A dual culture
Although the first languages spoken on Barbados were of Amerindian origin, particularly Venezuelan, there are hardly any traces of them left today, as the Arawak and Caribbean peoples have long since succumbed to various plagues, wars, epidemics, famines and kidnappings. In the 16th century, the Portuguese, en route to Brazil, made a brief stopover on the island, just long enough to give it the name Os Barbados, which is still the subject of debate today. In fact, today, apart from the very official English, another dialect can be heard on every street corner: Bajan, the endemic Creole born of contact between the language of the British colonists and that of the slaves they brought over from Africa. This wave of settlement was not the first, however, as the Irish were first deported as "voluntary servants" with "work contracts" lasting up to seven years. But in 1636, just ten years after colonization began, the Life Slavery Decree was signed in Barbados, stipulating that, unlike whites, blacks and Indians could never claim their freedom. This formalization of slavery - for the first time in the British Empire, even though the island was then the private property of an earl, James Hay - and the racist prejudices it entailed, ruffled Thomas Browne's feathers, and he made no secret of it in Enquiries into vulgar and common errors (1646). This work was the first to mention Barbados: since the development of the lucrative sugarcane industry, the number of African slaves on the island had increased considerably, providing the essayist with a concrete example to back up his diatribe.
Slavery lasted for two centuries: its abolition, proclaimed in 1834, became effective four years later, when blacks were finally allowed to leave the plantations. At that point, whites were still largely in the minority on the island, but this did not prevent them from retaining control of the economy, even if a political breakthrough came in 1843 with the election to Parliament of the mixed-race Samuel Jackman Prescod. This very long period of domination, punctuated by episodes of repression as violent as the one that occurred in 1819, could not, however, make us forget the obvious: the foundation on which Barbados was built was undoubtedly twofold, Europeans and Africans having arrived at the same time, each with their own cultural baggage. Thus, Anansi, the spider-man of West African folklore, is still a familiar hero on this side of the Atlantic, since his stories were relayed and safeguarded by the slaves, then by their descendants, and finally by all Barbadians without distinction. The truth is, reconciling differences to achieve a common identity was the great challenge facing Barbados in the centuries to come.
From press to publishing
From the beginning of the 20th century, writing flourished in several fields - journalism with Thomas William Chenery (1826-1884), cinema with screenwriter Wyndham Gittens (1885-1967), political activism with Richard B. Moore (1893-1978) - but it was truly with Frank Collymore (1893-1980) that it became literary. The man considered to be the father of Barbadian arts wore many hats: writer and poet, of course, but also teacher, artist, painter and, above all, editor of a magazine that was to revolutionize Barbadian, and more broadly Caribbean, literature: BIM. In December 1942, for the first time, a publication opened its columns to writers from the West Indies. The highly acclaimed BIM inspired new vocations, and was followed by two other literary magazines: Kyk-Over-Al in British Guiana (now Guyana) and Focus in Jamaica. Collymore remained editor-in-chief until 1975, survived until 1996 and then returned in 2007 under the title Arts for the 21st Century, publishing two issues a year.
In this first half of the twentieth century, the press offered interesting visibility and, above all, enjoyed a real effervescence. Some of the most political titles were short-lived, but managed to put across the ideas of activists such as Clennell Wickham (1895-1938). After leaving The Herald, he founded The Outlook: A Monthly Magazine and Review. If no man is an island, as the poet claims, neither was Barbados isolated from the rest of the world: in Harlem, the interwar period was synonymous with the Renaissance, and Clennell's magazine - although it only ran for six issues - echoed this movement. Another link could be made in the person of Eric D. Walrond, born in Georgetown in 1898 to a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father. A tireless traveler and prolific novelist, his novel Tropic Death, published in New York in 1926, embodied this revival, using dialect like no other to give his dialogues consistency and flavor. Subsequently, the generation born with the century could continue to count on BIM to make itself (re)known: Karl Sealy (1922-1993) published the short stories that made him famous (including The Pieces of Silver) and Geoffrey Drayton (1924-2017) serialized his novel Christopher. Others honed their pens here before turning to publishing houses with a wider reach, among them a writer destined for posterity: George Lamming.
Between here and elsewhere
The child of a mixed-race couple, George Lamming eventually left his mother's native island for his father's homeland, England, seeking to escape what he saw as a mortifying huis-clos, only to fall into painful anonymity. Nevertheless, it was in London that his first novel was published in 1953, and the success of In the Castle of My Skin - a highly autobiographical initiation story set in Barbados in the 30s and 40s - was immediate. Praised by Jean-Paul Sartre and awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, the title was reissued in New York and soon completed by a sequel, The Emigrants. As for Lamming, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he embarked on a career as a professional writer and lecturer that took him to the four corners of the globe, but it was in Bridgetown that he died in 2022, just a few days before his 95th birthday. In all his novels and essays, Lamming never ceased to be interested in Caribbean history and to question the place of the West Indies in the post-colonial world. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to read him in French.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite's career bears uncanny similarities to Lamming's, of whom he was only three years younger. He too began by publishing in BIM, then moved to England with a scholarship to study at Cambridge. A university professor, he lived in several countries, notably Ghana, whose early independence - the first in Africa - had captivated him, for he too studied at length the question of decolonization and its consequences. A life and career intensely pursued until the honorable age of 89, and punctuated by numerous awards and honors. Today, among his abundant works, The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy(Rights of Passage, 1967; Masks, 1968; Islands, 1969) is considered a classic. In our language, RêvHaïti has been translated by Mémoire d'encrier and Negus by the sublime éditions Isabelle Sauvage.
Taking to the open seas is not surprising for a population born on an island, some of whom will never return, so it's not surprising that a good deal of Barbadian literature comes from the diaspora. We could mention the novelist Austin Clarke (1934-2016), who moved to Canada at the age of 21, taking up his nationality in 1981, where his talent was repeatedly recognized with prestigious awards. Sometimes, the transplant was more difficult, as with the poet Odimumba Kwamdela (born J. Ashton Brathwaite), who preferred to leave Toronto following the limited success of the Spear magazine he had launched there. In the end, it was in New York that he found his place, galvanized by the BAM (Black Arts Movement) of the '70s, and again in New York that he breathed his last in 2019.
Little-known but fertile
Wherever they live, the most important thing is that writers produce original work, which they do in all styles and genres. Timothy Callender, a complete artist, never wanted to choose between music, painting, poetry, drama, the novel, sociology, history, dialect or English: he excelled at everything. As for Esther Philips, she devoted herself exclusively to her poems, for which she received the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award. Faithful to BIM magazine, which first gave her a chance, she has co-published the new version since 2007. Adisa Andwele prefers the stage: he declaims his verses to music during his European and African tours. Lastly, while Linda M. Deane has added publishing to her many hats as a poet and children's author, Glenville Lovell has launched his career as a playwright after gaining recognition as a novelist(Fires in the Canes, Song of Night).
That these writers are unknown to us is all the more unfortunate given that some have received genuine recognition from the very best. Anthony Kellman, for example, was spotted and encouraged by Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) as early as his 1990 collection Watercourse. He has since completed what is Barbados' first epic poem, Limestone, which recounts four centuries of the island's history! In another field, Karen Lord also decided to innovate, moving from Redemption in Indigo, inspired by Senegalese folklore in 2010, to a social science fiction novel in 2013(The Best of All Possible Worlds, published by Panini Books). In conclusion, let's hope that Cherie Jones, born in 1974 and translated into French in 2021 by Calman Lévy(Et d'un seul bras, la sœur balayaie sa maison), paves the way for a generation increasingly visible on the international scene.
