Afro-Caribbean…

Abstract

Afro-Caribbean… Ivelisse Rodriguez, PhD (bio) "The first Puerto Ricans were in fact black Puerto Ricans," José Luis González asserts in his seminal essay "Puerto Rico: The Four-Storeyed Country." In the essay, he grapples with how to define Puerto Rican culture. On the first storey of his four-storey metaphor, González places the descendants of the first African slaves because they were "the people bound most closely to the territory which they inhabited (they were after all slaves), who had the greatest difficulty in imagining any other place to live." In other words, the first Puerto Ricans who had to become Puerto Rican were the Africans. The Spaniards and other Europeans could remain as such, but it was the Africans who had to acquire new names, new customs; they had to become someone else in Puerto Rico and the other (present-day) 30 Caribbean nations and territories they were brought to. The descendants of the Bantu, the Kongo, the Yoruba, the Lucumís, and the other ethnic groups of West Africa transported to the blue and green seas of the Caribbean have morphed over the centuries into Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Antiguans, Haitians, Cubans, Trinidadians, Arubans, Bahamians, Dominicans, Barbudans, and so on and so on. Forced to these islands, the West Africans were meant to be subjugated, stripped of their individual and cultural identities. Their cultures were meant to be rooted out, decimated. And they were. But that is not the end of their stories forged in violence. They used the remnants of their culture like seeds. And up rose new nations, new cultures, new people. And here are some of the stories of their descendants. In Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa's novel excerpt from Woman of Endurance, we see what our foremothers endured and the initial stages of the transition to a new self. Keera endures the trans-Atlantic voyage, learning the multiple ways that people die—through dehumanization, rape, or being thrown overboard. Her body survives, and she is still Keera when she steps onto the harbor of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In a matter of hours, though, she will become "Pola" in Puerto Rico, no longer "Keera." Llanos-Figueroa marks the beginning of the transformation from one culture to another. This is the birth of we descendants. Racquel Goodison in "The Story Goes" picks up the story of the Caribbean by taking us to Runaway Bay in Jamaica where the Spanish fled from the English: one colonizer chased out by another, a coward's retreat. That is one story of Runaway Bay; the other is about a bold declaration of self—when slaves fling themselves into the sea, fleeing to death or to another country. The running away—either cowardly or praiseworthy—is steeped in bloodshed, and centuries later the brutality stains the land. So much so that in Goodison's story, a family's vacation is upturned, the remembered violence chasing them home. In Tammi Browne-Bannister's "Midknight in Shining Armor," the violence is in the air, identifiable by [End Page 66] its stench. A spirit-like figure named Gomer, who rises once a year during Barbados' Crop Over Festival, searches for the pleasures of life, inhabiting the body of a man on one occasion, a woman's the next, allowing herself to enjoy the body she occupies each time she comes to life. But this day is different; this year is not about gratification. Gomer chases a smell in the air, only to find out the scent is death, emanating from the man Gomer chooses to seduce. In Llanos-Figueroa's novel excerpt, Keera called out for Mother Yemayá for protection, but it is in "Midknight in Shining Armor" where the spirits finally hear. While the revelers wine on each other, and the carnival goes on, Gomer battles the man and safeguards them all. After having fled from Haiti, the family of Henri Christophe, the King of northern Haiti, tries to adjust to life in Pisa, Italy, in Monique McIntosh's "Pretend Wars." Amethyste, Athenaïs, and their mother find themselves in a new land, but this time they come as refugees, as the daughters and wife of a King, this distinction currying...