Editorial | Rediscovering Lamming et al

George Lamming’s death last week, days shy of his 95th birthday, was another pointer to the end of the era of that first generation of West Indian writers, artists, and intellectuals who, despite the turmoil of their colonial experiences, discerned the existence of a genuine Caribbean civilisation and fought for its acceptance and embrace.

Few of that generation campaigned longer and harder than Mr Lamming. He had great certitude that figuratively, or otherwise, the Caribbean existed in nobody’s backyard no matter how big or powerful the claimants were. The region was a shared neighbourhood. The people who lived there were neither subservient peons nor second-class inhabitants.

It is against this perception of self and of the sharing of this vision of the Caribbean as free, confident, independent, and prosperous that we support Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s assertion that George Lamming’s first novel, the autobiographical In the Castle of My Skin, “ought still to be required reading for every Caribbean boy or girl”.

Hopefully, the current attention on Mr Lamming and his works will also do something else: catalyse a rediscovery of Sam Selvon, Earl Lovelace, Martin Carter, Wilson Harris, Roger Mais and others of that period, whose works are largely unknown to, or unread by, recent generations of Caribbean students/citizens.

This newspaper, of course, accepts that societies are not, and ought not be expected to be, static. Each generation builds on the efforts of the preceding one. The issues of global warming and climate change, or of the Caribbean’s need to compete in a global economy that is in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, may seem well beyond anything that might have been imagined by Mr Lamming’s generation. They, in their ‘discovery’ of alienation while crafting their early novels in London, helped us to make better sense of the old colonialisms from which they had emerged and the new thing into which it had morphed and with which they now grappled.

FASHION TRUTHS

In that sense, and to paraphrase a saying of another intellectual of that generation, Jamaica’s Rex Nettleford, Lamming’s generation employed the creative imagination to fashion truths. They helped, thereby, in fortifying the confidence of those who saw in the West Indies the possibility of viable societies and modern nation states. They helped to overcome the doubters even if only for the fact that their works received critical acclaim.

Another way to put it, perhaps, is that creative intellectuals like Lamming were the other face of the coin to early West Indian nationalists, including people of his generation and the one before – A.W. Domingo, the Manleys, Bustamante, Uriah Butler, Robert Bradshaw, V.C. Bird, and his Barbadian compatriots, the Adamses and Errol Barrow, and others.

Indeed, Mr Lamming once observed, as was quoted by the English novelist and historian Mary Chamberlain, that “the major thrust of Caribbean literature in English rose from the soil of labour resistance in the 1930s”.

“The expansion of social justice initiated by the labour struggle had a direct effect on liberating the imagination and restoring the confidence of men and women in the essential humanity of their simple lives,” he said. “In the cultural history of the region, there is a direct connection between labour and literature.”

On most of these fronts, the Caribbean has been in retreat. The labour movement is significantly diminished. And there appears to be a deepening presumption among some policymakers that history and creative expression, in the sense of literature in English by West Indian writers, are at odds, or incompatible with, 21st-century technological modernity to which Caribbean societies aspire. As if they fear the region’s history.

CO-EXIST SEAMLESSLY

They clearly miss how successful societies and enduring civilisations tend to define themselves not only by their modernity, but also by their history. The two streams co-exist seamlessly. Ms Mottley gets it.

George Lamming’s coming-of-age novel, In the Castle of My Skin, is partly a deconstruction of colonial Barbados and a window into the past of West Indian society – the understanding of which no doubt helped to shape Mr Lamming’s concept of power relationships and of what the Caribbean might be. And his willingness to tell truth to power.

As Rickey Singh, one of the noted Caribbean journalists, observed in a tribute to the author, Mr Lamming “was a man of tremendous courage, singular in his undaunted pursuit of truth and justice”.

Added Mr Singh: “He never shied away, nor was he ever ambivalent when it came to urging CARICOM governments never to waiver when the moment arose to be firm in their solidarity on commonly held values, or their right to regional unity and relationships.” Ditto!

We part from Ms Mottley on a small point: her suggestion that In the Castle of My Skin be required reading only for the region’s boys and girls. Its reading should be universal. It might help to unlock ideas and values we take for granted as well as offer a deeper appreciation of ourselves and the starting points of our communities. If it nothing else, it would be a good, intense read.