Contemporary issues in different literary forms

The poem “Third World Views (for Grenada)” written by Jean Binta Breeze in 1988 collects feelings regarding 1980’s invasion led by USA and other countries to Grenada. The voice in the poem states his/her rejection to war. The author plays with deictic referents (I - they), relating the use of “I” with nature and the use of “they” with war. Lots of metaphorical expressions to represent the sadness and suffering of the local (I) by comparing these feelings to nature. This poem, unlike “Language” by Marc Mathews, is written with Standard English. The reference to the Caribbean is not given by the way language is used but rather by the images presented in the poem.

But Do Caribbean writers MUST use Caribbean English? Or standard English? There is not any written rule to these questions but, to this respect, Grace Nichols in her essay “The Battle with Language” criticizes the problem with stereotypes. She presents, in this essay and through her poems in general, an opposition towards caging people because of their ethnicity, gender, social class, etc. Actually, she says that people who belong to a group do have the right to be creative and produce different things. Being black or being a woman, for instance, does not have to limit a person’s production. Nichols, being both black and woman, pronounces against the victimization of minorities.

The short story: “My two dads” by Mary Lee deals with culture and ethnicity. The narrator of this story experienced a different world and a different father when she travels to Korea (her parents’ country of origin). She being American and discovering this new world recognizes the cultural diversity, so common in this globalized era.

Finally, we closed our session with a couple of poems by Caribbean writers: Anthony Kellman and Kendel Hippolyte (“Bajan” and “a Caribbean exorcism poem” respectively). The former dealing with the paradoxes of an island (Barbados) reflected in the beauty of its nature; and the latter poem expresses, through a veil of religiosity, certain rejection to stereotypes and it states the importance of accepting and recognizing the existence and coexistence of good and evil.