Tiffin talks Caribbean literature

• Fourth Baugh lecture held on rainy Sunday
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Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

There was no escaping the ironic aquatic tint to the title of Professor Helen Tiffin's lecture on Sunday, a small audience braving the weekend showers for the fourth Edward Baugh Distinguished Lecture. Tiffin spoke on 'Small Islands, Strong Currents: The Significance of West Indian Literature', two of the persons she expects to have significant impact in the future - Dr Erna Brodber and Tanya Shirley - in the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre, University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona.

The other is Dr Curdella Forbes.

However, before forecasting the reach of the current tides of West Indian literature, Tiffin looked back to previous impact at the lecture, hosted by Dr Anthea Morrison, senior lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English. The lecture was put on by the department, along with the West Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, with the support of the Commonwealth Foundation.

And there was music from Dr Kathy Brown to start off, Brown introducing "a combination of A Prayer and an African celebration selection of mine".

In introducing Tiffin Dr Michael Bucknor, lecturer in the Department of Literatures, said that having her and Baugh together "is tantamount to deep calling unto deep". And in making her personal connection with Baugh and pointing to the importance of the critic, Tiffin said she first heard of Lorna Goodison's Heartease when Baugh read from it at a conference.

Assessing the impact of West Indian literature in the past, Tiffin started at the crest with Nobel Laureates Derek Walcott and the "caustic and sceptical" V.S. Naipaul, saying that in the latter's A House for Mr Biswas "I read about my place for the first time". Using 'West Indian' to apply to the English-speaking Caribbean and noting that "influence is, of course, a very difficult thing to measure", Tiffin moved on to Jean Rhys and Edward 'Kamau' Brathwaite. The impact of the former's Wide Sargasso Sea is measured in part by the Penguin sales figures at one point showing that it outsold any single Shakespeare title, though not the collection.

A major part of Brathwaite's legacy, Tiffin said, is a renewed interest in performance poetry by black youth in Britain and the United States.

devotees

Jamaica Kincaid's use of 'you' in "an accusatory voice" in A Small Place and Wilson Harris' "roller-coaster" approach have also had their impact, Tiffin noting that outside the Caribbean Harris "has not only found admirers but also devotees". She said that in teaching his Palace of the Peacock "every class two or three students get obsessed while the others dismiss the work".

Before moving on to Brodber (The Rainmaker's Mistake), Forbes (A Permanent Freedom) and Shirley (She Who Sleeps with Bones), Tiffin noted that there are those whose work she did not have time to explore in the lecture, among them Claude McKay, CLR James (Beyond the Boundary), Sam Selvon (Moses Ascending), Louise Bennett, Lorna Goodison, Olive Senior, and Sistren Theatre Collective.

the critic

She also pointed to the important role of the critic, including Brathwaite, Walcott, Baugh, Professor Mervyn Morris and Professor Carolyn Cooper, saying the latter "has produced some fans of popular culture".

Tiffin identified a common thread of sexuality and secrecy running through Brodber, Forbes and Shirley's work, doing a critical analysis of The Rainmaker's Mistake. She noted that while not a realist story, it deals with very real issues although, like Harris, one is unlikely to find the work on airport stands.

"This novel is in many ways a critic's novel. It is likely to be influential in other ways," Tiffin said. She took a sharp look at the development of language in the era of text messaging, referring to "the dumbed down language of today".

Tiffin said the title story of Forbes' short story collection is "unsentimental, beautifully crafted" and while slavery and the African legacy are not the main focus they are brought to bear in the treatment of secrecy and sexuality. Those issues surround an apparently heterosexual man's intense, secret homosexual affair.

Tiffin said that in Shirley's She Who Sleeps With Bones the metaphors for appetite, for sex and food are powerful.