between her and the others. Her accounts, though fictional, are much more gripping and interesting, because they involve so much more feeling and emotion. The others seem to be nothing more than basic historical accounts of the Caribbean. It is impossible to look at her novel for more than a few moments and not pick up some sort of passage about the tragedy of this issue....
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...ean is presented with, neither is able to portray what Cliff can. Simply reading about the dynamics of plantation and race does not illustrate it enough. Though it is certainly very important to understand these dynamics, and thus read the articles of Mintz and Benitez-Rojo, the study of these issues would be incomplete without Cliff’s works on the subjects of the Caribbean.
Bibliography
Benitez-Rojo, Antonio. "The Repeating Island," Post-contemporary Interventions, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 1992.
Cliff, Michelle. Abeng, Penguin Group, New York, 1984.
Cliff, Michelle. "If I Could Write This In Fire, I Would Write This In Fire," An Anthology of Literature From the Caribbean, The New Press, New York.
Mintz, Sidney W. "The Caribbean as a Socio-cultural Area", as seen in Peoples and Cultures of the Caribbean, Garden City, New Jersey, 1971.
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