Brother, I'm Dying, Edwidge Danticat

How and Why it was Written

• Brother, I’m Dying begins with a quote by Paul Auster in The Invention of Solitude: “To begin with death. To work my way back into life, and then, finally to return to death” and this is what the memoir essentially does.
• We are told of Danticat’s Father’s terminal illness in the first line of the text and later learn of her uncle’s cancer. We then hear of Danticat’s life split between Haiti and America and the memoir ends with the fight to find the truth of her Uncle’s death and cope with her Father.
• The heartbreaking simplicity with which Brother, I’m Dying is written belies the potency of the story’s inherent significance. The narrative is a testament to the strength of will in and over adversity. 
• Danticat’s account and memory of her childhood could have belonged to any child growing up in any part of the world; her message is universal and yet culturally specific references feature throughout the pages of the book. 
• Throughout Danticat’s writing it is clear she wants to write the Haitian experience into existence, to make individuals out of masses  
• The imagery used is sensually evoked and the reader can almost taste the coconut freskoes, smell her mother’s soups and stews, and can visualise the vibrancy of the salmon pink house in which she grew up. 
• In her review of Brother, I’m Dying Denise MacLeod comments: “Mules and plantains, tree bark-soaked tonics, and smatterings of Creole are found all the way through the narrative; used booksellers, women water-carriers, and crippled beggars abound. Brother, I’m Dying is at the same time an exotic enriching journey, and a document of survival over hardship which transcends all cultural boundaries” 
• As a participant, Danticat herself is almost absent from this memoir. Her role is that of an observer, of curious spectator. Danticat says of the memoir: “It was a book I felt I had to write, for my uncle who died in immigration custody as well as for my father who died at around the same time and for the future generation, including my daughter, who was born in the midst of all that. It was indeed very therapeutic to write. I've said this before I think of Brother, I'm Dying as not a me-moir, but a nou-moir, a we-moir; it's not just my story but all these stories intertwined.” 
• Writing becomes a way in which Danticat can engage with the past and the present at the same time. Through writing Danticat learns to transcribe and translate her family’s existence and experience. When her father buys her a typewriter she remembers being told that it would be a way to “measure [her] words” (p.119) 
• Danticat took this literally: “He and I both had slightly crooked cursive handwriting [...] Still [those words] feel like such prescient gifts now, this typewriter and his desire, very early on, to see me properly assemble my words” (p.119) 
• Danticat writes and translates with the blessing of her father and we see in her literary work that she reworks her texts with a sense of orality creating a space where she can recreate the Haitian tradition through writing. 
• The tale of her Uncle’s death is one of the main reasons why Danticat writes the memoir, she is keen to discover the truth. 
• Danticat is extremely critical of the way he was treated in America 
• In Brother, I’m Dying, sinister and underlying shades of racism and xenophobia are exemplified by Joseph’s treatment in the Krome Service Processing Center, a former United States Air Force airbase built during the cold war. 
• Dancticat writes about when she goes to Krome Detention Centre as part of a delegation of observers organised by the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Centre and witnessed people arriving: “They were Haitian “boat people” and in addition to their names identified themselves by the vessels on which they’d come”. 
• Danticat asks the lawyer how they determine their ages if they do not come with birth certificates and he answers that “their age is determined by examining their teeth”. 
• This reminds Danticat of slave auctions where the mouths of slaves were checked to assess their health (pp.211-212). 
• Danticat cannot help but associate migrants with slaves and terrorists. 
• Danticat is quick to condemn this and comments on the unjust treatment of her Uncle in the chapter ‘Alien 27041999’ (p. 214) 
• Danticat is extremely critical of the way Americans dehumanized immigrants. 
• The themes of exile and immigration make the circumstances which result in the final resting place of Danticat’s father and uncle in America ironic, especially after living apart for more than thirty years. 
• The division of the book into two seems to separate much of the positive from all that is negative, the peaceful from the horrific.
• Overall, the memoir is a way for Danticat to cope with the deaths of her Father and her Uncle. It also functions as a way to communicate the history of individuals in Haiti and challenge the history of the masses. While violence, instability and nature’s wrath have long been mainstays of Haiti, Haiti is also Danticat’s homeland. It is a place for inspiration for Danticat but she struggles with political dilemma she finds herself in as an American citizen born of Haiti.

Storytelling

·         Danticat’s novel is dispersed with numerous folk tales and children stories with symbolic messages.

ðThe tales link into Danticat’s traditional Haitian storytelling style and seem to provide a form of escapism for her during the more troubling times in her life, dealing with issues such as death, displacement and illness.

·         Most of the tales were told by her Grandmother – “Grandme Melina” – who can be seen to be giving her guidance even after her death, through her stories.

·         “Leaning down, I picked a book that looked familiar, a book I’d owned before. It had a nun on the cover and on one side o her were eleven little girls in Raincoats and on the other, having the luxury of an entire hand to herself, a little girl who was dressed exactly the same as the others but stood apart somehow. The little girl’s name was Madeleine...I couldn’t wait to climb into bed and have another visit with my old friend Madeleine, who like me, now live in an old house with other children”. (p.67)

ð  Danticat shares a similar experience with the character of Madeleine, as she feels displaced and abandoned, what with her parents leaving for New York to set up a better life for them. Her lack of communication with them could be seen as a reason for why she was so dependent on such tales to help her through her childhood.

·         Moreover, the story of Madeleine helps her deal with the concept of illness – “I leafed through my Madeleine, which managed to make even sickness – in Madeleine’s case it was appendicitis – seem like a lot of fun”.(p.71)

ð  She was constantly surrounded with illness suffered by her family members such as her uncle.

·         Her grandmother also informs her of another tale similar to that of Rapunzel, of a “beautiful young girl whose mother, fearful that she might be abducted by a passerby, locked her inside a small but pretty little house by the side of the road while the mother worked in the fields by dusk...Grandme Melina’s voice would grow shrill with excitement from dangers that might lie ahead for this young girl...our representative in the story, the one from whose choices we were meant to extract our lesson”.

ð  The girl is terrorised by a snake who attempts to enter the house by disguising itself as her mother, when this fails the snake kills the mother. The daughter however, senses danger and instead of leaving the house and risking her life by the snake, she stays inside and retains her purity and her life.

ð  The story can be interpreted as having many lessons, that being safety and awareness, especially living in a politically turbulent place such as Haiti.

ð  However, a more relevant one to Dandicat’s tale would be the snake acting as a symbol of death and the young girl as sickness: “...a story I thought was meant only to scare the neighbourhood children. But I see now that the story was more about Grandme Meline than anyone. She was the daughter, locked inside a cocoon of sickness and old age while death pleaded to be let in somehow.” (p.71)

·         Another tale that was told by her grandmother to her, was the story of a young billy goat who came across an old horse on a narrow trail; an argument ensued over who should go first and that the oldest had priority, but there was disagreement over who was in fact the oldest. Eventually the goat argues that his beard proves he is the oldest. This story links into Dandicat’s migration to New York to be with her family and the struggle to integrate with her two brothers who did not understand the family dynamics.

ð  “”They say you two are older than me”, he continued, “but it’s not true. I’m the oldest”...Kelly’s time with our parents was his beard. Indeed he had spent much more time with them than Bob and I had combined.” (p.116-117)

·         “The story she told...was about God and the Angel of Death. It was one of Grandme Melina’s stories, one that Grandme Melina said you told to keep death away. In the end, Granme Melina stopped telling the story because she had wanted to die”. (p.143)

ð  The story of the Angel of Death and God was an effective tool for viewing death as a necessity of life and removing fear from it, especially for Dandicat who endured seeing her loved ones die in tragic circumstances.

ð  These stories acted in a way as to comfort her over serious matters.

ð  Danticat’s scattering of stories throughout her novel echoes was summed up in an interview: “many of us have turned to literature in difficult times and have found comfort and greater understanding there". Highlights the importance of literature in movement and migration of people, despite distance, words can unite people.

Separation and Where is Home?

From the age of 2 and all the way through her life Danticat experiences different types of separation, from both family and different homes and countries. Could these continual separations shape how she sees her, family, country and home?

• In an interview from 1996 Danticat discussed how separation was a strong theme in her past writings, such as “Breath, Eyes, Memory”. The reasons for separation shape relationships, and she was interested in the healing of these relationships, or lack of. “Brother, I’m Dying” continues this theme of separation and the recovery from these separations affect how she sees her family and what her concept of home is.
  • When Danticat is two, her father leaves for the USA, and when she is four her mother joins him. Danticat does not remember her father leaving, but remembers the trauma of her mother leaving

•  “When it was time for my mother to board the plane, I wrapped my arms around her stockinged legs to keep her feet from moving. She leaned down and unballed my fists as Uncle Joseph tugged at the back of my dress, grabbing both my hands, peeling me off of her […] But what if our mother went away and never came back?” (pg 56-57) 
• To comfort her, Danticat's cousin, Marie Micheline would tell her stories about her and her parents. She realises later that she would embellish them in her way, and use them to prove that they were once loved by her absent parents (pg 54). 
• So despite these stories, when her parents do return when she is seven she does not recognise them. 
• During the time of their separation, Danticat's father “had mostly been a feeling for me, powerful yet vague, without a real face, a real body”. Her birth parents were now strangers to her and her brother. The separation had made them shy and unsure of them, and has stunted their relationship. 
• Instead, the separation gains Danticat and her brother substitute parents in the form of their Uncle Joseph and Tante Denise. During the period until she is twelve, Danticat almost has two different families. There is the one of borrowed memories and imagined happiness in the USA, and the one of reality in Haiti.
•  When Danticat leaves Haiti at twelve, she leaves behind what had become her family. Her father recognises this when they arrive, whispering “one papa happy, one papa sad.” (pg 111) When Danticat does come back to Haiti because Tante Denise is sick, Tante Denise does not recognise her. Again the returning are not recognised by those left behind. 
• Danticat sees the birth of her daughter as a separation, and that over time they will gradually drift further apart (pg 253). She tries to hold back some of this separation and shows her desire for cohesion by naming her daughter Mire, after her father. 

• Danticat's feeling of separation from her families is also reflected in what she imagines her home to be. 
• Danticat does not return to Haiti until she is 25, and it does not look like she remembered it to be. It is more crowded, there are more shanty towns, and more burned homes. There are some similarities, but she does not recognise it, and it does not recognise her. In a way Danticat does not fully see herself as Haitian anymore, as she even describes herself and her father as “people from abroad” (pg 147). 
• The stories told to her by Marie Micheline, reflect ones that would be told about left homelands. The idealised space that are spoken about in the collective memory. 
• Walcott-Hackshaw argues that although Danticat left Haiti at twelve, it will always be her home as she continually returns for her work and like. However, if home is where the heart is, like the title of her article suggests, then surely her home would be in either Little Haiti with her husband and daughter, or in New York with her mother and brothers. Her Haitian parents have died, and so although she still has some ties to Haiti and Bel Air, her once separated family are now joined together in either the USA, or in death, as shown below.

Themes of Life and Death

The themes of life and death are apparent right from the start of Brother I’m Dying. Danticat says that: “I found out I was pregnant the same day that my father’s rapid weight loss and chronic shortness of breath were positively diagnosed as end-stage pulmonary fibrosis” (p. 3)

• When she found out she was pregnant was the same time that she found out her father was dying. This must have been tough on Danticat as she would be overjoyed at her pregnancy news but on the other hand she would be distraught at the news that her father’s condition was incurable.

Throughout Danticat’s journey she experiences many deaths both people she didn’t know and people she knew very well. “Suddenly it occurred to me that she might be dead. I had seen lots of dead bodies, not in their beds at home but at viewings and funerals at my uncle’s church” (p. 72).

• This quote was when she found her Grandma lying dead in her bed. Throughout the rest of the book she has to deal with many of her close family dying. This includes Marie Micheline, Tante Denise, her uncle and her father. Although Danticat is effected by these deaths she does not express that much emotion in her story just carries on with her life.

Danticat gained her view of death from what her uncle said. “‘Death is a journey we embark on from the moment we are born’ he’d say. ‘An hourglass is turned and the sand starts to slip in a different direction as soon as we emerge from our mother’s womb” (p. 73) This hourglass attitude to death could explain how she deals with deaths of people who are close to her. Not only this but when Marie Micheline died of shock, she stated:

• “When you hear that someone has died whom you’ve not seen in a long time, its not too difficult to pretend that it hasn’t really happened, that the person is continuing to live just as she has before, in your absence, out of your sight” (p. 135) When Marie died she had not seen her for years so it was better just to not think about her as being dead.

Even after the death of her father and uncle, whom we have seen that she dedicated the book to, Danticat was still thinking of the idea of death. “Like perhaps most people whose loved ones have died, I wish that I had some guarantees about the afterlife. I wish I were absolutely certain about my father and uncle are now together in some sort of tranquil and restful place, sharing endless walks and talks beyond what their too-few and too-short visits allowed” (p. 268)

The amount of deaths that Danticat talks about through Brother I’m Dying shows how much death was a prominent theme through her life.

Bibliography

Macleod, Denise; "Review of Oh Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Dandicat"; Scribe Publications; 2005

St Jean, Martha, Genius: A Talk With Edwidge Danticat http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-st-jean/genius-a-talk-with-edwidg_b_295040.html

Robert H McCormick Jr “Brother, I'm Dying” World Literature Today; Jan/Feb 2008; 82, 1; pg. 74

Danticat, Edwidge, 1969- and Shea, Renee Hausmann.

"The Dangerous Job of Edwidge Danticat: An Interview." Callaloo 19.2 (1996): 382-389. Project MUSE. Web. 30 Mar. 2011. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.

Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw. "Home Is Where the Heart Is: Danticat's Landscapes of Return." Small Axe 12.3 (2008): 71-82. Project MUSE. Web. 21 Jan. 2011. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>

The Devil That Danced on the Water, Aminatta Forna

How and Why she Wrote it

·         “The Devil who Danced on the Water” (2002) is a classic example of a lyrical memoir.

·         In terms of how it was written, she discusses how she wrote it using her memories including the fragmented ones from when she was a young girl, but that she required the use of interviews as a way of recollecting certain events that took place in Sierra Leone at the time of her father’s disappearance.

·         She describes this process of remembering as being in almost concentric circles, placing her memories in the middle and then expanding to look at her father’s story then the history of Sierra Leone.

·         Forna also notes that despite her turbulent relationship with her step-mother Yabome, that her cooperation for the book made it possible for her to unravel the true plot of the framing of her father.

·         It is clear that her father has had a huge influence on her life and was her motivation for writing the book, with the first page of acknowledgements stating that “This book is dedicated to the memory of my father”.(vii)                         

Picture 1

·         The book is broken into two sections – book one and book two

·         The first half of her story describes her father’s early life and his eventual migration to Aberdeen to study medicine. Most importantly, she discusses the fateful events that took place when her father was taken away for crimes he didn’t commit.

ð  Her father Mohammed Forna trained as a doctor in Scotland, before returning to Sierra Leone to become one of the most well known men of the countries generation.

ð  He was very involved in politics and promoting the rights of the poor; however, this had its repercussions, with Forna being arrested for alleged treason charges, that being the setting up of an opposition party.                                                                                                      

·         We first become aware of her struggle with the disappearance of her father when she describes the scene in which he is taken away:

ð  “”I have to go with these two gentlemen now, Am...Tell Mum I’ll be back later.” These are the last words, the very last words he says to me”. (p14)

·         The second half of the book sees Aminatta return to Sierra Leone as a journalist in her adult years, hoping to uncover what really happened to her father.

ð  This can be seen as her attempting to gain closure for the past events, especially when she is impelled to track down the men who betrayed her father.

ð  She also visits where her father’s remains are said to be buried.

·         There is a longing to put at rest what really happened:

ð  “Sometimes I dreamed he came back from living in a far away country, that he had been looking for us, but couldn’t find us...but despite the twenty-five years that had passed, they had never ceased entirely”. (p.17)

·         “We could say that Forna set the record straight. Or that she made a detective story out of personal pain.” – Lorraine Adams, Washington Post.

The Voices in Book One and Book Two

• Forna split “The Devil That Dance on the Water” into two very distinctive parts, Book One and Book Two.
• 

  

  Picture 2

  
  Book One contains a very childlike voice, that of Forna as a child and learning about the world around her, but veiled from the realities. We read about her experiencing childhood, focussing on what mattered to her, such as watching the ants, or being invited to a friends party, while bigger things she does not understand goes on around her.
• Book Two is a journey of discovery, of finding new memories of her childhood. For example, Forna was convinced that it was her who fetched her father before he taken away, where in fact he was already on his way out on his way to meet those who were to take him away. Forna builds up a bank of memories, which she placed in “concentric circles”, allowing a build up of all the different memories, including her own, her parents, and those involved with her father's death.
• In the closing paragraph Forna says that the voice of the Book One is the one who believed the Devil could dance on the water, but through her investigations Forna's innocence is lost. If she tries hard enough she can regain some of the innocence of Book One, but she is forever changed by what she has learnt in Book Two.

   

Memory and Forgetting

• Memory is an important component of Aminatta Forna’s The Devil That Danced on the Water.  Forna’s exploration of memory helps her understand her home nation and the history of her family, helping her establish a future by understanding the past.
• Memories, both personal and collective, form the frame of reference we all use to meaningfully interpret our past and present experiences and orient ourselves towards the future.
• The act of remembering is always contextual, a continuous process of recalling, interpreting and reconstructing the past in terms of the present and in light of an anticipated future.
• Aminatta Forna says: In the late 1990s, I began the process of collecting memories.  The first memories I collected were my own. They were fragments from the first ten years of my life and they were memories of events that had taken place in Sierra Leone in my own family.  But they had never been spoken about them, or at least, when they were spoken about it was only between my brother and sister and me.  We talked about them in huddled whispers. But at the end of the 1990s and the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone, I decided that I wanted to go back and look at these memories and work at what they meant to us.
• In the memoir Forna writes: “All my life I have harboured memories, tried to place together scraps of truth and make sense of fragmented images.  For as long as I can remember my world was one of parallel realities.  There were official truths versus my private memories, the propaganda of history books against untold stories” (p.18)
• Forna is trying to put together the documented history of her country along with her own memories, the personal lives of Sierra Leoneans that are forgotten in history books. 
• Forna is struggling to place her childhood identity inside the history of Africa: “I hoarded my recollections, guarding them safely against the lies: lies that hardened, spread and became ever more entrenched.  Yet what use against the deceit of a state are the memories of a child?” (p.18)
• Forna says the process of writing a memoir “was one of remembering.  Placing [her] own memories alongside the memories of others and the collective memories of a nation.  
• She wants to assert her memories as fact and is frustrated as she realises that the widely accepted history of Sierra Leone will still stand up despite her childhood remembering.
• Forna continues to struggle with placing her memories into the history of Africa and also with memories of her family.



Picture 3

• A young Forna remembers ‘Lord of the Dance’ which she sings at school alongside her early days in Koidu: “It was the first time I had heard the song since our days in Koidu and I didn’t understand why the words and the tune were so familiar, or why I knew them by heart.  I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the memory of my mother and instead of singing along with the others, I began to cry” (p.224) 
• For reasons she does not understand a remembered song brings vivid memories of her mother and in her youth Forna does not know how to deal with the emotions this brings.
• Forna also struggles with her memories of Africa and what one of her school friends talks of: “I couldn’t seem to recognise any aspect of the Africa she described and I had begun to wonder if indeed I really came from there at all” (p.227)
• Forna begins to struggle with notions of home from this point in the memoir.  Her memories tell her of a different Africa which is taught in England and she cannot link the two.
• This struggle with home continues into adulthood: “Sierra Leone to me was both utterly familiar and ineffably alien: I knew it but I could not claim to understand it” (p.271)
• Forna appears to be unable to connect the politics of her country with what she remembers of her time there.  She cannot relate to Africa as her home.
• Forna also talks about forgetting.  In reaction to her memoir she says that people would approach her and tell her they had asked their parents and grandparents:  ‘Why did you never tell us that these things had happened when you knew all the time?’ And [their] elders shook their head and each one gave the same reply: ‘Because I made myself forget’.
• Forgetting or letting memories fade acts as a coping mechanism, a means of survival for those who experience something awful.  In Forna’s case it was to survive the political climate of Sierra Leone.
• In her memoir Forna describes this: “There are those times when people hide something, or put some precious object away for safe-keeping or perhaps for discretion’s sake, and then forget where they have hidden it.  Sometimes people forget about whatever it was entirely; then you hear how their children or grandchildren unearth the same item years on: a note folded into the pages of a book, a photograph tucked behind a mirror, a heart-shaped stone in a jar full of odds and ends.  Memory, I discovered works the same way” (p.333)
• The process of forgetting is a way for the people involved to move on.  Forna believes that Sierra Leoneans have reached a period in the aftermath of war and do want to forget, to get on with their lives, to plant their crops, to have children.
• Yet this forgetting allows those who were complicit in what caused such trauma are able to stay silent for longer.

Race

We can see that throughout The Devil that Danced on the Water, Forna encounters the issue of her colour. One of the first times we see this is when she states:
“I refused to eat brown bread. … ‘Brown bread makes you brown and white bread makes you white,’” (p. 119)
Aminatta says this whilst in Aberdeen which makes us think that she was wanting to be white to fit in with the people around her. This was not the only time that Aminatta spoke about the colour of her skin.

Whilst at boarding school in England, Aminatta was unable to go to her best friends party despite everyone else in the class going.
“‘My dad doesn’t like black people. He told me he won’t have anybody black in his house. Sorry. Really’” (p. 231)
From a young age Forna could see how some people would treat her badly because of the colour of her skin.



Although, her dad was black, Aminatta‘s mother was white. Whilst attending school in Nigeria Aminatta is bullied by the other girls, when she tells her mother, her mother replies:
“‘I want you to remember that you are half white.’… ‘You’re better than those girls. Don’t you talk to or play with them’” (p. 146)
The way in which her mother says “half white” gives the impression that she believes that being white is better than being black which then in turn makes Aminatta better than those girls. When Aminatta went back to school she said that she “ostentatiously turned my nose up at the black girls.” (p. 147). Her mother’s attitude to these people clearly had an effect on Aminatta who never had a problem before being friends with “black girls”.

We can see through the book Forna sometimes struggles with the colour of her skin and the disadvantages that came with it in the time period. There are various references to race throughout Forna’s childhood however, they are not really mentioned in the latter part of the book. This could mean that as she got older she began to feel comfortable with her skin colour.

Bibliography

Brittain, Victoria; "The Truth About Daddy"; Review: The Devil That Danced on the Water; (The Guardian: 18th May 2002): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/18/politics

Fallon, Helen; "My father my Country": http://eprints.nuim.ie/950/1/My_Father,_My_Country,_Africa_Jan-Feb_2005,_Vol_70,_No_1.pdf

Stock, Femke, 'Home and Memory' in Diasporas: Concepts, intersections, identities ed. by Kim Knott and Sean McLoughlan (London: Zed Books, 2010)

'Memory and Forgetting: Aminatta Forna in Conversation & Valeriu Nicolae in Conversation', Index on Censorship, Vol. 35 No.2 (2006), pp.74-78

Aminatta Forna Official Website: http://www.aminattaforna.com/content.php?page=tdtdotw&f=2

Picture 1: Aminatta Forna
http://belindaotas.com/?p=4427

Picture 2: Ants http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/from-the-community-army-ants-beard-microbes-and-ant-mimicking-jumping-spiders/
Picture 3: Aminatta Forna with her mother Maureen Campbell http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/dailyrecord3/may2011/1/4/aminatta-forna-image-2-370620413.jpg

Atlantic Sound, Caryl Phillips

The Atlantic Sound, Caryl Phillips

Genre and Reasons For Writing 

• When asked what prompted him to write The Atlantic Sound Phillips replied: ‘No real moment. I always have some notion of a subject, but between the notion and the book there's much transformation!’ 
• Yet when asked if he was searching for something personal the reply was: ‘I'm always searching to simply understand. There are no real answers, only a better understanding. From writing The Atlantic Sound, I've gained a better understanding of the complexities of history, replete as it is with ironies and surprising stories of courage and loss.’ 
• Travel writing became the instrument for which Phillips could do this. 
• The travel writing genre is taken to new heights by Phillips, and other 20th century writers. 
• These countertravelers have broken the stereotype of the travel writer as white, male and middle class 
• Instead of trying to please the reader with the exotic or to boost their national identity ‘countertravel writing aims at shaking the reader’s complacency through the “unmapping” of the “mapped” world views. 
• Phillips’s revision of Europe’s historical involvement in the slave trade through his trips across the atlantic provides him with an opportunity to take up his perennial occupation with notions of home, belonging and cultural identity and also to further understand the history from whence he came. 
• The travelogue is a valid genre in which to do this. The formal flexibility common to the modern travelogue lets Phillips explore his history and identity through various modes of research. 
• The Atlantic sound is a blend of intriguing historical passages, geographical descriptions, fictionalised narratives, interviews, newspaper articles, letters, poems, extracts from courtroom proceedings, speeches, and endless strings of epigraphs which give the author, and the reader, the means to understand the history of the slave trade in the cities with the most involvement, Liverpool and Charleston. 
• Phillips’s large personal investment in his travel writing is exemplified in the fact that he starts his Atlantic tour with a trip from the Caribbean to England 
• Through his Atlantic crossing as an adult Phillips explores his identity in the extent to which he can relate to his parents’ generation 
• Yet he is a very different kind of traveller – his parents travelled to England with a sense of ‘hope and expectation’ (p.16) but Phillips travelled towards Britain ‘with a sense of knowledge and propriety” (p.16) 
• In his atlantic crossing Phillips shuttles between the roles of insider and outsider, between the sensitised son of Caribbean immigrants and the educated British scholar 
• This role shifting exemplifies Phillips’s inability to pin down his cultural allegiances 
• Although Phillips can sympatise with his parents he realises he holds a very different position. In spite of being in British society, Phillips complains that he is not being perceived of the society. 
• Phillips shows uneasiness about critics labelling his as a British writer, a black writer, a West Indian writer and a Caribbean writer instead of a diasporic intellectual 
• In this light Phillips’s travels in the narrative are not emotionally loaded experiences. A trend undercutting all notions of original identity is what is actually portrayed in the travelogue. 
• After his personal prologue we hear of Phillips’s travels from Liverpool to Ghana to Charleston 
• Describing Liverpool Phillips states: ‘history is so physically present, yet so glaringly absent from people’s consciousness in the Northern city’ (p.93) 
• On Charleston Phillips says: “it shocking that so much of [its] true, complex, hybrid history is hidden behind a slick, neatly-presented facade.” 
• Phillips is disturbed that such a key part of the history of the two cities, the slave trade, is absent. 
• The form of the postcolonial travelogue allows Phillips to critique the cultures which we so involved in the slave trade yet are quick to forget them. 
• Phillips’s wanderings have allowed him to deal with a wide array of issues such as the cultural affiliations of people of African descent, their dispersal in the Atlantic world or their revision of Western history. 
• His exploration of the history allows him to try and place himself within this history yet his last words in the narrative are: ‘it is futile to walk in the face of history’ (p.221) highlighting that identity is not found in the past but in the future to be made. 
• When asked what one idea he would like The Atlantic Sound to convey, Phillips answers, "The idea that history is not as simple or simplistic as the manner in which it is presented. We are encouraged to view history as an extended interview with the ‘winners’. Well, some of the so-called ‘losers’ have an equally valid, and important, point of view as well" 
• The subjective drive which underlies The Atlantic Sound, Phillips grappling with his identity as Black and British and understanding true cultural history, is characteristic of the centrality of the personal in the contemporary form of the modern travelogue

John Ocansey’s Story

• In chapter one, Philips takes the majority of the chapter to tell the story of John Ocansey.

“Ocansey was bound for the world-famous port of Liverpool in England, in order that he might discover what had happened to the money accrued from goods dispatched by his father, William Narh Ocansey, during the course of the previous year” (p. 24)

• Philips does not mention the relevance on telling Ocansey’s story nor does he mention the story again throughout the book, it almost seems random within The Atlantic Sound. However, when researching Ocansey and his trading business it seems they were well known traders in Africa.

“Hickson and Sykes referred to W. N. Ocansey and Sons as “the best traders on the Coast” because they could “buy [oil] cheaper than other traders””

• Therefore we can see from this that people spoke highly on W. N. Ocaney and Sons and their business. Not only this Dumett stated that:

“W. N. Ocansey attained success gradually as a palm oil exporter during two decades of rising prices and demand for the product in Europe”

• W. N. Ocansey and Sons was a clearly well known trading business, it seems odd however that Philips decided to tell this story of John coming to Liverpool and not justify why he mentioned it. On page 23 of The Atlantic Sound Phillips gives a short paragraph relating to the relationship between black people and white people in terms of trade

“The African dispatches the money to the white man and his African heart swells with pride. The African hopes for a new dawn; a brighter future. Luck has not been on his side. For many years now there have been problems. But, with the help of the white man, he can once again become great…” (p.23)

• Throughout the story of John Ocansey’s visit to Liverpool Philips repeats small parts of the paragraph which relate to the story he is telling. Oboe and Scacchi say that: “To further enhance Ocansey’s alienation, Philips punctuates his story with brief, lyrical passages hinting at the complicity of Africans in the slave trade”. The paragraph relates to the trade between W.N.Ocansey and Sons and Robert W. Hickson.
• When analysing the text Oboe and Scacchi refer to the italics as the “historical voices” in which John hears. They say that: “In The Atlantic Sound, the “historical voices” contribute to John’s confusing in what is already a complex relationship with his “father”. John’s sojourn in Liverpool lasts a few months, long enough, however, for him to reflect on the emotional effects that the forced separation from one’s homeland ultimately produces on isolated subjects”.
• Philips clearly saw it as important to include this paragraph in italics to show the connection to trade between the “white man” and the “African” and also how it relates to the story of John Ocansey.
• Philips does not specify the reason why he mentions the story of Ocansey in so much detail in his book, however, we can only guess that he wants us to see the relationship of trade between Africa and Britain.

Homeland

• The notion of homeland is firstly seen with the way the book is broken up; the first chapter titled “leaving home”, the second “homeward bound” and the third “home”.
• Caryl Phillips is a perfect example of a person who has grown up in a Diaspora, what with his birthplace being the Caribbean, growing up in the UK and now calling the United States home
• “The question. The problem question for those of us who have grown up in societies which define themselves by excluding others... ‘So my friend, you are going home to Africa. To Ghana.’ I say nothing. No, I am not going home”.(p.98)
• Unlike other books on African Diasporas, Phillips is not necessarily on a quest to find his “homeland” but is in fact examining why so many “return”, only to find is sometimes not what they expect.
• “Enthusiasm by those overseas who, upon arriving in the Americas, were suddenly distressed to discover they were black...there were engendered in their souls the romantic yearning to return “home” to a family and a place where they could be free from the stigma of race”. (p.113)
• Reasons include a lack of acceptance by many residents of these homelands and cultural collision
• In the US - the problem is colour; in Liverpool – the problem is the country of origin and that they are not “Liverpool Born Black”.
• That these countries are not their homeland
• “The States has let them down in some way and they expect Africa to solve their problems for them...the states has got problems but it’s their home”. (p.122)
• “People of the diaspora who expect the continent to solve whatever psychological problems they possess”. (p.172)
• Phillips describes the journey of those from homelands looking for a new and better life such as Mansour. He also discusses the journey of many from the United States back to what they deemed as home in Africa, either as a means of escaping prejudice or because of incentives offered to them such as the “Hashuvah movement”
• “They travelled in the hope that the mother country would remain true to her promise that she would protect the children of her empire...in fact, much to their dismay, they discovered that the mother country had little, if any, desire to embrace her colonial offspring”. (p.15)
• Many biblical references are made to the concept of homeland, with the epilogue titled exodus and the numerous references to Israel and promised land
• “His understanding of the Bible had led him to believe that God would eventually lead black people in America out of their bondage...back to the promised land, the land of the ancestors” (p.161)
• Phillips can be seen to be questioning the romanticised quests of many to find their homelands as a way of solving their problems
• “Where a man keeps his memories is the place he should call home”. (p.93)

Selective Memory

• Throughout “The Atlantic Sound”, it is noticeable that there is the underlying notion of selective memory, and the lack of commemoration or recognition of certain past events that have shaped black history.
• Phillips’ interest in looking to the history of memory can be linked to the memory boom of the late C20th.
• Most noticeably, the history of slavery, as seen in modern day Liverpool as well as in America with Sullivan’s island
• “Like Liverpool, the city of Charleston also possesses a hidden history that is centred on the slave trade”. (p.87)
• Sullivan’s Island has been described as the “Black Ellis island” and holds a lot of history of the Atlantic slave trade, however, Phillips finds it difficult to garner any information on its past. When asking for where the “pest houses” once were, no locals could tell him; this is an example of the problem of selective memory.
• “I asked him if renovation might not be seen as a process of literally and metaphorically whitewashing history... ‘do you think we need to be reminded about slavery? We know’”. (p.119)
• He also looks at how Charleston seems to be trying to hide its history of racism and prejudice.
• As recounted in the Charleston City Paper, Phillips referred to the history of memory and how most of the time it is an interview with the winners, and how many so-called losers have important things to say
• This could be seen as a reference to the efforts made by Judge Waring and his wife, to remove racial inequality from Charleston
• Although they succeeded to some extent, they made a lot of enemies and effectively lost their “home”.

Pan-Africanism
 A movement to unify all of Africa and African people into one community

Phillips in conversation with Charles Rhyne:

CR:: In The Atlantic Sound, you don’t seem sold on Pan-Africanism What is your stance regarding it?

CP:: I have no stance on Pan-Africanism, as such. I empathize with the impulse behind the theory, but between theory and practice much is lost. Idle romanticism helps nobody.

• Amalgamation of the history of all Africans and African descendants as one
  • With the theory of Pan-Africanism all those connected to Africa should be able to come together with a common past and linkage to Africa. Phillips is sceptical of the possibility of this commonality and how this will help the continent of Africa and the countries within it in the long run.
    • Panafest
      • “Panafest is to be a time when the diasporan family returns to the Mother Africa to celebrate the arts, creativity and intellectual achievements of the Pan African world” (133)
      • Phillips description of a lack of cohesion between the different groups shows just the surface of the difficulties that face Pan-Africanism. For example, Dr Ben Abdallah's description of how Ghanaian schools teach slavery “'It is taught', he said, 'with the understanding that those sold into slavery were not always that good, and that in some respects they got what they deserved.'” (pg 117) is in contrast to “an American, wears a bright yellow costume which is decorated with a drawing of human cargo that is laid out in the hold of a slave ship. Above it are written the words, 'Never forgive, Never Forget'.” (pg 136)
      • Panafest manifested too many differences between the different groups for there to be a belief that Pan-Africanism is an achievable goal.
    • Charleston Festival of African and Carribean Art
      • “There are no 'African-Americans', only 'Africans'. Everybody is 'Brother' or 'Sister'. Here in Charleston.” (pg 213)
      • “threads that connect them to the imagined old life” (pg 213)
      • Pan-Africanism seems much more achievable in this removed place of Charleston, where they are calling themselves the collective Africans. However, it is an imagined ideal Africa that is bringing them together, one that is removed from the intrinsics of politics and history that prevails in the continent of Africa.
• “You people” “So much for Pan-Africanism, I thought” (pg 118)
  • Dr. Ben Abdallah describes how certain sites means different things for those who stayed in Ghana and Africa and those in the diaspora, separating them off as “You people”. Despite his advocacy for Pan-Africanism, those in the diaspora are a separate entity fro Dr. Ben Abdallah. “It is your history, and their decline is not the fault of the Ghanaians.” (pg 118) They have separate histories, and it is not the responsibility of the Ghanaians to preserve another group's history. Phillips sounds disappointed that one the great advocates for Pan-Africanism dismisses those in the diaspora, perhaps as not being as deserving of being included in Pan-Africanism.
• “They think that if they dress down and filthy then they are being African” (pg 172)
  • A hotel worker, Kate, is lamenting the Jamaican guests who seem determined to return to their African roots by cooking over fires in their rooms, using drugs and dressing “ethnically”. Phillips describes many of the diaspora who attend Panafest as being determined to reconnect with their roots, and remembering the traditions of their ancestors, despite the fact that Ghana and Africa has modernised and moved on from the time the Diaspora left Africa. The Pan-African continent the Diaspora are aspiring to is an imagined one of the past, whereas Dr. Ben Abdallah and others are working for a modern and relevant Pan-African continent.

Bibliography

Caryl Phillips interview: http://www.ashcanrantings.com/2007/08/interview-with-caryl-phillips.html

Dumett, R.E, “African Merchants of the Gold Coast, 1860 - 1905 - Dynamics of Indigenous Entrepreneurship” Comparative Studies in Society and History vol 25 no. 4 (19
83) pp. 661- 69

Moorhouse, Geoffrey; "African Connection"; http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/29/reviews/001029.29moorhot.html

 Oboe, A. and Scacchi, A. (eds.) Recharting the Black Atlantic: Modern Cultures, Local Communities, Global Connections (Routledge, 2008)

 Ropero, Maria Lourdes Lopez, 'Travel Writing and Postcoloniality: Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound', Atlantis Vol. 25 (June, 2003), pp.51-61

Saez, Elena Machado; "Postcoloniality, Atlantic Orders and the Migrant Male in the Writings of Caryl Phillips"; Small Axe; Volume 9; 2005; pp.17-39

'My Long Journey Home', Lily Golden

My Long Journey Home

How she wrote it? Why she wrote it? Any Discrepancies?

·         As discussed in class My Long Journey Home was written after Lily Golden’s daughter, Yelena Khanga, wrote her narrative Soul to Soul. After its success people soon became interested in the story of her mother and wanted to know more.

o   “The arcs of the mothers and daughters careers tell us much about the transition from Soviet to post-Soviet times and the strange fate of being black and Russian.” (Peterson)

·         It can be assumed that Golden wrote the book herself due to the repetition and factual discrepancies. We can see a cultural clash in the book with her upbringing and her education; this is shown with her grammatical errors juxtaposed with the high register in which she uses in other parts of the narrative. We think that there is a lack of editing to give a more honest account of herself as diverse, not a fixed identity in the diaspora.

o   There is an omission of a bibliography despite her referencing her own and others works.

·         Throughout the book Golden mentions certain characters but does not follow through on these characters.

o   We can see this when she does not mention the divorce of her second husband.

·         “I only discovered much of the history of my family when I came to the United States ten years ago.” (p.1).

o    This was a way of looking back on her family history, especially her own father who she never got to know.

·         Overall, this is a reflective account of Golden’s life written in the last phase of her life.

Homeland?

·         Golden seems to be on a quest to find her true identity and the place she can call her homeland.

·         As Benedict Anderson has theorised, Golden creates an imagined place of origin. She has an utopian image but this never seems to be fulfilled.

·         Part of this struggle comes from the fact she says: "I belong to all races. I am African-American, a Polish Jew and a Red Indian who became Russian in everything but blood."

·         When studying African music she finds “definition and determination” (p.70) in African culture and finds more of her African identity in this.

·         However she still struggles with her Soviet and American identity. This was seen when she was attempting to get a passport: “I told them that “American” was a term of citizenship, while I was “Soviet”. The officer explained that “Soviet” did not mean nationality…I was born in the Soviet Union. So I should be Soviet, but you explained that there is no such nationality. I think you should write that I am a “Negro”” (p.37)

·         At the start of the book Golden has a map of Russia whereas the book finishes with a map of America. The whole book is a journey back home which ends up not being Africa but in fact America, where she finds herself surrounded by her family.

·         Therefore we can see that home to Golden is where her family is.

Her role in Communism/ Colonialism

·         Dale E. Peterson touches upon the fact that the book is “a personal tale of good choices and good fortunes rather than as a political commentary on the special status accorded to Soviet Blacks”.

o   She is almost accidentally involved with politics. For example, when she was elected leader of the Komsomol in her University class despite having no interest in its political aims.

·         “I knew nothing of Stalin and Stalinism” (p.49)

o   The passive attitude that Golden took shows that she is distancing herself from Communism.

·          “We were brainwashed by the Communist party, which had begun a war against “cosmopolitism”, which means the love to everything foreign… and we must resist all these alien influences” (p.36)

o   She struggles between Communist ideals and Western influences. This is seen with her discovery of jazz music and her inability to practice it in Russia for fear of being reprimanded.

·         Her political interest came when decolonisation of Africa started. “Looking back, I realise that we were too naïve and optimistic. We really believed that the entire continent would soon be free of colonialism and that all Africa’s problems would be solved automatically.” (p.77)

o   In hindsight the political interest was influenced by prominent figures like DuBois and she created an idealised free Africa.

·         Her only true political involvement came when she married an African man: “in the Diaspora, we were feeling solidarity with our brethren who were fighting for and gaining their freedom”. (p. 111) 

·         Although the book has a lot of references to political events, Golden is never actively involved in them but they always have an influence on her life.

Bibliography

Golden, L, My Long Journey Home (Chicago: Third World Press, 2002)

Anderson, B.R.O’G, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso 1991)

Peterson, D.E, “Lily Golden: My Long Journey Home”, Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 48, no.4 (Winter 2004)

http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/2011/02/lily-golden-russian-african-american.html