Green Days by the River (original) (raw)
Related papers
Growing up in the Caribbean: A Reading of The Nowherians and Other Stories
Ars Artium, vol. 12, 2024
Krishna Samaroo's The Nowherians (2016) is a coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman, of two brothers who are at the mercy of Trinidadian societal practices at the time. The details of childhood are a capsule of memory from pre-independence to post independence. In this article, I examine some key issues that arise from Samaroo's work and make connections to two other works set in a similar time in Trinidad and Tobago-Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey (1970) and Persaud's Butterfly in the Wind (1990). Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago in the 1950s and 1960s includes experiences that are determined by social class and specifically in these works, the rural-urban dynamic as it affects social issues. These three works include childhood as a major theme and as a result, home spaces and caregivers in the forms of grandmothers and aunts are also issues of importance. My own family stories offer connections to thematic discussions in the article.
The Journal of Public Space, 2017
Space is gendered. Private domestic space is classically considered to be a woman's domain while public space is masculine. Of course, men are found in private spaces and women in public, but ownership is a reference to those who typically exercise day-today control of that space. It should be remembered, however, that women frequently act as proxies for men in private spaces too; in much of the world, domestic space is inherited by men who are traditionally considered heads-of-the-household. To complicate matters, masculinity comes in many forms and to reconcile these wide variations with narrow, widely-held stereotypes, Connell introduced the term hegemonic masculinity. We take this term as referring to idealised cultural stereotypes related to orthodox masculinity, which provide virtual benchmarks for manhood but which exist nowhere in their absolute form. Nevertheless, these stereotypes serve to map out male domains and they can hence also serve to exclude women, thus making space gendered. We further argue that a potent means of mapping gender domains is through taboos: these taboos designate physical places and cultural spaces that men should not be associated with and doing so can pose grave risks to a reputation and sometimes result in violent retribution. We explore how masculine obligations and taboos construct boundaries between both male and female domains (intergender divides) and create distance between the domains of 'real' men and males who fail to measure up (intragender divides). In particular, we will focus on how the passage to manhood is both deeply affected by, and translates into the everyday character, praxis and ownership of public space with particular reference to manhood in the Caribbean.
A Central Voice in Caribbean Literature
New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids
This essay explores the complex ways in which narrative may signify in the contemporary Caribbean cultural context. Specifically, it is concerned with a trilogy written by award-winning Surinamese author Astrid Roemer, set in the years of independence of the Caribbean country after 300 years of Dutch occupation. The analysis focuses not on the usual postcolonial themes but on structures of signification: allegory, materiality and media of language, affect, and the function of objects. Roemer’s texts demonstrate the relation between discourse and physical violence, her language being tied to material media, bodies, and earth. Not just postmodern, but posthuman too, the Surinamese narrative is characterized by the attempt to connect objects to language, objects to emotions, or nature to memories. Language brings us in touch with Caribbean reality and memory, all the while questioning its capacity to do so through allegory and metaphor.
The Vulnerable Hero Who Survives and Succeeds in Caribbean Bildungsroman
Heroes in Caribbean neocolonial literature may at times present fragmented, ambivalent, and dysfunctional identities that resemble the isolated, variegated, and broken islands they inhabit. Sometimes, the character of the hero in Caribbean literature is as isolated and broken as the island he or she comes from. A coming of age child who is victim of abuse or neglect similarly feels isolated, inadequate and morbid. The Caribbean underprivileged child carries over his or her small shoulders the overwhelming consequences of colonialism, in addition to the fears, pain and suffering which accompany physical and emotional abuse. However, despite the unequal battle ensued against such a susceptible target, the Caribbean literature child hero thrives in adversity and shows resilience through survival. In this work, we shall discuss the child hero’s vulnerability and resilience as presented in Nigel Thomas’ Behind the Face of Winter (2001); and Jean Robert Cadet’s Restavec: From Child Slave to Middle Class American (1998).
‘They say he is a man now’: a tale of fathers and sons
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2016
Similarly to other minimalist societies lacking formalised social structures and offices, emotions play a central role in sustaining, expressing and evaluating relationships among the Calon Gypsies of Bahia. An analysis of emotions therefore has to take into account Calon views of personal transformation and how people’s interactions, as well as their views of themselves and situations, are patterned and described through emotions. The article is centred on three episodes that focus on the father-son relationship and are marked by strong affective ties. Love, fear and anger for one’s father or son, and a memory of care and sharing, are set against a world that is perceived as hostile and underpin the Calon institution of revenge. This article describes how, through the performance of culturally intelligible forms of violence, actors in specific social positions manipulate and create social order. As this order is unambiguously gendered, the article explores the making of a gendered, specifically masculine subjectivity: how through an affective relationship with others, one becomes and remains a man (homem).