Brathwaite, Edward Kamau - Silvio Torres-Saillant (essay date 1997)
Silvio Torres-Saillant (essay date 1997)
SOURCE: Torres-Saillant, Silvio. “Kamau Brathwaite and the Caribbean Word.” In Caribbean Poetics: Towards an Aesthetic of West Indian Culture, pp. 93-122. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
[In the following essay, examples of the Caribbean language, religion, and culture are teased out of Brathwaite's poems, leading to the conclusion that “Brathwaite insists on a theory of language, culture, and on a philosophy of history that have strong political implications insofar as they aim to liberate the Caribbean mind from the throes of a colonial heritage.”]
… isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?
Jamaica Kincaid (1989: 31)
Few oeuvres stress Caribbean literature's deep concern with language as sharply as that of the Barbadian Kamau Brathwaite. A...
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