West Indian Writers and Cultural Chauvinism
Jerome Teelucksingh
Mohanty briefly distinguishes chauvinism from genuine pride and this points to an overlooked issue– a scenario in which the voluntary migrants and displaced persons possess an inadequate sense of their heritage and distorted identity. This phenomenon also exists in West Indian novels. One West Indian novelist, Ismith Khan in his work, The Jumbie Bird, portrays one of the major characters, Kale Khan as not accepting Trinidad as home and desperately desiring to return to India.6 His daughter-in-law seeks to change his viewpoint by using religious persuasion, “We live in Trinidad all we days, even in the Koran it say that a person should help to build up the place where he get he bread from.“7 The migrant is a hybrid surviving in a changing multicultural and multiracial environment. V. S. Naipaul is able to capture this state of the migrant in The Enigma of Arrival–A Novel; Half a Life and A Way in the World. Some migrants are aware and appreciate their history, culture and more importantly, their role in rebuilding the society. Indeed, the concept of nationhood in new homelands is often not properly constructed and fostered. This would lead to regional and ethnic insularity and pose problems in acculturation, assimilation and adaptation. This would certainly prompt writers emerging from this immigrant environment to focus on such experiences and either limit or overlook the cross-cultural dialogue. Mohanty must be commended for his bold stance against literary chauvinist perspectives but his suggestions may prove to be inadequate especially in a rapidly evolving world with glaring literary differences. The complexities and multi-layered nature of societies with interactions of nationalism, sexuality, language, religion, migration, gender, ethnicity and class will hamper the efforts of Mohanty’s model to eradicate cultural chauvinism. His suggestions are noteworthy but many challenges lie ahead for the postcolonial literary world of the 21st century. Notes 1 Caryl Phillips, A New World Order: Selected Essays (London: Secker and Warburg), 2001. 2 Rhonda Cobham-Sander, “Consuming the Self: V.S. Naipaul, C.L.R. James and A Way in the World,“ in Jennifer Rahim and Barbara Lalla, Eds. Caribbean Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers), 52. 3 As early as 1958, V.S. Naipaul, the prolific Trinidadian writer and Nobel Prize winner, in an interview in London’s Times Literary Supplement, he distanced himself from the term, ’West Indian writer’ and sought to liberate himself from a limited reputation and audience. 4 Dionne Brand, At the Full and Change of the Moon London: (Granta Publications), 1999. 5 Bridget Brereton, “Naipaul’s Sense of History“ in Rahim and Lalla, Eds. Caribbean Perspectives on Naipaul, 204-213. Lawrence Scott, “The Novelist and History–Pleasures and Problems: V. S. Naipaul’s The Loss of El Dorado–A History, The Enigma of Arrival–A Novel, and A Way in the World–A Sequence “in Rahim and Lalla. Eds. Caribbean Perspectives on Naipaul 165-182. 6 This is feeling of alienation is also experienced among other Asian diaspora; see Charles Sarvan, “Ethnicity and Alienation: the African Asian and His response to Africa,“ Journal of Commonwealth Literature 20, 1 (1985): 100-110. 7 Ismith Khan, The Jumbie Bird (Essex: Longman Group, 1985) 90. Pages: 1 2 3 4 |
Essays in this Forum
Rethinking the Global South
by Mukoma Wa Ngugi From Indian Literature to World Literature: A Conversation with Satya P. Mohanty by Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar and Rajender Kaur Asia in My Life by Ngugi wa Thiong'o The Global South and Cultural Struggles: On the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization by Duncan Mceachern Yoon The Fault Lines of Hindi and Urdu by Sanjay Kumar Reframing Colonialism and Modernity: An Endeavour through Sociology and Literature by Gurminder K. Bhambra Varieties of Cultural Chauvinism and the Relevance of Comparative Studies by Tilottoma Misra Literature to Combat Cultural Chauvinism: A Response by Shivani Jha Is There an Indian Way of Thinking about Comparative Literature? by E. V. Ramakrishnan Modernity and Public Sphere in Vernacular by Purushottam Agrawal West Indian Writers and Cultural Chauvinism by Jerome Teelucksingh Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred by Fatima Sadiki |