“The West Indian writer is organically drawn to his history” (Derek Walcott 1963)

“The West Indian writer is organically drawn to his history”. (Derek Walcott 1963).
Discussing the representation of and attitudes towards history in the work of two
Caribbean poets.
The history of the West Indies is characterized by the colonization experience and is
measured in relation to, before being colonized, during colonization and after colonization. Is it
any wonder that Caribbean writers are compleyed to write about the single most defining event
of their communal histories and that continues to influence Caribbean societies to this day. In
particular, Caribbean women writers are “concerned with dismantling the negative hermeneutic
metaphors with which history has branded the tropics”1
. The authors Grace Nichols and Olive
senior write about history as a means of talking control of self, forming new identity and not
perceiving self as victim and therefore offer more than enough information in their work for the
adequate examination of this issue. They also both use motifs such as; femininity; land; the
ancestral home of Africa, its gods, heroes, cultures, customs; and language to inform the
exploration of history that is found in the collection of poems I is a long memoried woman by
Nichols and Gardening in the Tropics by Senior.
As previously, stated, black West Indians have predominately been defined by the
colonizing experience. The advent of slavery is responsible for the loss of history, culture,
customs, and the very identity of black West Indians. In the poem “sunshine” by Nichols, she
asks the question, “where’re our shrines? / where’re our stools?”2
To say that most of these
people would be inclined to resentment about the years of degradation and oppression of slavery
1
Rahim, Jennifer. “From Archaeology to Iconology: representations of the tropics in Senior’s Garden in the tropics
and in Goodison’s To us, all flowers are roses.” Journal of West Indian Literature 8.2 (April 1999). 80
2
Nichols, Grace. I is a long memoried woman. London: Karnak House, 1983. 21

would be a major understatement. Is it then any wonder that Caribbean writers (the descendants
of slaves) would seek to tell the stories of their ancestors. Olive Senior states that, she is
“providing the means by which people who have been voiceless in the pages of history can now
engage in dialogue”3
. In Senior’s first poem of the collection Gardening in the tropics entitled
“Meditation on yellow” she tells the story of the colonizers first contact with the colonized and
had she known then what they wanted she would have “brewed … some yellow fever-grass/ and
arsenic”4
. It can be said, that Grace Nichols goes much further into the exploration of the slavery
era as she presents many different stories of slave men and women. Indeed her collection of
poems, I is a long memoried woman was inspired by her dream of a young African girl
swimming from Africa to the New World surrounded by a garland of flowers. Nichols
interpreted her dream to mean that the young woman was “trying to actually cleanse the ocean of
the pain and sufferings she knew her ancestors had gone through”5
. In the poem “Skin-teeth”6
Nichols writes of the pretense of acquiescence that slaves adopted as a survival mechanism
despite their rage at the injustice of their situation. Nichols conveys the shame, rage, powerless
and deprivation of colonization in much the same way that Kamau Brathwaite does in his
collection entitled The Arrivants with the biggest difference between them being that she
explores the female perspective in detail, as does Senior.
There has been a general effort to reclaim the lost ancestral home of Africa if not literally
then its cultures, customs and spirituality. This endeavour is difficult to achieve because of the
systematic concerted attempt to irradiate all things African during colonization. Despite this,
3
Dawes, Kwame, ed. Talk yuh talk: interviews with Anglophone Caribbean poets. Charlottesville: The University
Press of Virginia, 2001. 74
4
Senior, Olive. Gardening in the tropics. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2005. 11
5
6

Nichols remarks on being “amazed at how much of Africa still remains in the Caribbean, when
you consider the disruption caused by slavery and the whole European colonizing experience”.7
This of course demonstrates the tenacity of the Caribbean people. The works of Caribbean
writers is then reflextive of the reclaiming of the past and is written to aid this process of
repossession of ancestral history. In this way Senior’s poetry “achieves empowerment by
reaching back to a cultural and religious heritage as rich as anything their new (en) forced
surroundings offer”.8
Myth making is then necessary to include the various tribes of Africa so as
to deal with the concept of the singleness of the African continent that symbolizes the ancestral
home of all black West Indians as the colonizing experience served to melt together individual
tribes. The concept of mythology and its effects on the consciousness of black West Indians is of
great concern to Nichols. This is mainly as a response to the inundation of the Caribbean society
with images of the “all-powerful male white God and the biblical associations of white with light
and goodness, black with darkness and evil”9
. Essentially, it became necessary to create new
representations of blackness. Both writers make deliberate exertions to create a history of
African West Indians before they were taken to the Caribbean. For that reason, “Senior
transports the reader into the realm of magical otherworldliness by weaving poems out of
fragments of gossip, myths, and folk beliefs”.10
A case in point is Senior’s poem titled “Amazon
women”, in it she compares the women she sees in her daily life to the legions of famous women
7
Ngcobo, Lauretta, ed. Let it be told: essays by black women writers in Britain. London: Virago Press Ltd., 1988.
96
8
Williams, Emily Allen. Poetic negotiation of identity in the works of Brathwaite, Harris, Senior, and Dabydeen:
tropical paradise lost and regained. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. 89
9
101
10

who once lived in the West Indies. Nichols too uses several myths to inform her depiction of
African women as indication by the poem “Yemanji”.
Nichols and Senior also delve into the spirituality of Africa or the gods of the ancestors to
provide further proof of the rich heritage of Black West Indians. Senior even dedicates an entire
section of her collection to them and Nichols makes repeated reference to them and even titles a
few poems in acknowledgement of these gods. In addition, both authors indulge in praise songs
to the gods and the heroes of the past. Nichols sings the praises of Jamaica’s Nanny of the
Maroon and Toussaint Louverture of Haiti in her poems “Nanny” and “… And Toussaint”; while
Senior repesents the ancestral home in her tales of mighty African gods like Ogun, Ososi,
Shango and Yemoja. Thus, these stories provide West Indians with reasons to be proud and
facilitate black pride.
Despite the negative emotions associated with history, the Caribbean writer articulates an
amalgamation of the ancestral home with the New World. This means that a hybrid of the
European and the African culture is attained. Thereby, creating a new identity for the former
slaves, as not African, not European, but distinctly Caribbean. One of the most obvious ways in
which this is accomplished is in the use of Caribbean dialect in Caribbean literature. Herein, both
Nichols and Senior comply seeing that, “language is power … and attests to the empowerment of
people through the recognition of their language, their culture”11
. Nichols also speaks on
“reclaiming our language heritage … (as) an act of spiritual survival”12
. Language is both the
ultimate form of resistances and conformity, as African West Indians were forced to accept
English in order to facilitate communication and subsequent survival but still managed to change
11
Newson, Adele S., Strong-Leek, Linda ed. Winds of change: the transforming voices of Caribbean women writers
and scholars. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1998. 8
12
Ngcobo, Lauretta, ed. Let it be told: essays by black women writers in Britain, London: Virago Press Ltd., 1988.
97

the language that was forced upon them and make it their own. The implementation into West
Indian literature of what Kamau Brathwaite calls “Nation Language” is symbolic of the
acceptance of a new identity in the new world and a combination of African and European
cultures. Summarily, language and identity are directly interrelated.
Another major motif expressed in the work of Senior and Nichols is the connection to the
land. This connection serves to provide a sense of rootedness for the new Caribbean identity.
Africans were dragged from their homeland and shackled to the land and while they suffered
days of hardship toiling in the cane fields, it was nevertheless, the land that first provided a sense
of belonging as it responded to their labourings. The poem “Sugarcane” by Nichols is an
example of the union of Caribbean people to the land of the Caribbean, so much so that
sugarcane becomes a persononification of the black man. The poem reports that the blackman
has become synonyous with the crop that he produces and is in essence a pathetic fallacy. It is
Senior however, who pays particular attention to the land. The very title of her collection is about
working with the land. Gardening in the tropics is demonstartive of living in the tropics where
nature is an integral part of the society. “Senior presents the land as a dual symbol, a panacea of
sorts, which keeps the family in touch with its hertiage, conversely, the land is a painful reminder
of their lost heritage”13
as such the people show respect and reverence to it.
It would not be possible to compare two female authors without appraising their
represenations of feminity, specificially black feminity. The black woman has been severly
neglected in the pages of history. Her enslavement was particularily painful, as she was subjected
to not only forced labour, but also forced breeding and rapes. Conversely, instead of dewHelling
on the degridatons of the past, Nichols and Senior make a purposeful attempt to focus on the
13
Williams, Emily Allen. Poetic negotiation of identity in the works of Brathwaite, Harris, Senior, and Dabydeen:
tropical paradise lost and regained. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. 79

strengths and endurance of the black Caribbean woman. The authors do not “subscribe to the
‘victim-mentality’ … or reducing the black woman’s condition to that of ‘sufferer’”14
; this is not
to say that they do not accept the fact that African women underwent severe destitution. All the
same, the “ancestor to Nichols is represented by an African woman … who has been, in history,
negated and voiceless but has persisted and flowered regardless”15
, she further relays in the poem
“we the women”, upon
we the women
who praises go unsung
voices go unheard
who deaths they sweep
aside16
“In, I is a long memoried woman, the woman is something of a mythic figure, and she breaks the
slave stereotype of the dumb victim of circumstance”.17
Nichols tells us that “we the women
making/ something from this”18
but not only is she surviving her situation, she is also doing it
with great dignity and goes about her life “holding herself like/ royal cane”.19
The poem “sacred
flame” also tells the story of the versatile woman, as mother, wife, labrourer, nurturer, cook but
above all else and in spite of everything else – a woman. Senior’s representation of women is
also of the powerful matriach and the facilitator of black customs. In the same way, that the
black woman carefully tends her garden, so too does she tend her children and by extention her
14
98
15
16
17
102
18
19

entire community. Senior’s attitude to black women is clarified moreover in her poem titled
“Yemoja: Mother of waters”, as she writes of the awesome powers that a female entity has over
nature itself.
Without a doubt, Nichols and Senior have managed to create poetry that “resurrects the
past and allows us to see our uncelebrated history made present, myth made real”.20
Societies,
like the Caribbean, that was built on oppression must have mythmakers or storytellers who can
lift the moral of the people and educate them on aspects of the lost ancestral home.
20

Bibliography
Dawes, Kwame, ed. Talk yuh talk: interviews with Anglophone Caribbean poets. Charlottesville:
The University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Newson, Adele S., Strong-Leek, Linda ed. Winds of change: the transforming voices of
Caribbean women writers and scholars. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1998.
Ngcobo, Lauretta, ed. Let it be told: essays by black women writers in Britain. London: Virago
Press Ltd., 1988.
Nichols, Grace. I is a long memoried woman. London: Karnak House, 1983.
Rahim, Jennifer. “From Archaeology to Iconology: representations of the tropics in Senior’s
Garden in the tropics and in Goodison’s To us, all flowers are roses.” Journal of West
Indian Literature 8.2 (April 1999).
Senior, Olive. Gardening in the tropics. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2005.
Williams, Emily Allen. Poetic negotiation of identity in the works of Brathwaite, Harris, Senior,
and Dabydeen: tropical paradise lost and regained. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999

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