British Media and the Caribbean

Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies, Warwick University
Tuesday, 26th October 2010
Maya Jaggi (freelance writer, mainly for The Guardian and The TLS) gave a talk on: "The British Media and the Caribbean", 5.00pm, Venue: Humanities H0.52,

I had considered myself to be well-read and 'on the ball' when it came to non-UK writers. An internet trawl of some of the work reviewed by Jaggi, from 1998 to October 2010 proved me wrong. Jaggi certainly has the ideal job: being paid to read, review and interview in relation to such a breadth of published materials by writers from the near and far.

However the title for the talk was misleading. The focus was solely on literature produced by Caribbean writers - whether diasporan or 'continental'.

Jaggi outlined the various 'era' in the literature of Caribbean writers: pre WWII, literature of the 70s, 80s, 90s
She acknowledged the often patronising reviews which sought to exoticise the writers and their works. Condemining the works as 'political' by writers with 'chips on their shoulders' was the other approach. Both approaches were based on nonchalant racism/ignorance and made glaring omissions in terms of the contexts in which the works were written. Reviewers would evoke false comparisons with other black writers yet fail to acknowledge how other influences (literary, historical, etc) were being made use of. As a result such reviews were based on dubious judgements and therefore lacked authenticity.

Jaggi also spoke of the was a cultural and historical amnesia in relation to reviewing Caribbean literature, so that no sense of progressions/development could be arrived at. As such each generation of writers suffered from 'perpetual newness'.

Then there was the way in which reviewers wanted the works to 'represent' certain things, even while they failed to see the universal in the particular details. It is such blinkers that prevent such reviewers from seeing the common humanity in the works by Caribbean writers.

There was reference to works in translation and the implications of this.

The overall message seemed to be: don't be too anthropological about the works by Caribbean writers, but don't ignore it either.

I wondered to what extent black and white readers 'read' books in the same ways. eg. How different are the reviews of the same works by different reviewers - based on level of education, 'race' , gender, age and class

Just what is good reviewing practice?

I had expected, given the title of the talk, to hear something about the Caribbean impact on Western literature eg. topics covered, use of dialect, phonetic writing, approaches/outlooks

I wondered how the representation of 'black' characters/countries had changed over the years, and if so, in what ways, and based on what factors.