Guyanese writers of African descent – Bringing new perspectives

By Petamber Persaud

Guyanese writers never shy away from sensitive issues. They will deal with the issues, as the occasions arise, in their private solitary writing moments; and they are not afraid to publish their opinions far and wide. That is one reason why Guyanese writers have become a distinctive breed, weathering popular thoughts to bring fresh perspectives to the table.

Guyanese writers of African descent were in a way and for a long time lobbying for the recognition of people of African descent. Now that UNESCO has designated 2011 as ‘International Year for People of African Descent’, it is only fitting for us, enjoying the benefits of their labour, to say thanks to some (the list is long) of these courageous writers.

Eric Walrond

At the turn of the twentieth century, a little-known Guyanese, Eric Walrond, was given the distinction of writing the ‘Great Negro Book’. Waldron had distinguished himself among a group of prestigious writers that included Marcus Garvey, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and was therefore chosen to write the ‘Great Negro Book’. Waldron was at the time (1920s) associated with the Harlem Renaissance, USA, playing a major role in the group’s programme. During this time, he encountered the vilest forms of class and racial prejudice, triggering his most productive literary years. His short stories like ‘On Being Black’, ‘On Being Domestic’ and ‘The Stone Rebounds’ were like fodder to black consciousness at the time.

Later he was entrusted with a greater role in fashioning and changing public attitude when he was made editor to Marcus Garvey’s ‘Negro World’. In 1926, he published a collection of short stories, ‘Tropic Death’, which was highly valued alongside ‘The Quest of the Silver Fleece’ by W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man’ by James W. Johnson and ‘Harlem Shadow’ by Claude McKay.

Norman Cameron

Three years after Waldron published his book, another Guyanese – Norman Cameron — this time in Guyana, published a significant book, ‘ The Evolution of the Negro’, a subject shunned by thinkers in the British colonial portion of the world.

(Cameron had three years previously returned from the UK, where he was studying at Cambridge University.) Within a short time of his return to Guyana, Cameron was already making his mark on the literary scene through his work as a writer, educator, mathematician, historian, poet, dramatist, sportsman, cultural activist, and social reformer.

Back in Guyana (1926), he was more Guyanese than when he left, an identity entrenched by discriminatory treatment in the ‘mother country’. Equipped with a ‘message’, an instrument to research, disseminate and justify, Cameron signalled his intention to stay home and mould a nation, participating in the affairs of his country, giving evidence in the British Guiana Constitutional Crisis, and making submission for a new socialist constitution.

He also published his views on various forms of government, including communism and ‘Thoughts on the Making of a New Nation’. Well qualified for the task, a witness to various stages of nationhood started in his youth, while growing up among living evidence of slavery and feeling the throb of a nation heading towards independence.

Although he was a social animal, Cameron declared that ‘cliquism in clubs has never agreed’ with him.

That declaration, supported by another statement, ‘mine has been a full life and complex, with notable contradictions’, said that he was a no-nonsense individual, willing to stand up for his rights and to fight for the rights of other human beings.

Ivan Van Sertima

 

While Waldron and Cameron were already in the limelight, Ivan Van Sertima was gathering his thoughts to publish his magnum opus, ‘They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America’. This was one of those controversial books that stabbed at misconceptions about Africans.

Van Sertima knew what he was doing when he set out on that scholarship: “Many people feel a certain kind of happiness when they read my book. A certain kind of shadow lifts. The psyche of blacks is raised. No man who believes his history began with slavery can be a healthy man. If you lift that shadow, you help repair that damage”. Van Sertima found many a loophole in the history of Africans written by the European. Hence he went about studiously to set the record straight with an avalanche of scholarship and publications.

And it was the creative Guyanese writers of African descent who brought the finer points of the discourse to bear through their art as fiction writers.

E. R. Braithwaite

 

Standing tall among such writers is E. R. Braithwaite with such novels as, ‘ To Sir with Love’ (1959), ‘ Paid Servant’ (1962), ‘ A Kind of Homecoming’ (1962), ‘ A Choice of Straws’ (1965), ‘Reluctant Neighbours’ (1972), and ‘Honorary White’ (1975). These novels portrayed Braithwaite’s poignant exploration of all forms of discrimination, especially social conditions of and racial discrimination against black people. Braithwaite’s frank and crisp use of language endeared the reader to the issues, catapulting many persons to action, improving their condition, righting wrongs.

Jan Carew

Mention must be made of Jan Carew, who lived and worked in many places with the singular fixation to right wrongs of discrimination, marginalisation and even gender inequity, fighting the ‘same cause’ by re-writing and righting history.

O. R. Dathorne

As a child growing up in colonial British Guiana, O.R. Dathorne was uncomfortable with the accepted norms of the society that held one man superior over the other.

In adulthood, unable to find a proper job in England in congruence with his Ph. D. (English) qualification, Dathorne moved to the African continent. Here he was influential in redefining African literature as one written by Africans, as against one written on Africans by non- Africans.

Beryl Gilroy

Beryl Gilroy was a prolific woman writer, authoring educational books for children to counter ‘Eurocentric books foisted upon children in order to set their places in the slurry at the base of the pyramid of achievement’. And her adult books, novels and historical fiction, were ‘rewriting wrongs imposed on the black man by correcting the ills of historical misrepresentation’.

Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols’s writing is a voice of reclamation.

‘Picasso, I Want my Face Back’ please, ‘ The Fat Black Woman’s Poems’ giving voice to the black woman as she tries to be herself in defiance of the dictates of Western values and ‘Sunris’, ‘reclaiming various strands of her heritage’. And the list goes on, all listing in the balance, all listing in the direction of respect, all listing in the direction of the rights of man.