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André and Simone Schwarz-Bart's Un plat
de porc aux bananes vertes: Shoah and Slavery Intertwined
-- Kathleen Gyssels
In this article , I demonstrate how the novel
Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes (A Plate of Pork
with Green Bananas) (1967) is the "corrective" of The Last of the Just (1959), the Goncourt Prize
winning début of André Schwarz-Bart. Through a fictional journal of a Martinican dying woman in
a Parisian house for the elderly, the author, assisted by his Guadeloupean wife and novelist
herself, Simone Schwarz-Bart, modelled a testimony that would complete the records of Shoah
narratives such as the writings of survivors (Levi, Wiesel, Antelme, Semprun). Bringing to the forefront
the missing record, the testimony of (Black and coloured) women who went through this ordeal,
both authors misled critics and readers. Foregrounding the extreme other: female, black,
pork-eating, non-Jewish, dying in what is very recognizably a "univers concentrationnaire" (Rousset,
1946), the authors demonstrate the "reversibility" of the Black and Jewish fate. Shoah and slavery are
the two sides of the same fabric, the absolute terror and absence of tolerance towards a
community because of skin colour or religion, or a mix of both.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A G Stephens: Australian Critic, Traveller and Nationalist, circa 1900
-- Peter H Hoffenberg
This essay introduces the life, work and overseas travels of Alfred George (A G) Stephens
(1865-1933), Australia's most influential fin-de-siècle literary critic and journalist. Some might
reasonably argue that he was the most significant literary critic in Australian history, mounting his
attacks and defenses from his famous "Red Page" in Sydney's popular Bulletin. Those columns made and destroyed literary careers around the turn of the twentieth century and later. His other
published works included introductions to Australian literature, edited volumes of verse, both his and
those of other writers, and a travelogue, entitled
A Queenslander's Travel-Notes, published upon
his return from overseas in 1894. Taken together, his writings address some fundamental
questions asked by Australians and others circa 1900: what constitutes a national literature? to what
degrees is that literature influenced by race, a sense of place, and interaction with other people and
their literature? what did the Australians and their literature share with other
Commonwealth societies, such as Canada, and with the United States?
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
"Felling Mahogany Trees" in
British Honduras: The Politics of Race and Double Traumatization in
Zee Edgell's Time and the River
-- Marlene De La Cruz-Guzmán
Zee Edgell's novel Time and the River (2007) opens narrative space for formerly
marginalized voices and exposes the problems ingrained in the nationalist meta-narrative that the novel
strives to counter. This article will explore the paradigm of double traumatization of the
charactersLeah Lawson and Will McGilvreyand its consequences for Belizean civil society and
explore Edgell's representation of trauma based on race politics in her latest novel. The ethnic
designations and divisions in Spanish controlled but British settled Honduras are at the core of this
narrative's focus on the problematic nature of the transference of political power in Belize, for it
implicates Creoles in collaboration with the British mahogany merchants as part of the double
traumatization inflicted upon African slaves and their descendants. The narratives of Leah Lawson and
Nzimbe, called "Will McGilvrey" by his owner, provide testimonio to the complexities of the
quasi-colonial British legacy that is the first assault on Nzimbe/Will, the imported African slave, while
Leah's Creole, and thus inculturated, perspective leads to a repeated betrayal of her fellow slaves.
Thus, this novel opens spaces for the polyvocal narrative of the enslaved, and the exploration of
race politics and double traumatization and its implications in post-colonial Belize.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Travelling Desires and Imaginary Bridges Between Renaissance Italy and Mughal India in Salman Rushdie's
The Enchantress of Florence
-- Geetha Ganapathy-Doré
The intertwining of history, memory and story is a typical feature of Rushdie's narrative
style. Postcolonial histories of India and Pakistan have time and again been explored in his novels.
In The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), he turned to Boabdil's Spain to underpin the nature of
intercommunal relations in India. The Ground Beneath Her
Feet (1999) deconstructed the West as Disorient. In
his latest novel, The Enchantress of
Florence (2008), Renaissance Italy becomes the mirror for
Mughal India. The poetry of Petrarch, the paintings of Botticelli, the moral war between the Medicis
and the cult of the Weepers, the politics of Machiavelli and the architecture of Florence find
parallels in the music of Tansen, the wit of Birbal, the splendour of Fatehpur Sikri, the universal religion
of tolerance that Emperor Akbar dreamed about and the feuds within his family. The connecting
link between them is a message of Queen Elizabeth to the Great Mughal usurped, carried
and misinterpreted by a half-Italian half-Indian cultural interloper, Niccolò Vespucci. The origin of
his clownish passage to India is a mysterious Mughal Princess called Qara Köz, the Lady Black
eyes. Like Akbar's ideal wife Jodha Bai, the Lady Black Eyes is unsubstantial, reminding us of the
dark lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. The Enchantress of Florence is a metanarrative tale of the birth of cross cultures through travel, trade and desire in colonial times which shaped the postcolonial
and the global world we know today.
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Creation of an "Anti-Thriller":
Vikram Chandra in Conversation
-- Claire Chambers
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
The minstrel harps at the beach of Negril
Republic of Love
(for AND)
Passageways
-- Tanure Ojaide
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Conversation
(With Paulo Coelho on reading The
Alchemist)
The Cook and the Chickpea
(With acknowledgement to Rumi)
The Other
Prayer
-- Shanta Acharya
© 2010 Shanta Acharya. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Late March in Austin
India, give me a poem,
It is spring
Reversal
-- Usha Akella
© 2010 Usha Akella. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Unbeloved
-- Robert Bensen
© 2010 Robert Bensen. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
A Nation of Advocates
My Other Mother
-- JKS Makokha
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Nelumbo Nucifera
-- Lakshmi Kannan
© 2010 Lakshmi Kannan. All Rights Reserved.
POEMS
Sarojini Naidu: Letter to Daughter Leilamani
-- Cyril Dabydeen
© 2010 Cyril Dabydeen. All Rights Reserved.
STORIES
Nirami
(A Political Colour)
-- Lakshmi Kannan
© 2010 Lakshmi Kannan. All Rights Reserved.
STORIES
Pogadapulu
(Flowers of the Bullet-wood Tree)
-- Poranki Dakshinamurthy
Copyright permission for the translation has been obtained.
STORIES
Akamveedu
(Indoors)
-- P Surendran
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
STORIES
Puramveedu
(Outdoors)
-- P Surendran
© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
STORIES
Maarpu Veneka Manishi
(Man Behind the Change)
-- Seela Subhadra Devi
Copyright permission for the translation has been obtained.
BOOK REVIEW
Dreams That Spell The Light. Shanta Acharya.
-- Lakshmi Holmström
© 2010 Lakshmi Holmström. All Rights Reserved.
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