History and the West Indian nation

Abstract

[First paragraph]The Art of Kamau Brathwaite. STEWART BROWN (ed.). Bridgend, Wales: Seren/Poetry Wales Press, 1995. 275 pp. (Cloth US$ 50.00, Paper US$ 22.95)Atlantic Passages: History, Community, and Language in the Fiction of Sam Selvon. MARK LOOKER. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. x + 243 pp. (Cloth n.p.)Caliban's Curse: George Lamming and the Revisioning of History. SUPRIYA NAIR. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. viii + 171 pp. (Cloth US$ 34.50)Phyllis Shand Allfrey: A Caribbean Life. LlZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996. xii + 335 pp. (Cloth US$ 55.00, Paper US$ 18.95)Of the four books to be considered here, those on Brathwaite, Selvon, and Lamming fit snugly together into a natural category of literature that has to do with the emergence of a Creole or African-centered Caribbean culture, and related issues of race, color, class, history, and nationality. The fourth is a biography of Phyllis Shand Allfrey, a white West Indian, who is of an altogether different race, color, and class than from the other three. Yet the four books are linked together by nationality, for Allfrey and the others are all citizens of one region, the English-speaking West Indies, which, as the Federation of the West Indies between 1958 and 1962, formed a single nation.