Caribbean literature

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The Caribbean literature is the literature of the West Indies , Surinam , Guyana and French Guiana , which in English, French, Spanish or Dutch, and was written in the corresponding Creole languages. The Spanish-language literature of Cuba , which is linked in many ways with the literature of the two American half-continents, is usually not classified as Caribbean but as Latin American literature . In contrast, the literature of English-speaking Belize is often counted as Caribbean literature because the colloquial language of the former British colony is influenced by Caribbean Creole.

Due to the Spanish conquest, there are no more traditions of the non-scripted cultures of the pre-Columbian population of the Antilles.

The development of Caribbean literature was largely shaped by the social structure determined by colonialism. The living conditions were determined by the dominant plantation economy and slave labor . Various waves of European settlers merged with the slaves who were abducted from West Africa from the 17th to the late 18th century to form a racial and social hierarchy with two cultural patterns, between which numerous transitions existed: the dominant European colonial culture, in which the “conservative planters wrote and printed things as carriers of new ideas ”, and the Creole culture with relics of the fragmented African cultures of origin and colonial elements. The black slaves and their descendants carried on their African myths and stories orally, while the members of the white upper class oriented themselves towards the literature of their mother countries with increasing education. After the liberation of slaves, it was the newly emerged Creole middle classes (first in Haiti and Cuba, later in Jamaica) who created their own Caribbean literature in which both currents merged. Creole literature wanted to provide educational material for the former slaves and took up the avant-garde protest movements from Europe, but its bearers by far overestimated the emancipatory effect of literature. So literature remained inaccessible to the general public.

In the 1970s, this literature overcame the political and linguistic barriers of the Caribbean; at the same time, however, it largely became a literature in exile . This development took place in the entire Caribbean regardless of the language area in a comparable form; The literatures of the Caribbean still have in common an ethnological interest such as Negrismo and social criticism. Therefore it is justified to cover them in one post.

Indigenous people still live only in Guiana and Belize. In addition to the descendants of runaway black slaves, Arawak , Wapishana (which also belong to the Arawak family) and others live in the “hinterland” of Guiana (also referred to as this in English literature ); in Belize at least 11% of the population are descendants of the Maya. It is only in these two regions that some Indian myths have been recorded and found their way into literature. Above all in Belize, but also in neighboring countries, there are also over 100,000 Garifuna- speaking Garinagu , descendants of fled black slaves and Arawak, who originally came from St. Vincent .

For the reasons mentioned, it is difficult for modern Caribbean authors to clearly assign identities. This applies e.g. B. for the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1992, Derek Walcott . Walcott was the son of an Englishman from Barbados who had an African American mother; his own mother came from a large Dutch landowner and a colored woman from St. Maarten whose ancestors came from West Africa. Walcott had British citizenship for most of his life, but saw himself as a colonial resident; he was an Anglophone, but lived on the island of St. Lucia , which changed hands 14 times in the course of history. While Shakespeare is read in schools , Antilles Creole ( Kwéyòl or Patois ), which Walton also spoke, is largely spoken on the streets . In contrast to the mostly Catholic residents of St. Lucia, he was a Methodist ; but the traditional healers are still omnipresent on the island. But in the works of the authors who have long lived in the USA and wrote in English, and even among the second-generation immigrants, the Caribbean origins and a special sensitivity for the impending loss of language can be felt.

Anglo-Caribbean literature

While the early Anglophone Caribbean literature was determined by the arduous attempt at self-assertion and gaining identity in relation to the mother country, with the independence of the (mostly) dwarf states at the latest, there was a literary bloom, which also received international attention.

Until 1950

Michel Maxwell Philip (1829–1888), son of a white plantation owner in Trinidad and an African-American woman and later mayor of Port of Spain , wrote the pirate novel Emmanuel Appadocca, or, Blighted Life: A Tale of the Boucaneers , the first Caribbean novel in 1854 English language applies.

A first conception of a comprehensive African identity that includes the Caribbean can be found in Anglophone Caribbean literature in the poetry of the teacher and catechist Thomas RF Elliot (1872–1910), a descendant of African slaves in Guiana. The first West Indian novel ( Jane's career ) with a black main character was written in 1913 by Herbert George De Lisser (1878–1944), born in Jamaica , a descendant of Africans and European Jews. The poet and narrator Claude McKay (1890–1948) came from Jamaica, had his first volume of poetry printed in Creole language in 1912 and emigrated to the USA in the same year, where he co-founded the Afro-American protest movement of the 1920s, which was influenced by socialist ideas - the Harlem Renaissance . Published in the USA a. the volumes Harlem Shadows (1922), Banana bottom (1933) and Selected Poems (posthumously 1953).

A solidarity movement of the Caribbean countries emanated from Jamaica in the 1930s, which led to the founding of the literary magazine BIM by Frank Appleton Collymore (1893–1980) from Barbados in 1942 . Derek Walcott (* 1930 in St. Lucia) also published his work in this magazine. In Trinidad, the Portuguese-born young Albert Gomes (1911-1978) founded the literary magazine The Beacon in 1931 , which contributed to the de-provincialization of Caribbean literature in a short time until his father, who had financed the newspaper, forced him to give up the writing and in to work with his pharmacy. He developed into a trade unionist, later wrote a novel and an autobiography ( Through a maze of color , 1974) and was the small country's first chief minister from 1950–1956.

Derek Walcott (2012)

Many literary works in the environment of the group around The Beacon emerged directly from the anti-colonial struggles of the 1930s to 1950s. They testify to the strong social commitment of their authors, such as the Poems of Resistance (1954), which Martin Carter (1927–1997) wrote while imprisoned in Guiana, and the socially realistic novel Crown Jewel (1952) by Ralph de, who has lived in Australia since 1948 Boissiere (1907–2008), who deals with the social conflicts of the 1930s in Trinidad. Other important socially critical storytellers from Trinidad were Alfred H. Mendes (1897–1991) , who came from a Portuguese Creole family, with his novel Pitch Lake (1934) and the Afro-Caribbean essayist and Marxist social theorist CLR James (1901–1989) with his groundbreaking realistic Workers' novel Minty Alley (1936). But only Edgar Austin Mittelholzer from Guiana (1909–1965) was the first author from the Caribbean to win numerous readers in Europe (with Corentyne thunder , 1941, and A morning in the office , 1950).

In Jamaica in the 1930s, theater brought forth new themes and forms under the influence of African culture. One of the most important authors was the poet, playwright and feminist Una Marson (1905–1965), who temporarily lived in London. In her important play Pocomania, she portrays a middle-class woman who expects the Afro-religious cults to create emotional experiences and an increase in her attitude towards life .

1950-2000

After the Second World War, the authors clearly turned to the culture of Africa. The novels of the Jamaican Victor Stafford Reid (1913–1987; New day , 1949) and the Barbadian native George Lamming ( In the castle of my skin , 1953) and Derek Walcott's poems (including In a green night , 1962) stand for this . Vic Reid (1911–1987) from Jamaica wrote historical novels about the slave revolt of 1865 and the Mau Mau War in Kenya .

Local dialects and sociolects have been used increasingly in literature since the 1960s . Popular traditions and Caribbean forms of music such as calypso and reggae were combined with modern lyric techniques.

However, the development of literature in the Anglophone Caribbean after the war was largely shaped by the BBC's radio program “Caribbean Voices” , directed by Irishman Henry Swanzy and Una Marsons. These programs were produced between 1943 and 1958 and broadcast in the Caribbean. The many authors who were able to present their texts there at the end of the colonial era - the book market was very tight, printing capacities were scarce and expensive, so the radio offered an important, if not the only publication opportunity - had to comply with the specifications of the Customize BBC. Some connoisseurs regard “Caribbean literature” as a construction of British intellectuals.

Many writers tried to survive as lecturers on short-term contracts. With increasing internationalization, more and more Anglophone authors emigrated first to London, then more and more often to New York or Toronto , where Anglo-Caribbean colonies had formed. These include Jan Carew (1920–2012) from Guiana, who became known through the novel Black Midas (1958), the exponent of magical realism Wilson Harris (* 1921) and Oscar Dathorne (1934–2007) from Guiana, who became the co-founder of Black Studies in the USA. The novelist and journalist Geoffrey Drayton (* 1924) from Barbados, the Jamaican storyteller and novelist John Edgar Colwell Hearne (1926–1994), the storyteller Jamaica Kincaid (* 1949) from Antigua , the writer and actress Pauline Melville (* 1948 ) also emigrated ) and the poet Grace Nichols (* 1950) - both from Guiana -, the poet Kamau Brathwaite (* 1930) and the writer and Canadian civil rights activist Austin Clarke (* 1934) - both from Barbados; finally the aforementioned Derek Walcott, who was finally able to use the money from the Nobel Prize for Literature to fulfill his dream of buying a house in his home town of St. Lucia. VS Naipaul (1932-2018), who lives in England, is descended from Indian ancestors in Trinidad and is best known for his critical travel literature, who is not only controversial in his homeland because of his identification with the values ​​of the former colonial rulers, also received the 2001 Nobel Prize .

Anglo-Caribbean authors in the diaspora

Many of these authors are now considered British, American, and Canadian by literary criticism. One of the early representatives of Anglo-Caribbean authors in Great Britain was Samuel Selvon (Sam Selvon), who immigrated from Trinidad in 1950 and whose most famous work is the novel The Lonely Londoners (1956), written in Creole English . He also wrote radio plays and poetry.

Second generation Caribbean literature has emerged in Great Britain since the 1970s. These include the Indo-Caribbean writer David Dabydeen (* 1955 in Guiana), the Afro-Caribbean author and social worker Joan Riley (* 1958 in Jamaica), who wrote the first novel in 1985 about the experiences of black migrant women in England, the well-known children's book author Faustin Charles (* 1944 in Trinidad) and the poet and playwright EA Markham (1939–2008) from Montserrat .

VS Naipaul, born in Trinidad, had lived in England since he was 18 years old. His first novels still deal with life on his home island; his later work, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 2001, reflects his uprooting in the diaspora and critically examines the consequences of the decolonization of the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. Mike Phillips (* 1941), originally from Guiana, writes novels, radio and television programs and photo documentaries about the everyday life of the Black British . Its themes are ethnicity and identity. Ferdinand Dennis (* 1956) parents emigrated from Jamaica when he was eight years old. His first novel The Sleepless Summer (1989) enjoyed cult status in the British-Jamaican community. Thematically, it ties in with the novel The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon.

Since 2000

The former Benedictine monk , storyteller and novelist Lawrence Scott (* 1943 in Trinidad), who became known for his artfully complex “rococo-like” prose, is one of the few authors who stayed mostly in their homeland during their lives . He received the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the category of “Best Book from Canada and the Caribbean” for Aelred's Sin , a novel about the conflict between homosexuality and religious vocation. His historical-fictional novel Light falling on bamboo (2012) about the moral conflicts of a 19th century painter was also highly praised. Marlon James (* 1970) is one of the younger Anglophone authors of the Caribbean . a. The Man Booker Prize- winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) became known. He deals with violence and drug trafficking in his hometown of Kingston .

Belize

Belize, which borders Mexico and Guatemala, is shaped by British colonial rule (until 1981) as well as by Afro-Caribbean influences and traditions of the Maya and the Garifuna culture. In addition, there are Indian, Arabic and East Asian influences, so that Belize in America probably represents the greatest diversity in a very small space.

In the 1920s, the son of a woodcutter and autodidact James Sullivan Martinez published the volume of poetry Caribbean Jingles , which is still considered to be linguistically innovative because of the use of the Creole language. In Beka Lamb (1982; Eng. "Beka"), Zee Edgell (* 1940), who is now considered to be Belize's most important author, tells the story of a Creole girl between matriarchy and the awakening national movement during the 1950s. In The Sinner's Bossanova (1987), Glen Godfrey deals with the transformation process of colonial society using the example of a girl living on a farm. Short stories and poetry are written by Leo Bradley, who also edited the anthology Snapshots of Belize: An anthology of short fiction (1995). Felicia Hernandez, who temporarily lived in the USA, writes primarily for women and children. John Alexander Watler is the author of the novel Boss of Dangriga (2007).

French-Caribbean literature

The Francophone Caribbean literature continued in the 18th century with the travel reports of French missionaries, u. a. by Jean-Baptiste Labat (1663–1738), also a plantation owner, whose cynical description of the slaves and their situation provided the French Enlightenment with the basis of their criticism of the colonial conditions.

Haiti

In Haiti, in the course of the slave revolts and independence (1804), the first writings by black and mulatto authors on local topics were created. Historians and politicians such as Émile Nau (1812–1860), Thomas Madiou (1814–1884) and Joseph Saint-Rémy (1818–1856) cultivated the memory of the revolution in essays, historical works and patriotic poems.

The genre of the novel national , which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century - one representative was Justin Lhérisson (1873–1907) - characterizes Haitian society in a partly satirical way. At the same time, the Lodyans (from l'audience , dt. "The audience") developed from an originally oral short form of the narrative to the written form. The often humorous Lodyans were also first collected by Justin Lhérisson and his friend, the journalist, novelist, playwright and State Secretary Fernand Hibbert (1873-1928).

Fernand Hibbert

With the American occupation (1915–1934) against which Hibbert fought, the political-literary criticism of the foreign infiltration of the country led to a return to the African cultural heritage, which the scholar Jean Price-Mars (1876–1969), a representative of the Indigenism , initiated. The representation of rural life and the previously taboo voodoo practices was henceforth a central place in the literature, so when Philippe Thoby-Marcelin (1904-1975), who wrote several novels with his brother Pierre Marcelin in which they the Haïtianité against tried to defend US culture, and in the novels of Édris Saint-Amand (1918–2004). Jacques Roumain (1907–1944), the first general secretary of the Haiti Communist Party, was the founder of non-folkloric indigenism. His novel Gouverneurs de la rosée (posthumously 1944; German: "Lord of the Dew") focuses on the village collective and its ways of dealing with a drought catastrophe. Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922–1961) initially distanced himself from indigenism with an emphatically realistic narrative style, only to later find his way to Réalisme merveilleux , a variant of magical realism . Indigenism and Negrism thus resulted in the Négritude , which made use of the stylistic devices of European surrealism to develop new forms of expression of a “neo-African” culture. These tendencies had an impact on Africa.

Alexis, who had contact with the African representatives of the Négritude in Paris, led a student uprising in 1946 together with René Depestre (* 1926), who later became known as a poet and political author , for which reason the dictatorial President Élie Lescot , who ruled the pursued local religious traditions as superstition, forced them into exile.

Depestre's (“The Schlaraffenbaum”) and Alexis' works have a number of common features: They address “political issues, coupled with recourse to the physicality of Haitian people, to popular traditions such as the [...] voodoo cult [...], which contains the healing, the interdependence of all things and living beings ”and avoid the charge of exoticism by embedding it in a humanistic-political context.

From the 1950s a socially critical to socialist perspective predominated in Haitian literature. The dictatorial rule of the Duvalier family drove numerous critical writers into exile after 1960. Besides René Depestre, these included the poets Jean-Fernand Brierre (1909–1992), Jean Métellus (1937–2014), Ahnthony Phelps (* 1928), Josaphat-Robert Large (1942–2017), the poet, novelist and social critic Lyonel Trouillot (* 1956) and others. Jacques Stephen Alexis was murdered as a communist after secretly returning to Haiti from exile in 1961. The essayist Georges Anglade (1944–2010) lived temporarily in exile in Canada; he died in the 2010 earthquake. Dany Laferrière (* 1953) also emigrated to Canada in the 1980s. In 2014 he received the International Literature Prize for his novel The Riddle of Return .

It was not until 1975 that the first Creole novel ("Dézafi") by Frankétienne (* 1936), who also became known as a painter and musician, was briefly minister of culture in 1988 and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2009, was published in Haiti .

Evelyne Trouillot (2011)

Evelyne Trouillot (* 1954) writes in French and Creole; her diverse work has received several awards. Her best-known novel is probably Rosalie l'infâme (2003), which tells the fate of a slave at the end of the 18th century based on Primo Levi's story about his survival in Auschwitz. Also Kettly Mars (born 1958) writes in French and Creole; their themes are sexuality and political violence. One of the most widely read novelists today is Gary Victor (* 1958), who also works for theater, radio, television and cinema.

Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana

Saint-John Perse's birth house in Pointe-à-Pitre (2012)

The literature of the other francophone areas was based longer on French models than Haiti. It reached its climax in the work of the Guadeloupe poet Saint-John Perse (1887–1975), who, however, returned to France with his family at a young age in 1899 and in 1960 received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The narrator, novelist and poet René Maran (1887–1960), who left his home Martinique early and worked in colonial administration, was the first black writer to receive the Prix ​​Goncourt in 1921 for his novel Batouala , in which colonialism is sharply criticized. As a result, he lost his job.

In Paris in the 1930s justified Caribbean writers such as the politician, essayist and poet Aimé Césaire (1913 to 2008) from Martinique as well as from Cayenne originating Léon Damas (1912-1978) together with Léopold Senghor the movement of Negritude, with pigment (1933) by Damas and Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939) by Césaire fundamentally renewed Caribbean poetry.

Graffiti with portrait of Aimé Césaires in Royan , France

It was only after 1945 that literature emerged that dealt more intensively with colonialism in the Caribbean as well as with colonial violence and the liberation movements in Africa. These include the works of the two Martinique-born authors Frantz Fanon ( Black skin, white masks , 1952; Les damnées de la terre , 1961) and Joseph Zobel (1915-2006) ( La Rue Cases-Nègres , 1950; filmed in 1983) as well the novels of Michèle Lacrosil (1911–2012), who was born in Guadeloupe . Fanon radically turned away from the Négritude and examined the trauma and psychological deformations of the colonized in the Caribbean and Algeria, as well as the forms of counter-violence. Zobel also had close contact with the Senegalese in Paris and worked in Senegal himself. The doctor, researcher and militant fighter for the autonomy and the Creole language Bertème Juminer (1927-2003) lived in French Guiana, France, Tunisia, Senegal and Guadaloupe and was best known for the autobiographical novel Les bâtards (1961), in which he described the exile situation. Like Damas, he paints a pessimistic picture of the black elite who are completely assimilated into French culture and are therefore "bastards". The author and politician Serge Patient (* 1934), on the other hand, describes in his historical novel Le nègre du gouverneur (1972) the rise of a former slave who, thanks to his ability to assimilate, penetrates the better circles of Cayenne until he succumbs to madness, a white woman to get married. Overall, the social criticism in the literature of French Guiana is far less pronounced than that of the authors of the earlier British Guiana.

The novelist, poet and cultural theorist Édouard Glissant (1928–2011) came from Martinique, who coined the concept of a specific multicultural Caribbean identity - the Antillanité ("Antillity") - and concretized it in his work. In his play Monsieur Toussaint he dealt with the myth surrounding the Haitian national hero Toussaint Louverture . As a cosmopolitan, he lived alternately in New York, Paris and Martinique. He was also a frequent guest in Berlin.

Daniel Maximin (1947–2013) developed a similar approach in L'isolé soleil (1981). Raphaël Confiant (* 1951) is the first Martinique writer to publish a novel in Creole ( Bitako-a 1985). Of his approximately 75 books, around 15 are written in Creole. Even Patrick Chamoiseau (* 1953), in 1992 the Prix Goncourt for his novel from Martinique Texaco received, the concept of trying creolite to do with stylistic means and through the inclusion of mythical figures in the plot visible. Simone Schwarz-Bart (* 1938), who claims to be born in Guadeloupe, lived there as well as in Africa and France. She wrote about exile and the problems of Caribbean identity.

Maryse Condé (2008)

Maryse Condé , born in Guadeloupe in 1937 , left her home early, studied at the Sorbonne, worked in West Africa and the USA and now lives in France; Her varied work reflects her experiences from all these regions, with colonialism and decolonization, with historical and gender issues. In 2018 she received the literary prize of the new Swedish Academy, which was awarded this year instead of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her novel Windward Heights (French: La Migration des cœurs , 2003) is the successful attempt to subversive Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë while retaining the characters (to incorporate literary, quasi "cannibalize") and using an oral Creole style in to move the colonized Guadeloupe around 1900. In this way she parodically refers to the Manifesto Antrofagico of the Brazilian avant-garde José Oswald de Souza Andrade from 1928, whose idea of ​​the ogre as a consumer, digestor and excretor of everything else and also of one's own plays an important role in the interpretation of Brazilian and post-colonial art overall to this day . Condé's book Histoire de la femme cannibale (2005) also remains connected to this topic.

Literature Prize

Since 1965, the Prix ​​Littéraire des Caraïbes has been awarded every two years by the Association of French- Speaking Writers to writers from Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. So far he has gone to Martinique nine times. The Prix ​​Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde has existed since 1990 . a. is also awarded to French-Canadian authors.

Spanish-language literature

The Spanish-language Caribbean literature has been influenced by Spanish-American modernism and partly by the Afro-Caribbean currents of the francophone areas since the 1920s . One of her most important achievements was the development of an independent lyric poetry, the poesía negra , whose representatives (in addition to the Cubans Nicolás Guillén , Emilio Ballagas and Nancy Morejón ) were above all Luis Palés Matos and Manuel de Cabral .

Dominican Republic

For a long time the politics and culture of the Dominican Republic were shaped by the massive demarcation from Haiti, which the republic occupied from 1822 to 1844, and by negrophobic tendencies as well as the attempt to approach Hispanidad again. Under Presidents Trujillo and Balaguer , the colonial racist ideology reached a climax in the 20th century. The important representatives of literature belonged to the white elite of the Dominican Republic, which had been independent since 1844 and again after 1865. The national literary award was named after Salomé Ureña Díaz (1850–1898), author of emotional and tragic poems and founder of higher education for girls and teacher training in the country. Her son, the liberal essayist and literary critic Pedro Henríquez Ureña , emigrated to Mexico, later to the USA and Argentina, where he influenced the work of Jorge Luis Borges .

20th century

Notable authors include the avant-garde poet Héctor Incháustegui Cabral (1912–1979), who was influenced by Walt Whitman , the extremely productive and socially committed representative of the poesía negra, and the narrator Manuel del Cabral (1907–1999), who lived abroad for decades as a diplomat, also the narrator Hilma Contreras (1913-2006), who was the first woman to receive the Dominican National Prize for Literature in 2002, as well as the poet and musician Manuel Rueda (1921-1999) and the former president Juan Bosch (1909-2001), who was also worked as a political writer and important narrator ( La Mañosa , novel, 1936). Ramón Francisco (* 1929) emerged as a poet and essayist; his poems have entered popular music. The poet, archaeologist and storyteller Marcio Veloz Maggiolo (* 1936) was ambassador to Mexico, Peru and Italy. The poet and narrator René del Risco (1937–1972), like Miguel Alfonseca (1942–1994), was one of the protagonists of the resistance against Trujillo and in the phase of transition to democracy. The literature in the repressive climate of the Trujillo dictatorship was also referred to as postumismo .

Rita Indiana Hernández
Exile and migration

Due to the widespread lack of economic prospects, more and more artists emigrated from the Dominican Republic or temporarily went abroad, such as Enriquillo Sánchez Mulet , since the 1960s . Julia Alvarez (* 1950) came to the USA with her parents from the Dominican Republic at the age of ten. She taught literature for many years at Middlebury College in Vermont , where she still lives today. She writes in English and is therefore considered an American author; but the Caribbean origin of the writers who write in English cannot be misunderstood. Also Junot Díaz (born 1968) emigrated eight years ago with his family to the United States; With his novel “ The short, wondrous life of Oscar Wao ” (2007), he is considered a representative of magical realism. Migration is also a topic for Juan Dicent (* 1969). He lives in New York, writes stories, poems and plays and uses the language mix of the Hispanic American community. Rita Indiana Hernández (* 1977) is a writer of novels, short stories and lyrics. She popularized the merengue in its original form, has lived in Miami since 2012 , but continues to write in Spanish.

Frank Báez (* 1978), who and his band El Hombrecito published an English-Spanish CD with music, literature and graphic animation for the Dominican diaspora in New York, became known as a narrator and poet who stayed in the country . Pedro Antonio Valdez (* 1968) writes short stories in Spanish. Rey Emmanuel Andújar (* 1977) is active in music and film production .

Puerto Rico

The Spanish colonial power suppressed the creation of native literature for a long time. The first local authors only wrote historical chronologies on behalf of the colonial power. Unlike Cuba, the remnants of the Arawak culture have not been so brutally wiped out in Puerto Rico; There are still traces of culture from the pre-colonial period here. But it was not until the 20th century that songs, riddles and stories from the Arawak, Afro-American and Spaniards from the early colonial period were published by J. Alden Mason .

The romantic poet, playwright, essayist and author of biographies and historical novels Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826–1882) is considered to be the founder of an independent Puerto Rican literature based on oral tradition . Many intellectuals went abroad after the failed uprising against Spanish colonial rule in 1868, such as the poet Francisco Gonzalo Marín (1863–1897) and the writer and essayist Eugenio María de Hostos .

After the US invasion in 1898

Soon after the US invasion of 1898, which was initially seen as an opportunity for liberation, it became clear that the new government was ignoring the island's grown culture and promoting Americanization. On the other hand, a nationalist opposition movement grew up, which led to a flowering of a literature that understood itself as patriotic and social, which was politically organized in the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1930s . These included the poet Clemente Soto Vélez (1905-1993), who was sentenced to several years imprisonment by a US federal court after the massacre at the University of Río Piedras in 1935 and the unlawful killings of members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in 1936 for an alleged coup attempt has been. His works could only appear since the 1970s. His poet friend Juan Antonio Corretjer (1908–1985) met a similar fate. The national movement also included the poet Julia de Burgos (1914–1953). With La llamarada (1935), Enrique Laguerre created a naturalistic-proletarian novel about rural Puerto Rico at the time of the Great Depression and with La Ceiba en el Tiesto (1956) a novel about massive emigration. The 1930s to 1950s were also a time when short narration and essay writing flourished in the course of the identity discussion between nacionalistas and asimilistas (supporters of independence or accession) and estadolibristas (supporters of a status associated with the USA).

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Manhattan on East 3rd Street

In fact, many intellectuals, poets and musicians left the island in the 1930s and 1940s, including the African-American Jesús Colón (1901–1974), who founded the Nuyoricans movement in New York to combat discrimination against the Spanish-speaking people . Hispano authors born in the USA also joined this movement.

Among the Spanish-speaking authors of the 20th century who remained despite the massive repression against the supporters of the national movement in Puerto Rico that began again in 1948, include the Afro-American poet and representative of the poesía negra Luis Palés Matos (1898-1959) and members of the so-called. Generación del 50 : the poet, essayist and politician Francisco Matos Paoli (1950–2015), the playwrights and storytellers René Marqués (1919–1979) and Luis Rafael Sánchez (* 1936) - all supporters of complete independence. Sánchez's best-known work is the tragedy La Pasión según Antigona Pérez (“The Passion according to Antigona Pérez”, 1968), a variation of the Antigone material based on the biography of the nationalist freedom fighter Olga Viscal Garriga . His novel La Guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976) takes a critical look at the Americanization of Puerto Rico and the resulting loss of identity of the island and its inhabitants. Francisco Matos Paoli, a representative of lyric romanticism as well as modern and postmodernism, continued to write poetry in prison ( Luz de los Héroes , 1951); In 1977 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Since 1980

The younger authors no longer got to know repression; they stayed in the country. These include the feminist author Rosario Ferré (1942–2016), whose works have been translated into many languages, the essayist and novelist Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá (* 1946) and the narrator Manuel Ramos Otero (1948–1990), who wrote in his partly autobiographical work was open about his homosexuality.

The classic of Latin American postmodernism , Giannina Braschi (* 1953), who has lived abroad since 1980, writes in Spanish, English and Spanglish . Her trilogy ( Yo-Yo Boing ! , United States of Banana , El imperio de los sueños ) is written in the three languages ​​of Puerto Rico. It circles around the relationship with the USA and raises the question of whether the island is a colony, a state or a nation and examines the situation of the Hispanic people in New York. Also Writing Puerto Rico: Our Decolonial moment of the poet and social scientist Guillermo Rebollo Gil (* 1979) is concerned with the chances of decolonization, but he writes in English only.

Sánchez's political satire First Dog - Revelations of a Presidential Dog (2011) about Bill Clinton's dog, who is kidnapped by the FBI and made to speak, became known in Germany. In 2016, he contributed the word puertorriqueñidad to the official Diccionario de la Real Academia Española .

Literature of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam

Numerous oral traditions of the Ashanti from Ghana have been preserved in the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname (as well as in Jamaica and among the freed slaves who migrated back to Sierra Leone ) . Of these, the Anansi-tori or Nanzi , the spider stories that are closely linked to the ritual of the dead, are particularly well known.

In both areas of the Netherlands, in addition to the Spanish-language and Dutch Caribbean literature, there is also literature in the Spanish-based Creole language Papiamento .

Netherlands Antilles

Olga Orman from Aruba writes spider stories in Papiamento

The probably most important author of the Netherlands Antilles is Frank Martinus Arion (1936–2015) from Curaçao . His novel Dubbelspel (1973) , written in Dutch, is also available in a German translation ("Double Game"). In addition to short stories, Carel de Haseth writes poetry in Dutch and Papiamentu. Roland Colastica (* 1960) is the author of short stories and plays. Olga Orman (* 1943) from Aruba writes her animal fables and spider stories for adults and children in Papiamento.

Surinam

The literature of multiethnic and multireligious Surinam began in the 19th century with three historical novels (first: "Codjo, the arsonist" 1903) by the Catholic missionary Henri François Rikken (1863–1908). Rikken, who tried to convert the Chinese contract workers, also learned Chinese and immersed himself in the Creole dialects and the oral traditions of the various population groups. He saw no conflict between this cultural heritage and Christianity. The poet, writer and politician R. Dobru (actually Robin Ewald Raveles, 1935-1983) also came from Suriname. He wrote in Dutch as well as in the Creole language Sranan , which is rooted in English and Portuguese and has been written down since around 1945. Even Edgar Cairo (1948-2000) wrote in both languages ( Temekoe , 1969) u. a. about historical topics. Today, Sranan is the lingua franca between all Surinam's population groups - including those of the Hindi and Chinese speakers.

Karin Amatmoekrim

Cynthia McLeod from Paramaribo (* 1936) is the author of historical novels in Dutch. It addresses the clashes between Calvinist colonial officials, Jewish plantation owners, Creoles and Malay workers. Annel de Noré (* 1950) became famous for her feminist-psychological novel De Bruine Zeemeermin (2000). Karin Amatmoekrim (* 1976), who has Indonesian, Chinese, African and Indian ancestors, lives in the Netherlands and has published six novels to date. One of her topics is the migration of Indonesians within the Dutch colonial empire. Her fifth novel, De man van veel (2013), is based on the biography of Anton de Kom .

literature

+ Anja Bandau, Christoph Singler: Transinsular, tean cultural, transnational, transatlantic: Caribbean literature (s). In: Doerte Bischoff, Susanne Komfort-Hein: Handbook Literature & Transnationality. Berlin, Boston 2019, pp. 401-417.

  • Ulrich Fleischmann, Eckhard Breitinger: Literatures of the Caribbean. In: Kindlers new literature lexicon , Munich 1996, Vol. 19, pp. 1052-1066.
  • Donald E. Herdeck, Maurice Lubin, John Figueroa, and others. a. (Ed.): Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Encyclopedia , Washington, DC, 1979.
  • B. King (Ed.): West Indian Literature , London 1979.
  • R. Sander (Hrsg.): The Caribbean area between self and external determination: On Caribbean literature, culture and society , Frankfurt 1984.
  • DC Dance: Fifty Caribbean writers , New York 1986.
  • F. Birbalsingh: Passion and exile. Essays on Caribbean literature , London 1988.
  • DL Anderson: Decolonizing the text. Glissantian readings in Caribbean and African-American literatures , New York 1995.
  • R. Ludwig: Frankokaribische Literatur , 2007.
  • N. Ueckmann: Aesthetics of Chaos in the Caribbean: 'Créolisation' and 'Neobarroco' in Francophone and Hispanic literatures , 2014.
Anthologies
  • EA Markham (Ed.): Hinterland: Caribbean Poetry from the West Indies and Britain , 1979.
  • EA Markham (Ed.): The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories , 1996.
  • Janheinz Jahn (ed.): West India (= modern storytellers of the world, vol. 13). 2nd edition Tübingen / Basel 1974.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fleischmann / Breitinger 1996, p. 1053.
  2. ↑ Fleischmann / Breitinger 1996, p. 1053 f.
  3. ↑ Fleischmann / Breitinger 1996, p. 1057 f.
  4. ↑ Attempts by German missionaries to translate the New Testament into the language of the Arawak in Guiana were not continued. Leipziger Literatur-Zeitung, March 1824, Volume 1, No. 148, p. 1182.
  5. ↑ Bandau, Singler 2019, p. 413.
  6. ↑ Susanne Freitag: The Construction of Anglo-Caribbean Literature: Caribbean Voices 1946-1954 , Diss. Hannover 2013 ( online ), accessed on April 19, 2016.
  7. ↑ Peter-Paul Zahl : Jamaica , Munich 2002, p. 144.
  8. ^ EA Markham: Poet, dramatist and writer who resisted any tendency to define his work as either Caribbean or British , in: Independent, April 12, 2008 [1]
  9. ↑ Sample text on www.mybelize.net
  10. ↑ Directory of authors on thelatinoauthor.com
  11. ^ Wolfgang Bader: Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guayane: a peripheral literary history , online (pdf).
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Binder: Half the night weighs heavier than its silence .: Mixed writings: Reviews and epilogues to literature from the USA, Latin America and the Caribbean. Würzburg 1998, p. 58.
  13. ↑ No end to the class struggle: the writer Lyonel Trouillot in conversation with Barbara Wahlster , Deutschlandradio Kultur, January 2, 2015 [2]
  14. ^ Leonie Meyer-Krentler: Hidden Stories from the Caribbean , ZEIT online, February 8, 2010 [3]
  15. ↑ Frauke Gewecke: The Caribbean: on the history, politics and culture of a region , 3rd edition, Frankfurt 2007, p. 216 f.
  16. ↑ Ute Fendler: Maryse Condé: From the African roots to the Caribbean mangrove. In: Petra Petra, Dirk Naguschewski (Hrsg.): French literature of the present: a lexicon of authors. Munich 2001, pp. 51–54.
  17. ↑ Alternative literature prize goes to Maryse Condé , in: zeit.de , October 12, 2018.
  18. ↑ Peter W. Schulze: Strategies of 'Cultural Cannibalization': Postcolonial Representations from Brazilian Modernismo to Cinema Novo. Bielefeld: transcript 2015.
  19. ^ Mariana Ionescu: Histoire de la femme cannibale: Du collage à l'autofiction. In: Nouvelles Études Francophones. Vol. 22, No. 1 (2007), pp. 155-169.
  20. ↑ Nawal Jelb: Diaspora and Identity in the Literature of Postcolonialism: An Analysis based on the novel La maravillosa vida breve de Óscar Wao by Junot Díaz , Hamburg 2016, p. 23 f.
  21. ↑ Michael Rössner (ed.): Latin American literary history. 2nd edition, Stuttgart, Weimar 2002, p. 196 f.
  22. ↑ On the term, see Stefan Quast: Puertorriqueñidad: National Identity, Interculturality and Transculturality in the Musical Life of Puerto Rico. Göttingen 2008.
  23. ^ Albert James Arnold, Julio Rodríguez-Luis, J. Michael Dash: A History of Literature in the Caribbean: English- and Dutch-speaking countries , 2001.
  24. ↑ Wan bon / een boom , poem by R. Dobru in Sranan.