B. Advan ced Critical Studies in Short Stories 137. 21. Dream Haiti Kaman Braithwaite Summary The sea was like a silver grey with awhite waves. The sea waves were as white as the skin of the author and they struck the bow and the nerves of the author where the US coast Guard cutter was patrolling all along the borders of the Mexican and the “Haitian Refugees”. The narrator was not going any where, although the ship was moving. The author thinks that the sea and the waves seemed to move to him. He felt as if he was:dreaming and was boarding anytime. Then the author felt that something like belts on the horizon either still like a sword or a razor blade of light chummed and -author could not do: about anything now that was there in the dream of the ship. Then the narrator said that he dreamt of the ship waiting for these Haitian refugees in a strange land and he did not know why he was there and how he came to be on board that ship that navel of his past. The author felt giddy and his heart pushed hard against the daylight of his leafless body and swishing for the peace and darkness. The author supposed that he was a poet, not a coast guard cutter or fireman or one or two others on the deck standing by the railing where there were these hard white life-savers the narrator supposed that some kind of chord of music or anthology is called life line that he gripped in his hands when he tossed this little white sweet with the legend. “US Coast Guard Gutter’. On the top and bottom of the ro e, » WO stenciled with black coloured material, rose were The narrator described that when sot i meor pene he Cee but the narrator was not inte ae was feeling giddy and giddier a; : e blind. : ind he felt that he has become ‘Scanned wih CamScanner138 MBD Advanced Studies in English Literature 33 MBD 4c ee Further, the narrator recalled the day of his youth and he often wandered what it they would really be like out there far from his homeland on the Atlantic with a condition but now a long time has passed since he stayed on the sea. . Then the narrator describes that he stood in the mids! of bamboo trees’ and did not even have time to scrape the ashes from the fireplace before he was down the hull bound for those tuilleries behind the Iron market where they had to meet the Canot “Salvage” and he kept thinking. “Sea core No Father sea come No Father ......” The narrator could not sleep till longer because nobody had written anything serious since Mexican died. So all they stood in silence of this dream. Since we all were artists and strangers to each other and not soliders or sailors or dwarfs. The narrator said that all were on the same trip according to Black Sralin. They were on the same sloping deck and the ropes. were tied neatly. They felt something unusual taking Place outside: So, Sun Bryan appeared on water like a kind living {ife-buoy but it was only his face there in the shape of a smile. Sun Bryan passed quite closed but swiftly by like a sea island kite. All they hardly looked#up there or the stars since everything was moving so strangely and we were not able to pay homage. The captain of the ship said that the “Sun Bryan was on a Starboard Course” whatever that meant Tocking from side to side like a pendulum of time as if he was suspended from the top of his pointed head above’ the water. The author was to revise and write something. They went on board and feit'cold although they were in a boat designed as the TV Poe tin ee to carry 14 to 15 and the rocking 1 it i farrateh was capable to ae ihe he eal eae ihe focking and smiling triangle of th eat Ain nothing sal @ head rolling swiftly past the coast Guard Gutter and then we all were locked at each other because they have.heard that “Madame Margaret Eugenia Azuthar Market place” had at last gone up. a The author recalled his tele, 5 5 Phone cal on the beach of shells where she ha all to her years ago had been able to Pick up a ‘Scanned wih CamScannerAdvanced Critical Studies i ‘hort Stories ._ 139 ‘latge pink conch in her hands without being cut her hands by the sharp edge of the vivi as has happened to the narrator. He recalled the time when he was a little boy on a bank Holiday when he: was too young to remember anything except the dines and the bright light on the sand and dazzle. He remembered the red blood from his fingers flowing down on the coral beaches. He kept looking at birds and fish for out on. the horizon and by the time he got up, everyone was talking ebout the visit. The narrator felt good of her.coming back even though it was clearly too late to understand and felt it warming her arms, her face and her dark glasses. She felt that the waves spread all around her in rocks and:she felt responding tc the colour of the daylight. The narrator was.able to reach a firm political decision pretty soon and departed to the deck of © the ship where all were passing by Sun Bryan and looking out for Mexican and the Haitian refugees. All they took rest. Suddenly someone shouted for Columbus. He had discovered America in October 1492. Then all they ran to railing but.they did not wish to fall into what the sailors called drink. Then the narrator felt that they have gone to hills. He felt afraid of heights even though he was in a landscape of sounds and sweet airs that give delight and don’t hurt. The author felt that he would fall and tumble down in the valley or rather into a dark blue hole far below. He further, noticed that the railings or stations were made of the material as their fingers and plans of their hands and the life boys suddenly out there in the water like flying fish or Whales. The people were startled and rushes to see to relive their limbs of what becomes like tedium onboard the bells of a ship. Each one seemed to had like a white head that flashed back and forth and each of them cried for their country with wide open mouth. The Salvages felt tired of climbing up one more hill just out of sight of Pt. Serene and they felt themselves into the darkness. dungeon tke ¢ bindman ard convicted tn (a cat bus ¢ convicted. He felt himself like Some dark gaoler and heard long echoing noise of the mi Yoors. All they were trying to reach the life lines ‘that ya Made of the same material as their lungs and their fingers aa ee ‘Scanned wih CamScanner140" MBD Advanced Studies in English Literature 7 skins. Nobody came forward to help them. The ferrymen were shouting and: fighting for survivors though they were all quite dead and.even some of us have started floating to the surface. The narrator felt that no body was throwing life lines nor booies nor anything like that towards them. The author had no time to think any of this down even if he could have in all that crushing and crying and falling into those cul-de-sac heights that he had always feared. They moved back with their beads up'and down in the curve of water and their still vainly tried to reach Miami and Judge Thomas and US supreme court, were dreaming and drinking. Once again, all stood on the soft hard deck of the coast Guard “Impeccable” watching them. So, the author Kamau Brathwaite tries to establish a Caribbean Culture by recording and re-orchestrating the surviving echoes of only African culture. ‘Scanned with CamScannerChapter-24 Dream Haiti ee ete AL NL wal biutne fe wtihy PL LAP hin Hil PASTE SSE SA SE NPL Sirinig Pe Go VIAL IBA 4 bens Pr te S LAL Lt MES OI ESE PIE Gel ie iP Sii6 ter Sle ee FI ibid! lite RL BRILL Stole ese iiuz eae FE 1Summary The Dream Haiti The story is about the dream of a Haitian resident who has migrated to U.S.A for better facilities of life. He works there as a coast-guard. His time passes amidst the waves of the ocean. His duty is to stop the people entering into American territory who are not residents of U.S.A. but they are born in Haiti or other areas of slave nations, under the cruel clutches of Imperialism. The poor people of these slave nations of the world wish to reach America and work in order to better circumstances. The narrator himself being a Haitian by origin and a poet, is unable to help the poor that belong to his own nation because of the strict laws of immigration by American authorities. He wishes that the people of his own nation should be allowed to enter America to get better facilities of life. But there is a lot of difference between his dream and reality! The narrator prefers that people should call him a poet, and not a coastguard. “I was Suppose to be a poet, not a coastguard”. Coast-guards are supposed to be safeguard for the People in danger of drowning. But he has a negative type of duty. He imagines a kite hovering over. Later on, he dreams of one Madame Margaret Eugenia who “was able to come to a firm political decision — about light at the end of the tunnel. etc.” Thi : At the end, the narrators dream tak : es us and Judge Thomas and U.S. Supreme Court. It Contrast to the People Haiti faiti and ¢] narrator finds No justice, : one “to rach Miami shows the wide in’ Miami. The ree ‘Scanned wih CemScanner08 Edward Kamau Brathwaite (1930- ) SS LIFE-SITUATIONS & LITERARY CAREER Birth and Parentage Kamau Brathwaite was born on May 11, 1930 in the capital city of Barbados, Bridgetown. He was the son of Hilton Brathwaite, a warehouse clerk, and the former Beryl Gill. Education He attended Harrison College, an elite school, and then went with a Barbados Scholarship to England, where he studied history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After graduating with honours in 1953, Brathwaite studied for a year for a teacher's certificate. In England, he felt an outsider but entered the British colonial service, and left in 1955 for the Gold Coast (now Ghana), where he worked at the textbook department of the Ministry of Education. “I want to submit that the desire (even the need) to migrate is at the heart of West Indian sensibility,” wrote Brathwaite in 1957 in Bim, “whether that migration is in fact or by metaphor.” Brathwaite received his Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 1968. His dissertation was titled The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica 1770-1820 (1971). The years were to Brathwaite of crucial importance for the diceeiog ote limitation of Jamaican Creole identity. To heal the traumas of colonialism, he has suggested that the denigrated Creole |; ae should be introduced into the education system. Kamau Brath eee currently Professor of Comparative Literature at New ¥; kU Ree a position he has held since 1991. ork University, Marriage and Family Life purine athwaite marred in 1960 Doris We uring the years of 1997-2000, Kam: . financed “Maroon Years” at "Cov Pasture,” nea spent three self- post Hurricane” home in Barbados. The mid. sry {@™OUs and, then, Hage itieult time for Brathwaite, as his wife dengst¢ 1980s proved a spats ie cilbert destroyed his home ang <4 i 1986 and in 1988 Papers in mud. Two years 7 ated almost all his and beat later he was z, 7 robb, : These traumas contributed to his decision rato the We in gatiaica: est Indies in lcome; they had one son. 84 ‘Scanned wih CemScannerny 8— Edward Kamau Brathwaite 85 1991 and take his current position at New York University, After the‘ death of his first wife, he married Beverley Reid, a Jamaican. Honours and Awards Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Sixth Annual Griffin Poetry Prize. His recent volume of poctry, Born to Slow Horses, was the work recognized for the Griffin Poetry Prize. He has received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, to cite only two of many other notable fellowships. Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Américas Prize, and the Charity Randall Prize for Performance and Written Poetry, Brathwaite has painstakingly established himself as a tour-de-force in not only the literary arts arena but also in the arena of historical and cultural studies. Literary Career From 1950 he started to publish short stories, literary criticism, and poetry in the West Indian magazine Bim, edited by Frank Collymore. In 1957, a new nation, Ghana, was born, and became a model for other colonies struggling for independence. During these years Brathwaite familiarized himself with traditional verse and pre- colonial African myths, which were considered an essential part in building a new Ghanaian cultural identity. Brathwaite was influenced especially by the work of Kwabena Nketia, the director of Ghana Institute for Study of African Culture. Brathwaite established a children’s theatre, and wrote children’s books and plays, of which Odale’s Choice was later produced by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. He returned to the West Indies in 1962 and was appointed a tutor in the department of Extra-Mural Studies of the University of the West Indies in St. Lucia. Next year he moved to the Mona campus of the university, in Kingston, Jamaica. He produced programs for the Windward Island Broadcasting Service, was the founding secretary of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement in 1966 and in 1970 started to edit its magazine Savacou. Deeply conscious of his social role both as poet and professional historian, he started after 1976 to use the culturally divided first names Edward Kamau. Braithwaite’s notable scholar works include Jazz and Indian Novel, published in Bim in 1967 and The Folk cue Jamaican Slaves (1969). In 1983 Brathwaite was appointed professor of social and cultural history at the University of the West Indies, where he worked until 1991. After retiring he spent some time n visiting professor in America, and in 1993 he became. profes: of comparative literature at New York University: In his nae (rr ‘Scanned wih CamScanner86 Short Stories of the World Brathwaite has infused European and African influences, He -ombines spoken word with modernist techniques, Sacha . ae nd uses rhythms from jazz and folk music. But int rua i Play ith words and linguistic inventions are not a mani ‘it de toward absorbed individualism or post-modern ironic i am ae aesthetic practices. His poetry is a part of the col ne on of Caribbean identity and racial wholeness. Feelings of roo a a emerge often from Brathwaite’s poems, and in an interview he has confessed that his travels have given him a sense of movement and restlessness. Brathwaite made his breakthrough with the dazzling trilogy Rights of Passage (1967), written while he taught at the University of the West Indies, Masks (1968), and Islands (1969), reissued in one volume as The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973). Its central theme is a Dantesque spiritual journey in which the Paradise is lost, but eventually it leads to a recovery and rebirth into knowledge of the past. The journey continues as an examination of the black condition in America, heard through several voices. Masks is a dream and pilgrimage to the forest empire of Ashanti. In the poem Stone from Middle Passages, dedicated to Mickey Smith, who was stoned to death on Stony Hill, Kingston, he combined basic word processing techniques with deliberate | misspellings, onomatopoeia, and graphic rendition of the rhythm and syntax of agitated everyday speech. In Black + Blues (1976), which earned Brathwaite a prize at the Cuban Casa de las Americas poetry competition, he plunged into the language and experience of Coe end cartes slum subculture. The Zea Mexican Diary 1993) was a tribute the poet's wife i i i Brathwaite learned that che was dying of acon feng 988 when “nation language” of Jamaica and Caribl Mi Sun Poems (1982), and X/Self (4987) toon othe autobiographical elements, which tries to give a te: Caribbean experience. The trilogy starts with the (ota! Picture of the women, and focuses then on fathers and follows *or1d of Caribbean " ‘owing generations. MAJOR WORKS The Arrivants In 1965, Brathwaite went t, . fo. of Sussex, and in 1968 he was avandia study 2 the Univetsity on slave and Creole culture in -D. in histo il . ry for research scholarly work, he. also poe ‘i Caribbean, As he embarked on his eventually collected as The Anes Publish th 1967 and 1969, the three volumes ‘ublished individually between ‘Scanned with CamScannerEdward Kamau Brathwaite 87 Brathwaite tremendous attention and praise. This is a wonderful collection of verse. There is enough wisdom and observation within Brathwaite’s poetry which make The Arrivants a remarkable book. The array of messages developed in the poetry allowing us the rare opportunity to understand the ‘world through the eyes of a poet whose homeland is in the Caribbean, are both innovative as poetry and javaluable as a written history — a Caribbean history which, while developed from past events, shows how interwoven we all are as humanity. Middle Passages With his other collections Black + Blues and Third World Poems, Middle Passages creates a kind of chisel which may well lead us into a projected third trilogy of the writer. Here is a political angle to Brathwaite’s Caribbean & New World quest, with new notes of protest and lament. It marks a Sisyphean stage of Third World history in which things fall apart and everyone's achievements come tumbling back down upon their heads‘and into their hearts, like the great stone which King Sisyphus was condemned to keep heaving back up the same hill in hell - a postmodernist implosion already signalled by Baldwin, Patterson,-Soyinka and Achebe and more negatively by V.S. Naipaul; but given a new dimension here by Brathwaite’s rhythmical affirmations. Middle Passages includes poems for those modern heroes who are the pegs by which the mountain must be climbed again: Maroon resistance, the poets Nicolas Guillen, the Cuban revolutionary, and Mikey Smith, stoned to death on Stony Hill; t'e great musicians (Ellington, Bessie Smith); and Third World lead: s Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney and Nelson Mandela. Born to Slow Horses This book of verse shows more of Brathwaite’ ive re of technical innovations- in stanza form, dislect, ever lnreat aes typography-in seven adventurous medium-length works. On sequence describes coastlines and islands as seen from the air Another adopts the voice of a girl who may be a slave remembering the Middle Passage or a modern youth encountering its ghosts. Other sequences focus on generational succession and on hopeful, endangered or murdered children, invoking the Jamaican ritual cal H kumina, the myth of Osiris, the biblical binding of Isaac and the grec of Brathwaite’s own extended family. The anthology is.a si nies of posite snesiations on islands and exile, language and ritual, and t the fre af peronal and ‘storia passions and grief. These poems i-‘¢ , a literally, by spirits of the Afri iaspe and drenched in the colours, soun race ea they also'encompass the world of a er ehy etic a ria E s , en ‘Scanned wih CamScannergs Short Stories of the World one of the foremost voices in of 9/11 in New York City. Brathwaite a his poetry is densely rooted postcolonial inquiry and expression, an and expansive. Dreamstories Kamau Brathwaite continues his ongoing eee ae poems, comprised of the broken images, flow, and ha Beale dreams. The poetic stories in Dreamstories ue rose se trademark sycorax video style, offering personal revel ey ach with political and historical fables occurring around the globe. Brathwaite’s prose poems relate with ardency and Paes te Caribbean experience and are a potent voice of the African diaspora. To read Dreamstories is to come into contact with its author's consciousness, to experience at a cellular level its inflections and refraction and get a sense of the history it has endured. The experience is a thrilling one that transcends the ordinary experience of literature. We are lucky, in our bleak time that this poet is still at the height of his powers. Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica The book throws light on the beliefs and customs in Jamaica. Folk customs relating to death play a significant role in the Jamaican culture. This is due mainly to the general belief that there is power in death. Locals believe that the dead possess supernatural powers which can be used to bring about harm if the necessary precautions are not taken and the relevant respect shown. Most death rituals, practised in present day Jamaica are African-derived and date back to striking similarities between the se practiced in traditional West three components, the body, the sou view is shared by locals, as well, Another shared belief is that the l and the shadow or du This specially those from pire ean culture. Society in Jamaica of a coloni ‘The Development of Creole This book is a study in depth critical years of slavery in the Cac however, itis not concerned with dere ae As the title suggests entity of which slavery was a significany @cUSively, but with a social the people - from Britain and West aie tt: Brathwait ‘and worked in Jamaica, contributed 117 t21Y - who settled, lived the formation of a society ‘ial Plantation during 50 th ‘Scanned with CamScanner8—Edward Kamau Brathwaite 89 which developed its own distinctive character - Creole socie society developed institutions, customs and attitudes which were basically the result of the interaction between its two main elements, the African and European. But this Creolé society was also part ofa wider American or New World culture complex, and as such, it was also shaped by the pressures upon it of British and European mercantilism, and the American, French, and Humanitarian Revolutions. History of the Voice In History of the Voice, Brathwaite discusses West Indian poetry as a gradual approximation of the communal voice he is looking for. Jazz also offers an important model here (against what Brathwaite calls “the tyranny of the pentameter” which he considers inadequate to a rendering of the rhythms of Caribbean experience). The principal concept here, however, is that of Nation Language, a voice and language that can capture and re-enact Caribbean experience in both its temporal (historical) and spatial (geographical, local) dimension. As a holistic expression, nation language derives from folk traditions based on African elements, but it is no simple transcription of dialect. Rather, it is the result of a poetic innovation which aims to capture a specific confrontation of dispossession or catastrophe, which in Brathwaite’s view frequently characterize the Caribbean experience. Golokwati Golokwati embraces a way of interpreting the contemporary history of the Caribbean that affirms the existence of an alternative tradition and a basis on which to develop a more humanist Caribbean person. This collection of provocative essays ranges from a critique of Eurocentric analysis of Caribbean writing and thought to a defence of the author's home against the overwhelming pressure of development that privileges foreign interest at the expense of the traditional ways and rights of citizens. Environmental issues are also engaged. He links these contemporary issues to earlier instances of exploitation fer black people. Through his multiple case studies, he etches a vived Picture of dialectical/tidalectics struggle. By his de metaphor and imagery as well as semantic play, ii ‘Scanned wih CamScanner90 Short Stories of the World making them new, dramatic and textured. The magisterial work is also a detailed development of nation language. er KAMAU BRATHWAITE AS A SHORT STORY WRITER Brathwaite is one of the Caribbean's most celebrated writers. He is known chiefly for The Arrivants (1973), 2 trilogy of poetry volumes in which a uniquely Caribbean identity is set forth, incorporating ties to Africa and the lasting effects of slavery. Born in Barbados, Brathwaite has long been compared to another famous Caribbean poet, the Nobel Prize-winning Derek Walcott. Brathwaite was strongly influenced by the works of T. S. Eliot but his penchant for jazz, thythmic experimentation and his love of Caribbean vernacular are the most evident features of his poetry. His emphasis on the oral tradition in poetry has led him to produce several sound recordings. Holding positions at universities in the West Indies, England, and the United States, Brathwaite has had a distinguished academic career during which he has written and edited several highly respected works of criticism, essays, and scholarly histories of the Caribbean. Brathwaite’s Stories Brathwaite is one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. He is also noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in worke such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica; The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820; Contradictory Omens; Afternoon of the Status Crow; and History of the Voice. In’his cask. he provides the readers a deep insight into the cultures of rvsl Ahi and the contemporary Caribbean. He began exploring there Tink poems and chronicling them in scholarly writings. Smee he oti ing nd tral a ee rng Ht the cura een Africa and the Caribbean. In one way or another, Brathwaite’ ji the passing of time and the NSvemenr ae H eon oa concerned with in ee They oad with a retrospective account a prcriee by an ‘of memory. “Now that Think beers, NdHeCt, circumspect action Slaok ae it I think back,” the'phrase that spect action “angel eens on as the motto for the entire bee the story journey but th Story from the 1950s whose thone ose journey but the related one of spiritual strum feos’, Heme is-not the ele against unspecified ‘Scanned wih CamScanner8—Edward Kamau Brathwaite 91 evil forces. Yet even.this story employs the journey as one of its minor motifs. Themes : : waite is praised for taking on the role of representative figure tah the peonle of the West Indies, and for representing “their collective destiny.” Indeed, most criticism of Brathwaite focuses on themes such as the continuities between Africa and the Caribbean or Brathwaite’s cyclical theory of history and culture. Brathwaite’s theme is that of the West’ Indian, modern and ancestral, in slavery, emigrating, suffering, resilient but melancholy. It is potentially a striking and exciting theme, but Mr. Brathwaite’s technique and verbal control do not match his ambition. One can imagine that it might—given the right voice, the right production, and the right mood—make a powerful radio performance, at least in part: but it makes very flat reading on the page. Caribbean Experience Brathwaite is the founder of the Caribbean Artists’. Movement and has been actively involved with such Caribbean magazines as Savacou, Bim, Caliban, and Okike. According to Kamau (so renamed, later, in recognition of his African ancestry), speaking in an interview from New York recently, said he only realized how much he did not know about himself and Caribbean culture when he began to mix with other ethnic groups at university in London. “I became acutely conscious of what I did not know,” he recalls. “I began to learn what 1 could, meeting with other Caribbean peoples. Then I went to live and work in Ghana for 10 years.” This last was to gain further self- Knowledge. “My work is the constant discovery of who I am,” he says. His numerous book publications include Mother Poem, Sun Poem, Self, and The Arrivants, Middle Passages and Dream Stories, among athers. As a historian, he is the author of The Development of Create Society in Jamaica, Brathwaite is also author of History of the Vorce patminal text in Caribbean language discourse. In the book We Development of Creole Society - 1770-1820, Brathwaite notes, “It is in the lan, . ores racnetaee that the slave was most Successfully imprisoned by his Kamau also developed affection for indigenou: ic, his U : u iS mi Hie showing jazz influences and later eine ehidghre er) sta, calypso - rhythms combined with Teasoning. The arith wid te tas embraced all Caribbean cultural forms is a testiman : we are one. This i ite’s Visi ow ourselves game one its is Brathwaite’s vision - that we would iberation in that knowledge. We have a cul ich i ‘ulture which does not need integration. It is already one. Brathwait a ‘ite > ‘Scanned wih CamScanner