Caribbean Short Fiction

Introduction

Caribbean short fiction is diverse and rich, spanning the literary world in a global context. Caribbean short fiction includes writing from the islands and countries located in or bordering on the Caribbean Sea, writing by individuals born in the Caribbean, and writing by individuals of Caribbean ancestry. Adopting a wide geographical viewpoint, literary critics and editors of anthologies of Caribbean short fiction, such as the Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories (1999), include not only writers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Haiti, Cuba, and the other islands of the Caribbean but also writers from Mexico, Panama, Guyana, Suriname, and even Colombia, countries that share a Caribbean coastline. Thus, some writers included among Caribbean short fiction writers, such as Gabriel García Marquez, may also be considered writers from other geographic areas or from specific non-Caribbean countries.

Using a criterion of place of birth or ancestry, critics and editors also incorporate the work of writers not living in the Caribbean into their anthologies. The Caribbean diaspora has taken many writers away from the Caribbean. Seeking opportunities not available in their homeland, many early writers moved to England, France, or the United States and later Toronto, Canada. What makes all of these Caribbean writers is their involvement in the Caribbean experience and their portrayal of that experience in their writing. For these writers, the loss of identity through the traumas of displacement and marginalization resulting in cultural loss and denial and the regaining of this identity through the reclaiming of lost culture and ancestral history and tradition is the central issue of their work.

Development as a Published Genre

Caribbean short fiction traces its roots to the oral storytelling tradition of the African enslaved people who were brought to the region during the period of colonialism. The displaced African enslaved people kept their culture, traditions, beliefs, and history alive through stories. Storytelling was also an integral part of the culture of indentured servants who had arrived from Asia. The short story, in its most elementary form, is the written expression of the oral tale. Thus, the short story is a genre that links both culturally and traditionally to the Caribbean identity, which the writers attempt to reclaim. It was not, however, until the twentieth century that Caribbean short fiction appeared significantly as a published genre. In the early part of the century, the short stories were published primarily in Caribbean literary magazines.

The first two important magazines were founded in Trinidad. In 1929, C. L. R. James and Albert Mendes began publishing Trinidad. James’s barracks-yard story “Triumph” appeared in the magazine and then was published in England. In 1931, Albert Gomes began publishing The Beacon, which appeared monthly until the end of 1933. The two magazines provided opportunities for Caribbean writers to publish their work. In 1942, BIM was founded in Barbados. With its third issue, Frank Appleton Collymore became the magazine’s editor. Collymore remained as editor of the magazine until 1975. During his tenure as editor, the magazine became the most important means by which young Caribbean writers could start careers as published authors. Derek Walcott, George Lamming, Austin Clarke, Edgar Mittelholzer, and Kamau Brathwaite all published their early stories in the magazine. Collymore and BIM also played an important role in introducing Caribbean short fiction outside the Caribbean. From 1946 to 1959, the British Broadcasting Corporation broadcast stories that had appeared in BIM on the program Caribbean Voices. During this same period, the magazine Kyr-over-Al was established in Guyana and published from 1945 to 1961. In Jamaica, the newspaper Public Opinion published short stories from 1939 to 1942 and then created the magazine Focus in 1943, where short-story publication continued under the editorship of Edna Manley.

During this period, only a few collections of short stories were published, including Eric Walrond’s Tropic Death in 1926, Jean Rhys’s The Left Bank in 1927, Claude McKay’s Gingertown in 1932, Seepersad Naipaul’s Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales in 1943, and R. L. C. Aaron’s The Cow That Laughed, and Other Stories in 1944. During the 1950s and 1960s, because of the success of several novels by Caribbean writers such as The Lonely Londoners (1956) by Samuel Selvon and A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) by V. S. Naipaul, a strong interest in Caribbean fiction began to develop among the reading public, especially in Great Britain. A market for both anthologies and collections of short fiction by individual authors opened up. A collection of Selvon’s short stories, Ways of Sunlight, appeared in 1957, and in 1959 Miguel Street, a collection of V. S. Naipaul’s stories appeared. In 1960, Faber and Faber published the first major anthology of Caribbean short fiction West Indian Stories, with Andrew Salkey as editor.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, the number of Caribbean short-fiction writers increased significantly as more and more Caribbean women, such as Olive Senior, Maryse Condé, Jamaica Kincaid, and Michelle Cliff, began writing and finding a wide market for their work provided by the feminist movement. From the 1990s and continuing into the twenty-first century, Caribbean short fiction has enjoyed a strong popularity among the reading public. Caribbean short fiction has also established itself as a significant literary genre along with Caribbean poetry and the Caribbean novel.

Themes and Motifs

Caribbean short fiction is dominated by the Caribbean experience and by a desire to express what it means to be Caribbean. Caribbean writers share a legacy of being displaced, marginalized, and denied their culture. They have a history of movement from forced leaving of the homeland to being enslaved or indentured service to emancipation into poverty and lack of opportunity, once again forcing movement to other places and a renewed sense of loss of cultural identity, exile, and marginalization. It is this history that underlies Caribbean short fiction. One objective of the writing is to portray the real Caribbean. Therefore, most of the stories are traditional, with a narrative plot. The writers portray aspects of life for Caribbeans both at home and abroad. From a literary viewpoint, social realism and naturalism are the prevailing fictional styles. However, the themes of the short fiction come in a wide variety, drawing upon African and Indian myths, women’s issues, obeah (black magic), and family relationships. The writers also seek to find their lost cultural and individual identity, which is the Caribbean identity. From the early writing, there are stories that focus on the psychology of being Caribbean and the struggles of individuals with loss of identity, exile, loneliness, and issues of color and social class.

Of all the myths and legends deriving from African and Indian cultures, the Ashanti (African) story of Anancy (Anansi) the spider man has played the greatest role in Caribbean short fiction. Anancy appears in many individual stories, and there are four major collections of Anancy stories. Salkey published two collections: Anancy’s Score (1973) and Brother Anancy, and Other Stories (1993). Anancy and Miss Lou by Louise Bennett appeared in 1979; James Berry published his collection Spiderman Anancy in 1988. In the original Ashanti tale, Anancy, the spider, is weakest among all the animals, and he wishes to have stories named after him. Tiger, the strongest of the animals, says Anancy must bring the Snake to them alive. By using patience and cunning Anancy succeeds, thus proving that the weak and powerless can survive and defeat the strong and powerful.

Anancy is the basis for a character who appears frequently in the short stories and in different guises, for example, as the trickster. The trickster, male or female, child or adult, always manages to get the best of someone more powerful. In Selvon’s “The Cricket Match,” a group of West Indians outwit and defeat English acquaintances in a cricket match. In James’s “Triumph,” two women, who live in the barracks yards (slums) in Port of Spain as kept women, at the mercy of the men who provide for them, combine their wits and cunning to make it possible for one to entertain a former lover without losing her current one. In Senior’s “Do Angels Wear Brassieres?,” a young girl manages to outwit two powerful forces, the adult world of proper behavior and the Christian clergy with her question, do angels wear brassieres? In her story, Senior uses the trickster to challenge organized religion, which Senior feels contributed to the ills of colonization.

Using elements of African-based beliefs in magic and spirits, including obeah, spells, curses, baakoo (a spirit in a bottle), and duppies (ghosts), in their stories, Caribbean writers portray a Caribbean culture vastly different from that of the European masters. Stories such as “The Spirit Thief” by Erna Brodber and “Easter Sunday Morning” by Hazel D. Campbell reclaim an identity and a culture repressed by the colonizers. Drumming, an integral part of African culture suppressed by the enslaver, is another important element used to create the reclaimed culture. In “Fleurs” by Earl Lovelace, the drums call the stickfighters to competition; in “Discerner of Hearts” by Senior, the drums are part of the ceremony warding off a curse. All of these elements reclaim a culture that provides a freedom from the colonizer, for whom it is mysterious and frightening, and to whom it denies entry.

In the psychologically oriented stories, the themes of loss, exile, color consciousness, and class discrimination are the major themes. Naipaul’s “The Night Watchman’s Occurrence Book” and Clyde Hosein’s “I’m a Presbyterian, Mr. Kramer” deal with the lack of equality between the European colonizers and those of African or Indian ancestry. The stories underline the attitudes of superiority, privilege, and hypocrisy of the colonizers and the powerlessness of the West Indians The issue of color discrimination and its effects is addressed by many of the writers. In Roger Mais’s “Red Dirt Don’t Wash,” a woman refuses to go out with a man because of his red skin. In Paule Marshall’s “To Da-duh, in Memoriam,” the grandmother prefers to have white-skinned grandchildren. The problems of loss and exile faced by those who leave the Caribbean are also treated in many of the stories. In “Veins Visible” by Neil Bissoondath, the main character laments the loss of the lifestyle and culture left behind when he goes to England. The story is set in a cold, dreary, rainy London, which intensifies the sense of difference, loss, and exile. In “Mammie’s Form at the Post Office,” E. A. Markham uses misunderstandings of communication to emphasize the sense of exile. Mammie wants to send money home to the West Indies, but the English postal clerk cannot understand the West Indies as home, to him the West Indies are abroad.

While the majority of writers of Caribbean short fiction have been and are more focused on the content of their stories than on the form, a number of the writers are also interested in experimentation with form and in breaking the strict boundaries of the traditional story. Jean Breeze has published On the Edge of an Island (1997), a collection of work that mixes poetry and stories. Cliff uses a writing style that combines the genres of poetry and prose throughout her short stories, all collected in Everything Is Now: New and Collected Stories (2009). In the short story “My Mother,” Kincaid recounts a series of surrealist vignettes of interaction between her and her mother. In “Dream Haiti,” in his collection DreamStories (1994), Kamau Brathwaite experiments with form, structure, and even the physical presentation of the text on the page, as he combines various sizes of type and of linear patterns of words, while surrealistically depicting the hopelessness and anguish of the Haitian boat people, fleeing poverty and oppression.

Language

Caribbean short fiction is a multilingual and multicultural genre. Depending upon the country or territory in which they live, residents of the Caribbean speak English, French, Spanish, or Dutch along with a Creole dialect derived from mixing an African language and the language of the colonizer. The various dialects not only incorporate African words and expressions into the language but also reform the grammar. Creole or patois is often referred to as “nation language.”

Consequently, Caribbean short fiction offers a wide variety of language. Selvon is recognized as the first short-story writer to use dialect for the narrative voice of his work. Other writers who have been influential in making dialect the language of Caribbean fiction are Louise Simone Bennett, Senior, and Kamau Brathwaite, who originated the term “nation language.” Though similar in meaning, Brathwaite thought dialect to be more of a pejorative term and coined nation language to envelope the broad mixture of languages that uniquely come together to form what is spoken in Caribbean countries.

Choice of language plays an extremely important role in Caribbean short fiction, as it does in all Caribbean writing. Creole and nonstandard language, whether French, Spanish, or Dutch reformed into “nation language,” serves two purposes. First, it authenticates the writing as a true depiction of Caribbean culture and life, whether the story narrated is a realistic one or a magical adventure. Second, it denies and rejects the authority, power, and influence of the colonial masters who imposed their language, culture, and beliefs on the enslaved Africans and later on the indentured Asians from India and China.

Bibliography

Brown, Stewart, and John Wickham, eds. The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Cudjoe, Selwyn Reginald. Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.

Emery, Mary Lou. Modernism, the Visual, and Caribbean Literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Markham, E. A., ed. The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories. London: Penguin, 1996.

Morris, Mervyn, ed. The Faber Book of Contemporary Caribbean Short Stories. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.

Ramchand, Kenneth. The West Indian Novel and Its Background. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2004.

Rody, Caroline. The Daughter’s Return: African American and Caribbean Women’s Fictions of History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

“Short Stories and Novels from the Caribbean.” Charles County Public Library, 15 June 2021. Accessed 20 July 2024.