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This week, I focused on chapter 6, “The Rise of Toussaint”. There was one part of the passage that caught my attention. “For these blacks, lacking civic discipline, running wild

in a country tom by revolution and war, knowing only that

they wanted to remain free, yet confused and deceived by

all parties, for them Toussaint had a deep and passionate

sympathy. "O you Africans, my brothers!" he addresses

them in a proclamation. "you who have cost me so many

fatigues, so much labour, so much worry, you whose liberty

is sealed with more than half of your own blood! How long

will I have the mortification of seeing my misled children

Fly the counsels of a father who idolizes them" Autocrat

though he was, that is the way he felt about his people.

“It is always the blacks who suffer the most," was an expression often on his lips; and one can feel his spontaneous

horror at the news of a rising provoked by the British

among the cultivators of a district in the North Province.

"You will not have much difficulty in divining whence has

come this terrible blow. Is it then possible that the labourers

will always be the plaything and the instruments of

vengeance of those monsters whom hell has loosed upon

this colony?…The blood of so many victims cries for

vengeance, and human and divine justice cannot delay to

confound the guilty.” (James 152)

Toussaint Louverture was a powerful leader. But even with that, he was still able to empathize with former slaves, and he had the ability to recognize the horrible conditions they had to deal with. I found it very interesting how he was able to take something filled with despair and turn it into something that give light for so many people and despite his authority, he still make sure to prioritize what was best for the people and what they needed most over the demands of the government. I believe that someone like this would be great in our current world.

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1. Name

2. Pronouns

3. Hometown

4. Text you are interested in on the syllabus

5. Something fun you did over the summer

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https://hunter.cuny.edu/people/tao-leigh-goffe/

1. Professor Goffe

2. she / her

3. London + NY (Queens / Manhattan)

4. Dark Princess

5. Wrote a book on climate crisis in the Caribbean and Afro-Asian ecologies called DARK LABORATORY.

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Required - August 29- Presentation Sign-Up 

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Required - August 29- Presentation Sign-Up 

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1. Prof. Goffe

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Guide to the reading. Optional

1. What was the Bwa Kayiman Ceremony? How does ceremony play a role in Bailey’s poems?

2. Who is the Goddess of the Sea? Does she have many forms? In which poems does she make an appearance?

3. Cite examples from the footer that runs along the bottom of the page in italics that form a sense of continuity across the poems. How does the voice change? Would you consider it one poem itself?

4. The formatting of “La Divina Pastora, Mother of Miracles,” shifts our orientation of the page because of the layout. Discuss how the poem itself becomes a type of alter to the Black Madonna figure across various cosmologies found in the Caribbean.

5. How does pleasure and Black vitality show up through the motif of worship in the poem “Dancing at the Shrine in Harlem?” What connection do you see between the contemporary scenes and the historic setting of the Haitian Revolution? How do the poems time travel through this connected voice of the Caribbean Sea?

Discussion questions will be posted on Padlet and Brightspace. They are not required, but recommend as a guide for your reading.

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1. Alberta Hogan

2. She/ her

3. New York

4. What Noise Against the Cane

5. Went to the beach and attended summer family gatherings

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Afro-Caribbean Literature - Hunter College

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Afro-Caribbean Literature - Hunter College

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In the book, I chose the Chant for the Waters and Dirt and Blade poem to do my close reading. Particularly, the stanza, “oiled up and thrown down…” It uses a powerful and contrasting imagery to evoke the complex relationship between person and land. The stanza establishes the poem’s central themes of violence, trauma, and objectification. First, the initial lines “oiled up and thrown,” helps introduce the theme of violence. In a striking contrast to the surrounding land, the speaker showcases the dehumanizing act they have experienced. This sense of violence puts them in a vulnerable position. The stanza also uses alliteration, such as “pine cloaked mountains” and “dark face ringing,” adding some lyrical quality to the poem. However, the scenic backdrop of the shape of mountains highlights the tension between the naturally beautiful scenery and the harsh human experience. The speaker continues to explore the idea of both solace and pain. The speaker’s declaration of being “haunted by the land’s beauty” introduces a crucial paradox. In this stanza, beauty is not comforting but a curse, portraying the speaker’s fear and uneasiness. In the line “its dark face ringing with the throat of a bell,” humanizes the land, signifying that it has a history and a voice. However, the ringing bell could signal both a warning or worship, suggesting that the land is both sacred and sinister. Ultimately, the final image of the speaker’s hair standing up introduces a powerful simile. It links the speaker’s fear to a masculine and potentially aggressive natural world. Finally, the close reading reveals the poet’s skills. Luckily, they employ imagery, simile, metaphor, alliteration, and personification to evoke the reader’s attention and emotions. They turn a landscape into a violent and rebellious character.

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From the book, I chose "First American Years" for my close reading. A stanza that really stood out to me was when Bailey says, "Our father in the flesh. No longer over the phone, or in cards or letters stamped with the American Flag." From a reader's perspective, Bailey is using imagery as she mentions that they are immigrants coming from another country to the United States, and they are seeing their father in person for the first time, rather than communicating with him differently since they were separated by distance. It's a transition from a Caribbean childhood to a life in the US. This is not just a cultural change, it's a collision between both worlds. Using imagery to contrast joy and trauma, since she's happy to finally get to see her dad in person but has vivid memories of him on how they used to communicate when she was fr from them. Bailey mentions how she then had to start adapting to the American culture, such as music, books, TV, and clothes, to "fit in" as an immigrant from the Caribbeans. It made her feel a lot of pressure. Bailey uses alliteration by describing the type of culture Americans have with TV, music, and magazines. She uses simile to vividly compare childhood moments to larger cultural forces.

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I chose the stanza "I want memory to fail, I want to drive it out with the scent of pésil, to crush its mocking skull, pound it like garlic in a pilon" from Chant for the Waters and Dirt and Blade. This stanza in particular stood out to me because it just feels like it was written with so much pain mentally from the first line alone, "I want memory to fail." To me, Bailey is referring to painful memories of slavery. Slavery, at least the slavery we're all familiar with, has ended, but present day there are still things such as child labor and forced marriage that reinforce the idea of slavery. The second line, "I want to drive it out with the scent of pésil" builds off of the first where Bailey wants to "drive it [the memory] out" with the use of pésil, which is what Caribbeans call Parsley. Pésil (parsley) is often used in rituals to ward off evil-where in this case the traumatic memories are the "evil." Smells often trigger memories, such as a bad smell bringing up the memory of a bad experience. Using something to overpower that odor could be a way to relieve someone of a bad memory (evil) triggered by a smell. The last two lines build off on the idea of getting rid of a painful memory, "crush its mocking skull" meaning to get rid of it completely and "pound it like garlic in a pilon," a pilon, which is a mortar and pestle essentially, commonly used to mash herbs and spices in Caribbean culture.

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The poem Fleshed Cartographies in What Noise Against the Cane, is used by Bailey to relate the body, map, and historical violence that roam the landscape in areas of recorded history. The line I will focus on is “to explore the escape: body lilting across the uncharted edge of Terrain; or the unescape: fallopian as factory assembling tools to tend the field,” I understand the first portion of “Explore the escape: body lilting across uncharted edge of terrain or the unescape…” as freedom of the body to break past borders in a joyful or rhythmic way, to refuse the colonial maps, such as slave routes or patriarchal geographies, and to be free of systemic traps. The next part, “fallopian as factory assembling tools to tend the field” refers to the literal use of women's reproductive bodies as mere tools, reducing them to a method of production, to create other beings for the sole purpose of labor.

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Excerpt chosen from the third and final stanza of “Ma and the Snake” poem on pg. 37:

My no-nonsense mother, mother of the rosary’s

swift reason, still believes my tongue was fluent

as tadpoles in the creek. How eager she is to forget

that in my earliest years, the horsewhip’s lisp rose from my lips

and my cousins begged me to spit our words like season and

souse, charmed by the pink head

peering out between my teeth. I was a child of thorn

and shadow, drawn to the soil’s mysteries, peculiar as

the driftwood’s rot. What dark-throated truths

piped into my mouth, what stinging languages

broken and blown, fed to my gorging breath.

In this concluding stanza to “Ma and the Snake,” I was impressed by Bailey’s use of vivid imagery and symbolism to explain the aftermath of an encounter she had with a snake in her youth. Initially dismissed by her mother as just a Caribbean superstition, Bailey divulges that the horsewhip’s hiss towards her in her childhood did actually have repercussions or impacts on her language and diction, both on the surface level and in a more profound sense. Through describing her mother as “no-nonsense” and as a “mother of the rosary”, she references her mother’s tendency to rely more on her religious virtues and principles, and thus alludes to her resistance to believe in a Caribbean old wives’ tale that says her daughter’s future speech will be marked by a snake’s fated determination. Later on in this stanza, Bailey admits to her cousin’s slight teasing of her lisp that did genuinely develop by making her say ‘s’ words (souse & season), which caused them to be “charmed by the pink head peering out between my teeth” - in other, more literal words, them finding her tongue-induced lisp amusing. Beyond this physical effect, Bailey uses the final line of this poem to detail the more complex effects of her meeting with the horsewhip. As I read “What dark-throated truths piped into my mouth, what stinging languages broken and blown, fed to my gorging breath,” I interpreted this to mean her interest in uncovering all of the deeper facets of what language could expose and explain in life, which perhaps would lend itself to explaining why she became a poet/writer.

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Guesswork

“True: there is no homeland. Just my veined feet wandering the shore, marring paradise. Regretful inconvenience I am, smudged in the eye of a tourist's camera.

Vagrant. Is what I learned to call the man with snarl of sky for a roof. And how now that word turns inward, taking root within the spleen. I am not lost or am I.

Light a white candle, says a friend, his pupils storming within mine. Neighbor it to a glass of water. Flame and water to uncover a path, to greet the ones who walked moons before. Damn near atheist on so many days, but I touch the flame to the wick and my head is light light, it's lifting. Diasporan daughter, raking the soil for a map, a glint of my mama's gold, a bone to call my own.”

Similar to the “Capture Land” by Chronixx we listened to in class about living in a stolen land surrounded by injustices . Chronixx was saying it’s not possible to forge a better life on stolen land because building on a foundation of injustice one can not reach a righteous product. He calls to be taken home. This section discusses the felling of a person who feels lost in a land not their own. And even worse they feel that they have no home yet. A person without foundation or “bone to call my own”. A vagrant or homeless vagabond who we learn throughout our life in stolen lands is a regretful or bad thing to be. And we must win in the game and be successful or we are doomed to be one. So in the poem the author strives to uncover her roots covered and obscured by centuries of oppression and survival. Using all means available even DNA to track down a real home and not just two stolen lands that she grew up knowing. Bringing herself and those who come after her closer to completion.

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From this book, I chose the stanza “out on the deck I measured the sea” to “refused this offering of my body”  from “Chant for the Waters and Dirt and Blade”.  This stanza stood out to  me because I admired how the author used metaphors to refer to the ocean as both the girl’s way to freedom and captivity. She was probably bought on a ship and enslaved, but she refers to the ocean as a she creature with mercy of scales, showing that the ocean could show mercy to her by letting her drown in it. The young girl views the ocean as her way out of captivity, even if it kills her. However, the girl offered herself to the ocean, but it “refused this offering of [her] body”, which showed that she was still denied the choice to make decisions in her own terms.

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Excerpt chosen from Side B. of "Women in Dub":

"            stripped of my first voice

down in the dub            cop hounds my blood

into paranoia           a black reality

cycles spilled

power husked
emotional woman I   I

I iron                            real street               folkloric and mad
tr tr trrrruuuueeee

take a good look at the devil

peer into the dread

men surrender to wound: drunk        calcified                                          but I

fantastic
chasing echoes

nailed to system                                            free in sound

I       a fact

answer of my own making

"

What is first immediately striking about this to me is the structure of the stanza, as it is designed to imitate the dub versions found on the b sides of reggae songs for soundsystem selectors. This is a perfect example of form being part of the message: the b side is a stripped-down, bare bones version of what was featured on the a side. In this same way, the second stanza of this poem is a rawer, primal look at the themes initially laid out in the first. The usage of manipulated space so characteristic of dub is also used effectively here as the gaps in the text evoke a sense of tension that our minds have to fill the blanks with. Pair this with the themes of a Black woman whose voice is stifled and who strives to break free, this retroactively gives the title a new meaning, a woman whose voice has been "dubbed".

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1.        CLR James famously wrote, “In America the Negroes made nearly 150 distinct revolts against slavery. The only place where Negroes did not revolt is in the pages of capitalist historians.” How does this statement make you think about the way he narrates the history of the Haitian Revolution?

2.        How would George Orwell and CLR James define fascism differently considering the context of World War II and European colonialism at that point in time?

3.        George Orwell writes, “A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details.” What do you think of his argument about the difference between Latin or Greek and Saxon words?

4.        What is the UN’s definition of “genocide?” How would you frame the statistics about Native genocide and the Lucayans from CLR James’ account in the prologue? “These and other requirements of the higher civilisation reduced the native population from an estimated half-a-milIion, perhaps a million. to 60,000 in 15 years.”

5.        What percentage of children born on plantations does James say died from what the disease called “the jaw-sickness”? How does this relate to his interpretation of poison as a method used by enslaved Africans?

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AS i read chapter in the Black Jacobins this passage intrigued me :

“T here are and always will be some who, ashamed of the behaviour of their ancestors, try to prove that slavery was not so bad after all, that its evils and its cruelty were the exaggerations of propagandists and not the habitual lot of the slaves. Men will say (and accept) anything in order to foster national pride or soothe a troubled conscience. Undoubtedly there were kind masters who did not indulge in these refinements of cruelty and whose slaves merely suffered over-work, under-nourishment and the whip. But the slaves in San Domingo could not replenish their number bv reproduction. After that dreaded iourney across the ocean a woman was usually sterile for two years. The life in San Domingo killed them off fast. The planters deliberately worked them to death rather than wait for children to grow up. But the professional white-washers are assisted by the writings of a few contemporary observers who described scenes of idyllic beauty. One of these is Vaublanc.”

This quote really stood out to me because up to this point James dives into the horrific realties of slavery. In chapter 1: “The Property” i have read about the transatlantic slave trade, sexual/physical violence against slaves and forced labor. This undoubtedly showed the horrors of slavery and then James transitions into offering the enslaver’s perspective. Where white washers like Vaublanc deny that slavery was that violent and inhumane. James use of the phrase “kind masters” immediately displays the contradiction in the white washers idea that there were less cruel slave owners. But how could a person who is being forcibly overworked , under-fed and physically abused not endure cruelty? They can’t, it’s inherently cruel.

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The UN defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy a national,racial or religious group” , some acts included murdering native Americans, preventing child birth, removing children from families, causing physical or mental harm. CLR James showed this with the Lucyans, as he wrote “the higher cilivilization reduced native population from an estimated half-a-million perhaps a million, to 60,000 in 15 years.” This remind me of what the native Americans face, as they were subjected to “forced labor minds, murder, rape, bloodhounds, strange diseases, and artificial famine”.Enslaved Africans experienced many of the same horrors, as they were kidnapped, sold off, forced to work, and often saw their children die before growing up. These examples show how colonial powers used both genocide and slavery to destroy and control people.

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James’s quote makes me think about how he narrates the story of the Haitian Revolution by putting focus back on the enslaved people and showing they were the ones leading the fight for freedom instead of being left out like in other stories. When it comes to fascism, Orwell mostly saw it in terms of dictators and controlling truth in Europe, while James also tied it to colonialism and how the empire kept power. Orwell’s point about Latin and Greek words kind of makes sense in a way. He thought they cover things up, while Saxon words get straight to the point. The UN defines genocide as destroying a whole group, and I say James’ numbers about the Lucayans dropping from almost a million to 60,000 in just 15 years definitely shows how big of an impact the destruction was. He also mentions that about 33% of children born on plantations died from “jaw-sickness,” which connects to how enslaved Africans sometimes used poison as another form of resistance. He connects this to the extreme life on plantation and showed how high child mortality was in the system of slavery. This can show how unsustainable the plantation system was when there are children dying in very large numbers from harsh condition.

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In the book, "The Black Jacobins", multiple themes are presented, including Race, Class, and Power. The Haitian Revloution had tension with enslaved Africans, free people of color, French revolutionaries, and colonial officials because of how the class and race intersected in the struggle. As I read chapter 1, James describes how slavery was an integral part of capitalism. James represents racism as a function of economic power, and it was used to justify exploitation and maintain control of the people. Some questions I have are, what motivated James to speak about this? What encouraged him to speak about things that probably haven't been spoken about during the Haitian Revolution?

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C.L.R James, “The Black Jacobins” is quite an interesting read. The narrative explores the successful slave revolt that created the first independent black republic world. It acts as a comprehensive history of the Haitian Revolution, a significant event in world history. However, what caught my attention is brutal realities of the slave trade in the first chapter, “The Property.” James establishes that the entire colonial enterprise was built on the foundation of slave labor. He vividly describes the dehumanizing nature and cruelty Africans experienced during the Middle passage, where men, women, and children were packed into ships like goods and underwent inhumane conditions. The chapter continuously showcase a regime of violence, terror, and control to maintain order and productivity. The enslaved Africans were treated as property and were taken to plantations to work as free labor. Though, James argues that the extreme brutality of the system sowed seeds of destruction leading to death and despair, it created the opportunity for a slave revolt that changed the course of history.

On another note, both C.L.R James and George Orwell’s texts were written in different times but are profoundly shaped by the World War II. James, “The Black Jacobins” was written in 1938 just before WWII broke. It uses the historical example of the Haitian Revolution to provide context of the 18th century colonialism and brutality. He wanted to showcase how and why the slave revolt was necessary. Similarly, Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language” was published in the aftermath of the war critiquing the deception he had witnessed. In particular, Orwell argued that politicians used euphemisms. These phrases corrupted the language to excuse injustice and conceal unpleasant truths. He stressed that it is an action many perfected during the war to perpetuate political oppression. Therefore, while James’s text looks back in the past to find a model for future liberation, Orwell’s critiques the political propaganda where the degradation of language was a precursor to political oppression during and after WWII.

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Reading the first chapter for me was sort of a self-reflection of my own life. There are so many things in life that we take for granted, not because we're ignorant people, we're just used to having these things around. The amount of torture and pain these slaves went through just for the benefit of the colonists is beyond belief. Human origin was in Africa, the only thing that happened from there was adaptation to a new environment, resulting in a change of skin tone. This alone though was enough for colonists to see the Africans as inferior and "not" human. It makes little things such as a lamp to light up a dark room and a place to sit such as a stool seem like blessings from God to these people. From Orwell's essay, a quote that stood out to me was "Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." This describes what was going on when colonists were trying to justify slavery, saying that the slaves, as stated in The Black Jacobins, "had light work to do and were happy to do it." This also relates to WWII where during the holocaust for example, terms such as "the final solution" were used to hide what was really going on. In addition, the British fought for "freedom" even though they still had colonies in Africa.

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One thing that really caught my attention during my initial reading was James's attention to detail, particularly in describing essential aspects. I believe that, although the conditions of how slaves were transported cannot be truly understood without firsthand experience, even our imagination fails to bring us to a place of the real thing, James's use of certain words brought my understanding of the conditions closer to what it really was. James used the phrase "dens of putrefaction," which really captures how bad these conditions were. Having your neighbors right next to you, chained up, and decomposing is an experience truly unimaginable: the smell, the sight, and the fear of being next. The "mortality in the "trunks" being over 20 per cent."... "The close proximity of so many naked human beings, their bruised and festering flesh, foetid air, the prevailing dysentery, the accumulation of filth, turned these holds into hell." That is the only way I would really describe it. Hell.

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“The Black Jacobins” Excerpt for Close Reading

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“The Black Jacobins” Excerpt for Close Reading

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For this week’s reading, we covered the map, two prefaces, the prologue, and the first chapter "The Property”. One of the most glaring excerpts of the reading went as follows:

“Were these tortures, so well authenticated, habitual or were they merely isolated incidents, the extravagances of a few half-crazed colonists? Impossible as it is to substantiate hundreds of cases, yet all the evidence shows that these bestial practices were normal features of slave life. The torture of the whip, for instance, had ‘a thousand refinements,’ but they were regular varieties that had special names, so common were they. When the hands and arms were tied to four posts on the ground, the slave was said to undergo ‘the four post.’ If the slave was tied to a ladder, it was ‘the torture of the ladder’; if he was suspended by four limbs, it was ‘the hammock,’ etc. The pregnant woman was not spared her ‘four-post.’ A hole was dug in the earth to accommodate the unborn child. The torture of the collar was specially reserved for women who were suspected of abortion, and the collar never left their necks until they had produced a child. The blowing up of a slave had its own name - ‘to burn a little powder in the arse of a n*gger’: obviously this was no freak but a recognised practice.”

In a time, today, where any instance of political violence exerted from an oppressed class for a means of liberation or hope for an improved condition is criticized, I found this paragraph to be especially insightful in laying the exposition as to why the San Domingo Revolution (& linked rebellions) was beyond imperative. As this book goes into detail surrounding the revolutionary work of Toussaint L’Ouverture and the rebellious enslaved individuals as a whole, it was important to distinguish the absolute need for revolution in San Domingo/Haiti to occur. When you are met with the abhorrent violence that slave populations in the Americas and Caribbean were met with for a long as they did, including what was exemplified in this excerpt, sometimes the only thing that can combat that and will be appropriately felt by the oppressors/those that enacted the original violence, is responsive violence. As we will go on to read the specifics of what the Haitian Revolution entailed, I believe that C.L.R. James included this particular context to ensure that readers knew what would follow was well within justifiable reason in terms of revolutionary-backed violence.

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In C.L.R. James’ Book ‘The Black Jacobins’ from the Preface on he describes the condition and plight of the African slaves from their moment of retrieval in Africa to the arrivals in Tortuga and points onward. I feel the poignancy of Christianity and lack of Value to the lives taken were the most important element to the readings. The fact that peace was brokered by the Indigenous folk to bring about chattel slavery while using the carrot of eternal life was poignant in showing the lengths people would use for self-preservation. The fact that suicide on the boats themselves were seemed a better fate then their torturous routes to the land showed the depravity and despair that the human cattle felt they were up against.

Another overriding theme I wanted to touch on was the thought that Africans were substandard to the point that they were referred to as “lower than dogs.” In al l the writing they would mention the ones by the names of Louverture and Mackandel as being part of the upper-class slave who rose to prominence due to extraordinary skill and possibly a little luck. While this may have been true this harkens back to me the though process behind the ‘Talented 10’ and how society still views the occasional negro of today as being talented rather than the norm. While this prowess is why the Haitian Revolution was so successful, I feel it that given the plight of the people of the time and lack of education/opportunity, this caused more harm then good. While the sever whippings would ensue if they dared to read, I feel it undermined a bit the resourcefulness of the Haitian People.

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“The propagandists of the time claimed that however cruel was the slave traffic, the African slave in America was happier than in his own African civilisation. Ours, too, is an age of propaganda. We excel our ancestors only in system and organisation: they lied as fluently and as brazenly. In the sixteenth century, Central Africa was a territory of peace and happy civilisation. Traders travelled thousands of miles from one side of the continent to another without molestation. The tribal wars from which the European pirates claimed to deliver the people were mere sham-fights; it was a great battle when half a dozen men were killed. It was on a peasantry in many respects superior to the serfs in large areas of Europe, that the slave-trade fell. Tribal life was broken up, and millions of detribalised Africans were let loose upon each other. The unceasing destruction of crops led to cannibalism; the captive women became concubines and degraded the status of the wife. Tribes had to supply slaves or be sold as slaves themselves. Violence and ferocity became the necessities for survival, and violence and ferocity survived. The stockades of grinning skulls, the human sacrifices, the selling of their own children as slaves, these horrors were the product of an intolerable pressure on the African peoples, which became fiercer through the centuries as the demands of industry increased and the methods of coercion were perfected.”

From a Pan-African perspective, this portion sticks out to me because it highlights how much the slave trade was just as much of a tragedy for West Africa and continental West Africans as it was for their enslaved contemporaries and their descendants. This is also interesting to me, given the usage of particular language and the way it squares with more contemporary descriptions and analyses of this period in history. In particular, the usage of the word “tribe” stands out as it is currently frowned upon in African studies, but is also utilized in discourse amongst African peoples describing themselves. Furthermore, the fact that this was written during World War 2, when Haiti was in the midst of a wave of Haitian nationalism following President Vincent’s time in office. Such a sentiment would likely lead to a utopian description of African history, particularly in regards to its relationship with Haitian history.

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This quote shows how historians brushed over revolts from enslaved people to push their own narrative of everything that happened. They purposefully chose to leave it out and portray enslaved Africans as passive. I feel like George Orwell put more focus on politics, on how the public was manipulated through propaganda, while CLR James connected it back to racism and colonialism.  I had to do some research on what Saxon words were, but he compares Latin/Greek and Saxon words to imply something larger. Saxon words are more specific and can give more detail, which would be helpful when writing about history accurately. The UN’s definition of genocide is destroying a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. The loss of the Native population showed how the higher civilization (Europeans) came as colonizers and committed genocide.

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1. Janna Touray

2. She/Her

3. Bronx NYC

4. What Noise Against the Cane

5. I visited Atlanta for the first time.

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In the first stanza of “Ma and the Snake,” ceremony shows up in everyday life through the mother’s actions. Bailey writes , “she planted pigeon peas, bird peppers, broad-leaf thyme and they came in thick and fragrant, nourished by my waxing heart and sea-blast.” This imagery makes the plants feel alive, almost like the child’s heart and the sea are part of the ritual. The superstition that “a pregnant woman’s hand could spring forth the richest crop” shows how planting becomes more than farming. It is seen as a symbol of fertility and tradition.

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Revision for CLR James, "The Black Jacobins" by Alberta Hogan

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Revision for CLR James, "The Black Jacobins" by Alberta Hogan

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In “The Property” C.L.R. James explored that “Human beings were packed in these ‘dens of putrefaction’ so that no European could stay in them for longer than a quarter of an hour without fainting.” This phrase immediately caught my attention as it emphasized the inhumane conditions Africans underwent during the middle voyage. Particularly, the phrase, “dens of putrefaction” evokes a feeling of disgust and shame. James used this language to suggest humans stayed in lairs filled with rot and filth, showcasing just how disgusting and morally corrupt Europeans were towards Africans. The statement that no European could step in those areas, implies that the inhabitants lived in horrific conditions. Through this language, James exposes his audience to the physical horrors of the slave trade. He believed that the extreme brutality of the system sowed seeds of destruction leading to death and despair. However, I trust that it created the opportunity for a slave revolt that changed the course of history.

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The way the colonists valued the lives of the enslaved people was truly something else. "Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty in the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver, and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare. Given the circumstances such things were (and are) inevitable. Nor did the system spare the slavers. Every year one-fifth of all who took part in the African trade died." The crew of these slave ships already had complete control over them. The slaves were naked, chained close together which limited movement, barely fed, conditions that made these quarters "dens of putrefaction," what could the colonists possibly even be afraid of? The slaves were already living in fear likely wondering when their bodies would give out in these horrid conditions, but the colonists still felt the need to apply even more fear. Killing a slave, then feeding the organs to other slaves; yet the colonists think that the slaves are non-human.

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C.L.R. James, "The Black Jacobins" Ch6&13 week 

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C.L.R. James, "The Black Jacobins" Ch6&13 week 

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"Fear of restoration of slavery was always the cause of the trouble. The British had no intention of abolishing savery, neither had the Spaniards.... All parties confused the ignorant Negroes by playing on their fears and accusing every other party - the French and Toussaint himself, of wishing to restore slavery... Now the machinations of British and Spaniards were teaching those who were learning to understand politics that nearly all whites in the colonies were the same, birds of prey feeding on the ignorance and inexperience of the great masses of the black labourers." (152)

James, C. L.R. “Chapter 6.” Essay. In The Black Jacobins Toussant L’ouveerture and the San Domingo Revolution, 151-152. Secker and Warburg, 1938.

James's use of literary devices, particularly through figurative language, is evident in this passage. The first is his use of repetition of "The British had no intention of abolishing savery, neither had the Spaniards." This repetition enhances how both colonial powers had no intention of freeing the slaves of San Domingo, only saying these things to deceive the slaves into doing what the powers wanted, and confusing them further about whom to trust. This is further emphasized with "playing on their fears" which depicts the manipulation the colonial powers have used. "The Machination of British and Spaniards were teaching them". This portion is an example of personification. He is giving the plots of the powers human attributes, such as teaching, as if these "machinations" can really teach political lessons. The final figurative language is a metaphor: "birds of prey feeding on the ignorance and inexperience of the great masses of the black labourers." James is comparing two unlike things, birds and colonial powers, by the way they exploit the vulnerable to sustain themselves.

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CLR James: The Black Jacobins; The Rise of Toussaint

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CLR James: The Black Jacobins; The Rise of Toussaint

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The chapter I focused on was chapter 6, the Rise of Toussaint, a chapter full of distrust and new alliances between revolutionists. The paragraph, "...Rigaud and Beauvais were trying to get him to co-operate with them, but Dieudonne distrusted them, said he did not want to obey any Mulatto, and entered into negotiations with the British. The British had made all arrangements to buy him over, but the millstone around their necks in this campaign was their reactionary policy. They could not even lie on a large scale: it was too dangerous, and their rich allies would have deserted them at once. They had to be so careful even about making arrangements with Dieudonne that he got suspicious and withdrew. Beauvais and Rigaud heard about Dieudonne's negotiations with the British and begged Toussaint to use his influence. With a single one of his dictated letters, Toussaint changed the whole situation." Dieudonne had a powerful army but was unsure on who to ally with since he didn't trust "Mulattos," people with African and European background. The British were trying to win over Dieudonne for their plan to restore slavery, but had to make sure to maintain the trust of the "rich" allies, the plantation owners. If the British told Dieudonne that they wanted to abolish slavery in order to convince him to join their side, the plantation owners wouldn't side with them. Toussaint's involvement which convinced Dieudonne to join the French side shows the influence he had during this time where loyalty was always shifting.

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“The Black Jacobins” pt. 2 Excerpt for Close Reading

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“The Black Jacobins” pt. 2 Excerpt for Close Reading

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For this week’s reading, we covered Chapter 6: “The Rise of Toussaint” and Chapter 13: “The War of Independence”. A piece of writing that stuck out to me went as follows (from page 161):

“Laveaux, it is obvious from Toussaint’s replies, wrote in a similar strain. Toussaint gracefully acknowledged his commander’s graciousness. ‘I do not know how to express my thanks for all the pleasant things that you have said to me, and how happy I am to have so good a father who loves me as much as you do. Be sure that your son is your sincere friend, that he will support you until death. My army thanks you for your kind regards, and charges me to assure you of its attachment and it's submission…. ‘I embrace you with all my heart and be sure that I share with you your difficulties and your cares.’”

Chapter 6 especially emphasizes the relationship between General Laveaux and Toussaint L’Ouverture, and particularly how the influence of Laveaux on L’Ouverture generated the revolutionary and militant spirit within the latter in such a way that made him as remarkable of a leader as he was. Part of the significance of this influence was due to the deep care and affection which was expressed between the two, nearly in a familial sense. Of important note, conveyed by this passage saying Laveaux “wrote in a similar strain” to L’Ouverture, was that this endearment was something communicated mutually and crucially by both men. L’Ouverture indicated how he viewed Laveaux as a father figure to the point where he adopted Laveaux’s own troubles in conflict and the matters in which he was passionate about. This adoption would later feed into the mentality and fervor in which L’Ouverture acted behind, and develop him into such a skilled and impactful revolutionary leader.

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The rise of TOUSSAINT

"Can it be possible, my dear friend, that at the very moment when France triumphs over all the royalists and recognises us for her children by her beneficent decree of the g Thermidor, accords us all our rights for which we are fighting, that you should let yourself be deceived by our ancient tyrants who are only using one-half of our unhappy brothers in order to load the other with chains. For a time the Spaniards had blinded my eyes, but I did not take long to recognise their rascality. I abandoned them and have beaten them well. I returned to my country which received me with open arms and has recompensed my services.

I beg of you, my dear brother, to follow my example. If special reasons prevent you from having confidence in Generals Rigaud and Beauvais, Governor Laveaux who is a good father to all of us and in whom our mother-country has placed its confidence, should at least deserve yours. I hope that you will not refuse me, who am a black as you, and, I assure you, wish nothing more than to see you happy, you and all our brothers. As far as I am concerned I believe that our only hope for this is in serving the French Republic. It is under its flag that we are truly free and equal. That is how I see it, my dear friend, and I do not believe that I am making a mistake.“

"If it is possible that the English have succeeded in deceiving you, believe me, my dear brother, abandon them.

Unite yourself with honest republicans, and all together let us chase these royalists from our country. They are rascals who wish to burden us again with those shameful chains that we have had so much trouble to break." He begged for unity. "Remember, my dear friend, that the French Republic is one and indivisible and it is that which gives it its strength and has made it victorious over all its enemies."

The letter from TOUSSAINT shows us the reader who knows how everything ends that TOUSSAINT was sincere in his belief that France stood for liberty and freedom for all people even the formerly enslaved. He admired this about France and used his own influence to ensure that France won against its competitors, Spain and England. We as observers know that in the future France tried to enslave those who fought for France in exchange for their freedom. But as we read previously in the chapter Toussaint was a great military leader who lived with the men charged at the head of them and shared all trials and dangers with those he commanded, therefore he could not sit idly by and allow France to go against his ideas. With our protest as with his style of command, he too, would become enslaved with his men which is why his men trusted him. While TOUSSAINT misplaced his trust in France, his men did not misplace their trust in him, and he fought against France once it betrayed itself and tried to reinstate slavery on experienced soldiers.

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For this week’s close reading, I chose this paragraph from chapter 6, “His presence had that electrifying effect characteristic of great men of action. ‘I put before them the position of the enemy and the absolute necessity of driving him off. The brave republicans, Moïse, J. B. Paparet, Dessalines and Noel answered in the name of all the chiefs that they would brave any sort of danger, that they would go anywhere and that they would follow me to the end.’ The ranks, although exhausted, responded in the same way and marched against musket and cannon shot ‘without drawing a single weapon, guns in bandoliers’.... But he was self-contained, impenetrable and stern, with the habit and manner of the born aristocrat.”  CLR James uses hyperbole to emphasize the influence Toussaint Louverture had on others. His men were said to march ‘without drawing a single weapon’, which shows how devoted Toussaint’s men were to him. Toussaint is described as “impenetrable”, which shows that he went above and beyond as a leader to guide his army to victory.

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C.L.R. James, "The Black Jacobins." The Rise of Toussaint

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C.L.R. James, "The Black Jacobins." The Rise of Toussaint

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I focused on chapter 6, “The Rise of Toussaint and the following passage caught my attention. “If it is possible that the English have succeeded in deceiving you, believe me, my dear brother, abandon them, unite yourself to honest republicans, and all together let us chase these royalists from our country. They are rascals who wish to burden us again with those shameful chains that we have had so much trouble to break." He begged for unity” (150).

The excerpt is from a letter written by Toussaint Louverture, which sets a powerful example of Toussaint’s political and moral convictions as expressed throughout the chapter. From the beginning, James uses different literary devices to discuss Toussaint's role in the Haitian Revolution. Therefore, from the excerpt, we can see a form of personification. First, the statement, “the English have succeeded in deceiving you,” attributes to human action. For this part, the English are treated as a collective group with a focus on deceiving others for their personal gain. Secondly, the personal salutation, “My dear brother,” sets a persuasive tone suggesting that Toussaint was directing his message to a trusted ally. Thirdly, he characterizes the different forces at play in slavery. For example, he mentions, “… rascals who wish to burden us again with those shameful chains…” to dismiss the English royalists as morally corrupt and untrustworthy. In contrast, he believes the “Honest republicans” are better than the royalists, urging the ally to rely on them. Finally, these statements reveal Toussaint’s strategic ability to navigate the complex international politics which stood against slavery.

In addition, the phrase “shameful chains” is a powerful metaphor. It represents not only the physical bondage but the profound disgrace exhibited by the oppressing system. His reference to “break” those chains emphasizes the great sacrifice of the revolution. Toussaint argued that they should fight on without losing the will to achieve justice, claiming that they should not lose the freedom they have fought so hard to secure.

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Excerpt from "The Black Jacobins" Chapter 6 pages 151-152

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Excerpt from "The Black Jacobins" Chapter 6 pages 151-152

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"Fear of the restoration of slavery was always the cause of the trouble. The British had no intention of abolishing slavery, neither had the Spaniards. Permission to form black regiments was only given in 1795 and even then it was most positively forbidden that any who served with the British should be promised freedom:' But they could not keep that up, and the British got blacks to fight on their side by paying them. All parties confused the ignorant Negroes by playing on their fears and accusing every other party-the French and Toussaint himself, of wishing to restore slavery. The British and Spaniards could second their propaganda with offers of money and guns. Jean Francois told the blacks that only a King had authority to make them free and therefore they must fight for the Spanish King. Some planters hid the decree from their slaves. The blacks already distrusted the white planters. Now the machinations of British and Spaniards were teaching those who were learning to understand politics that nearly all whites in the colonies were the same, birds of prey feeding on the ignorance and inexperience of the great masses of the black labourers."

As a scholar of film and media studies, this passage in particular stood out to me because it speaks to the ways in which white people frequently use media to sew division between people of color and particularly Black people. This tactic is insidious because of its psychological implications. The "logic" of the colonizer and the enslaver does not have to be consistent or make any real sense it just has to generate a sense of existential fear that makes it harder for the subject to function and easier to control. I also think it stands out because it details how much economy is tied to propaganda particularly with the usage of bribes which preys on the desperation of the masses. It is also eerily resonant in its irony as the conditions of Haiti and its new social structure would start to resemble slavery as color based hierarchy was still entrenched.

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The phrase I selected is from the poetry "Chant for the Waters, Dirt, and Blade": "haunted by the land's beauty, its dark face ringing with the throat of a bell."This statement captures many of the emotional and political complexities that Bailey weaves throughout the novel. The speaker implies that beauty itself can carry pain, history, and memory since she is "haunted" by the land's beauty rather than just in admiration of it. The country is personified by the line "its dark face ringing with the throat of a bell," which gives it a voice, a face, and a sound that is both threatening and poetic. The bell symbolize regard or alarm, indicating a spiritual ceremony or a warning of danger. This dual meaning reflects the Caribbean's colonial and revolutionary past, in which gorgeous natural settings can conceal deep-seated suffering and struggle. In this line, Bailey turns the soil into a living witness, a presence that echoes the larger themes of Black survival, memory, and exile while vibrating with the sacred and the violent. This also shows how people can go vacation at a place and have a time of their life not knowing or suspecting the root of their trauma that is holding the country up.

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A powerful quote from the book The Black Jacobins is, "The slaves destroyed slavery. That is the plain truth."This line stands out because it fundamentally alters the narrative of independence. James focuses on the actions of the slaves themselves, particularly in the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), the only successful slave uprising in history that resulted in the creation of an independent Black nation, rather than presenting the abolition of slavery as a moral favor given by European powers.James challenges colonial beliefs and makes a political statement when he claims that "the slaves destroyed slavery". Independence was not given to us, we had to fight for it by sacrifice, political strategy, and disobedience. Additionally, it portrays the enslaved as historical players who influenced world politics rather than as helpless victims. One of the main themes of the book is the interplay of revolution, race, and power which is summed up in this quotation, as the importance of narrating history from the viewpoint of the oppressed.

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CLR James “The Black Jacobin’s” chapter 6 

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CLR James “The Black Jacobin’s” chapter 6 

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In Chapter 6 of The Black Jacobins, CLR James has understanding his leadership and the broader Haitian Revolution. The title of the chapter, "The General in His Labyrinth," references Toussaint's struggle to navigate complex political and military landscapes, while also reflecting on his own inner turmoil. He was able to unite formerly enslaved people and inspire them to fight with discipline and determination. James notes that Toussaint's strategic prowess in battles was strange. “Toussaint’s genius lay in his ability to make himself the symbol of the revolution, to give to it a unity and a coherence which it could never have achieved without him.” This quote reflects the extent to which Toussaint's leadership was not just military but also symbolic. “The revolution was not made by a man. It was made by the people, and the revolution was the people’s revolution.” James emphasizes the collective nature of the Haitian Revolution.

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A Small Place

1.        Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is the basis for the film Life and Debt (2001) by filmmaker Stephanie Black which critiques the role of the IMF and the World Bank on Caribbean economics and politics. How do you see debt, both material and emotional, playing a role in Jamaica Kincaid’s book considering the political climate in 1988?

2.        How and why did Jamaica Kincaid come to use this pen name?

3.        What role did the local library play for Jamaica Kincaid as a young girl in Antigua. How does this differ from an institution like the Mill Reef Club?

4.        Provide examples of green or eco-tourism. Is it possible for the tourist economy in the Caribbean to not be extractive?

5.        Kincaid describes the economic influence of Lebanese landlords and Syrians in Antigua. How does this merchant history from the Middle East impact the African Caribbean experience today across many islands?

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CLR James “The Black Jacobin’s” chapter 6

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CLR James “The Black Jacobin’s” chapter 6

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In Chapter 6 of The Black Jacobins, CLR James has an understanding of his leadership and the broader Haitian Revolution. The title of the chapter, "The General in His Labyrinth," references Toussaint's struggle to navigate complex political and military landscapes, while also reflecting on his own inner turmoil. He was able to unite formerly enslaved people and inspire them to fight with discipline and determination. James notes that Toussaint's strategic prowess in battles was strange. “Toussaint’s genius lay in his ability to make himself the symbol of the revolution, to give to it a unity and a coherence which it could never have achieved without him.” This quote reflects the extent to which Toussaint's leadership was not just military but also symbolic. “The revolution was not made by a man. It was made by the people, and the revolution was the people’s revolution.” James emphasizes the collective nature of the Haitian Revolution.

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How do they afford such a car? And do they live in a luxurious house to match such a car? Well, no. You will be surprised, then, to see that most likely the person driving this brand-new car filled with the wrong gas lives in a house that, in comparison, is far beneath the status of the car; and if you were to ask why you would be told that the banks are encouraged by the government to make loans available for cars, but loans for houses not so easily available; and if you ask again why, you will be told that the two main car dealerships in Antigua are owned in part or outright by ministers in government. Oh, but you are on holiday and the sight of these brand-new cars driven by people who may or may not have really passed their driving test (there was once a scandal about driving licences for sale) would not really stir up these thoughts in you.”

This passage from the first of four essays about Antigua, focuses on the POV of a tourist. I find it Interesting that the voice of the narrator is both upset and rigorously analytical to the point where the narrator reads the mind of the tourist and goes deep into the history and politics of Antigua. Jamaica Kincaid uses this style to shed light on the problems that tourism and tourist mindset brings. The problem of inequality and inability of the most of the people in Abused or formally abused Countries to escape the problems caused by the current system that you and they feel but you can leave quarterly and temporary escape. The mindset that what is happening in front of you has nothing to do with you and therefore you shouldn’t ruin the vibe with your observations and questions. This passage shows that tourists can see the signs of problems in the world ignore them and expect to be made to feel welcome. This style of critique highlights the discomfort and absurdity of the situation as a whole.

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The following excerpt from Jamaica Kincaid’s A small place caught my attention. "The road on which you are travelling is a very bad road, very much in need of repair. You are feeling wonderful, so you say, 'Oh, what a marvelous change these bad roads are from the splendid highways I am used to in North America.' (Or, worse, Europe.) Your driver is reckless; he is a dangerous man who drives in the middle of the road when he thinks no other cars are coming ...in the opposite direction, passes other cars on blind curves that run uphill, drives at sixty miles an hour on narrow, curving roads when the road sign, a rusting, beat-up thing left over from colonial days, says 40 MPH. This might frighten you (you are on your holiday; you are a tourist) ; this might excite you (you are on your holiday; you are a tourist), though if you are from New York and take taxis you are used to this style of driving: most of the taxi drivers in New York are from places in the world like this.”

The above passage is from the first essay in the book. From the beginning, Kincaid uses powerful visual details to contrast the tourist’s idealized vision with the local reality. For instance, Kincaid mentions, “a very bad road, very much in need of repair” which immediately establishes an image of a neglected road. It serves as a metaphor for the neglected nation. She also says, “the road side, a rusting, beat-up thing,” to visually summarize how Antigua is currently in a state of dysfunctionality. The book argues that the country is in disarray because of colonial neglect. In addition, Kincaid personifies the road sign, describing it as a sentient relic that bears the scars of colonial rule. It is a physical symbol of a past that still lingers today. Repetition, is also seen, when she continuously repeats the phrase, “You are on your holiday; You are a tourist.” The device highlights the author's sarcasm. She forces the reader to acknowledge that the tourist do not understand what is happening, reminding them of their moral and emotional limitations. Overall, the excerpt is a powerful piece as it explores how the country has faced inequalities and colonial decay over the years, yet outsiders seem oblivious to the situation. Kincaid forces the reader to confront these realities, instead of ignoring the problem.

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This passage intrigued me - "you make a leap from being that nice blob just sitting like a boob in your amniotic sac of the modern experience to being a person visiting heaps of death and ruin and feeling alive and inspired at the sight of it" - Kincaid uses metaphors to compare the tourist to being a fetus in the amniotic sac of the modern experience. The modern experience refers to the Western world they come from, which is much more convenient, and it is their experience in the Western world that shelters them from the truth, like how the amniotic sac would protect a fetus. The tourist views places of tragedy as tourist attractions instead of acknowledging the history of Antigua. There is irony in the fact that tourists feel alive at a place of death.

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From the first section, a paragraph that stood out to me was on pages 12-14 "...You see yourself, you see yourself...You must not wonder what exactly happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it. You must not wonder where your bath water went when you pulled out the stopper. You must not wonder what happened when you brushed your teeth. Oh, it might all end up in the water you are thinking of taking a swim in, the contents of your lavatory might, just might, graze gently against your ankle as you wade carefree in the water, for you see, in Antigua, there is no proper sewage-disposal system. But the Caribbean Sea is very big and the Atlantic Ocean is even bigger; it would amaze even you to know the number of black slaves this ocean has swallowed up. When you sit down to eat your delicious meal, it's better that you don't know that most of what you are eating came off a plane from Miami. And before it got on a plane in Miami, who knows where it came from? A good guess is that it came from a place like Antigua first, where it was grown dirt-cheap, went to Miami, and came back. There is a world of something in this, but I can't go into it right now."

Reading this reminded me of the history of colonization. The repeated use of "You see yourself" and "You must not wonder" helps bring up several things that many people aren't aware of, especially tourists who are visiting for the first time. The poor sewage system is a reflection of how the enslaved Africans were treated; they weren't even given basic needs. The mention of food going out of Antigua where it was "grown dirt-cheap" to Miami then back to Antigua relates to trade patterns during colonization. Food was exported for a low price which gave Antigua some money, but to import food back into Antigua, even if the food originally came from there, it costs a lot more than what Antigua received for exporting it in the first place. Lastly, the ocean is brought up again, similar to how it's brought up in "C.LR. Jame's The Black Jacobins" and "Desiree C. Bailey;s What Noise Against the Cane." The ocean is a symbol of the slave trade where "it would amaze even you to know the number of black slaves this ocean has swallowed up." Many enslaved Africans were thrown overboard or died on board the ships, making the ocean a symbol of all the torture and suffering these people went through during the slave trade, something that can't remain hidden.

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Jamaica Kincaid's, A Small place. Question 3

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Jamaica Kincaid's, A Small place. Question 3

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In Ms Kincaid's Book she discusses and the importance of the library to her and the significance it possesses. It's introduction began as she speaks of it being destroyed in the earthquake and never being rebuilt.The destruction that it caused is immortalized in a plaque that stood years after its destruction. The plaque itself also harkens to a begone time when she would create her own library from the books she took (or stole) that became part of her permanent library. As she continues to discuss the utter disarray it faced post earthquake, she likens it to the state of the youth in her town. The Library stands a s symbolism of what used to be of herself and the new youth. While doesn't explicitly state that the youth is in disarray due to the Library being moved from it's pristine location to Market St, I feel her description of the youth pageants and the general state of illiteracy of the newscaster directly to the lack of a functional library. Her youth is tied to the Library. In comparison, The Mill Reef club was a level of exclusivity that she could only attain as a servant and never as a member. It was never welcome or inviting to the Antigens as she can vividly remember the first time a black person was allowed to do things as trivial as eating a sandwich. While she showed no desire to be a part of the bourgeoisie, I felt a tiny air of jealousy that she wasn't one of the chosen few that was allowed access to the Club as participant, not Voyeur or servant.

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"And then there was another place, called the Mill Reef Club. It was built by some people from North America who wanted to live in Antigua and spend their holidays in Antigua but who seemed not to like Antiguans (black people) at all, for the Mill Reef Club declared itself completely private, and the only Antiguans (black people) allowed to go there were servants. People can recite the name of the first Antiguan (black person) to eat a sandwich at the clubhouse and the day on which it happened; people can recite the name of the first Antiguan (black person) to play golf on the golf course and the day on which the event took place. In those days, we Antiguans thought that the people at the Mill Reef Club had such bad manners, like pigs; they were behaving in a bad way, like pigs. There they were, strangers in someone else's home, and then they refused to talk to their hosts or have anything human, anything intimate, to do with them. I believe they gave scholarships to one or two bright people each year so they could go overseas and study; I believe they gave money to children's charities; these things must have made them seem to themselves very big and good, but to us there they were, pigs living in that sty (the Mill Reef Club). And what were these people from North America, these people from England, these people from Europe, with their bad behaviour, doing on this little island? For they so enjoyed behaving badly, as if there was pleasure immeasurable to be had from not acting like a human being"

This passage stands out to me because it speaks to both the abject cruelty of the white colonizer while also highlighting the psychological disconnect at play that allows for that cruelty. Antigua at this point is a majority Black country. For these people to go there and use it as a resort and segregate themselves from the general population already demonstrates a direct hierarchy. It then only then becomes all the more heinous when they pat themselves on the back for the so called "favors" that they do for the Black folks, gradually including them one by one in a structures that are designed to place them at the bottom of the hierarchy. I don't love Kincaid's use of the pig analogy as it is a further demonization of non-human animals that I find uncouth and unnecessary even if I understand agree with the general point that she is making here. I also think her line that questions whether they enjoyed behaving badly stands out to me because it speaks to an underlying sadism that pervades the dominant culture. To me israeli attitudes towards Palestinians amidst the ongoing genocide comes to mind.

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I will be analyzing a phrase that Jamaica Kincaid draws our attention to multiple times within her book A Small Place, “Repairs are Pending”. She speaks of this when saying that the library of Antigua that had been damaged in the earthquake of 1974 was not since repaired and has had the sign hanging on it stating that “Repairs are Pending” more than a decade later since the earthquake. Kinkaid states that this is the “unfulfilled promise of repair” of the library; this stood out to me because the library serves as a metaphor of the state of Antigua and “The Nation” itself and all of its unfulfilled promises of repair. No progress of the nation is ever materialized. I also found it to be important that the library was never repaired because this is another way in which Antiguans are oppressed and a reason for which they remain uninformed. The library is the place of which they would be able to gain knowledge and understanding of themselves and their history. On pages 52 and 53 Kinkaid details how the lack of knowledge and the effects of growing up and living in a “small place” affect the people of the small place; “The people of a small place cannot give an exact account, a complete account, of themselves. The people of a small place cannot give an exact account, a complete account of events…This cannot be held against them: an exact account, a complete account, of anything, anywhere, is not possible.” These circumstances are the direct result of colonialism and how colonialism disrupted and prevented the spread of knowledge and culture for native people, and how these effects have materialized into the current conditions of Antigua and the nation today.

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The Pagoda - Part One - Discussion Questions

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The Pagoda - Part One - Discussion Questions

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1. Patricia Powell’s novel The Pagoda places the reader in rural Jamaica and centers on a Chinese character named Mr. Lowe. Describe how the epistolary form opens his interior world to the reader?

2. When and why did the first Chinese laborers arrive in Jamaica? How was the institution of Chinese indentureship in the Caribbean different than chattel slavery?

3. Do you view you view The Pagoda as a trans novel or not? Considering that it was written in the late 1990s, discuss pronouns for the main character and how Lowe negotiates his sexual identity.

4. How do you define “passing” and “crossing” as regards the performances of gender? Lowe describes the “stench of puberty.” Discuss what shifts for the character at this age in Kwangtung.

5. The Pagoda’s title suggests the centrality of architecture and building for community and also archives. Explore the Jamaican Chinese magazine by the same name. What do you notice about how the community represents itself to itself?

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I personally would not consider this book a trans novel by modern standards. I can see how it may be viewed as such, being that Mr. Lowe is a transgender man. In the novel so far, Mr. Lowe explores his gender identity through certain experiences and trauma he dealt with. On page 8, it states “I am not your father like you think. It is a long story, full up of a lot of deception, a lot of disguises, but try to understand this was all so I could live. All so I could be free. Have a life. Maybe a letter is not the right thing. Maybe I should meet up with you in person and explain face-to-face, so you can see for yourself. I am not what you think”. Here, shows how he is trying to give his daughter the truth of who he “really is”. But he struggles and is afraid of what the outcome would be. The novel shows pronouns in a way displays a forced “double-life. Modern day, it can be considered somewhat easier to express identity when compared to the time this novel was written. In his situation, he got caught up in marriage and even having a daughter and this can definitely be a very difficult situation.

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From Chapter 1, "...The shop had been for her, if she wanted it, for him, if he wanted it, and the Chinese who had escaped the sugar estates with broken backs from working twenty a hours a day for close to nothing. They came with hands twisted and chewed from water pumps, scarred by deep grooves left over from cane leaves that cut like knives. they came with spit bubbling with blood, asthmatic and tubercular chests from the dust. they came without flesh, with holes in the skin, half starved from inferior food, lashed and mutilated by overseers under the muscle of plantation owners..." Based on the timeline of this book, slavery in Africa has been abolished for some time already, but its brutality still reached places as far as China and India. "Broken backs" from long hours of and basically no pay, "lashed and mutilated" and "holes in the skin" from the harsh physical environments of their work, sounds exactly like slavery. Starved and infected lungs from dust, all under the watch of plantation owners, we see the same disregard for life that the enslaved Africans went through. Powell shows how even after slavery ended in Africa, that didn't stop the colonists from finding another group of people to exploit and deem as their property.

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For this week's close reading, I chose this passage, "The razor heat, egged on by hot winds, had broken in, sucking air from the rooms, swelling locks on the doors, blistering the cream-colored paint on the walls. But now, in that hour right before dawn, temperatures had eased, the house had cooled down, and a light breeze had stolen in, gently billowing up comers of the bedspread and turning over loose pieces of paper.". The author uses metaphor to describe the wind as something sharp and invasive, that can hurt something greatly. I think Powell was trying to compare the wind to Lowe's internal struggles, since Lowe's past (the razor heat) was starting to "blister" his emotional state. However, Powell mentions the slight breeze coming in, which shows a shift in Lowe's mind.

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The Pagoda"s first four chapters spoke about identity, race and gender. We're introduced to Mr.Lowe who lives in life in a disguse. He is a shopkeeper and he has a complicated past. The store represented his identity which made it very hard for him. The fire brought trauma from his past life. Ms.Sylive and Mr.Lowe have a very difficult relaltionship. Its more as if the marriage was arranged since there isn't really much love in there. “It was as if she had been terribly burned. As if the light of the fire that once charged her had run its course and now, years later, had left her extinguished. But wasn’t that the nature of fire, he decided, once its fuel was done—to leave just the exhausted frame?” He does feel very different from others and he doesn't feel belonged.

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"One day Lowe turned thirteen and saw that the aromatic petals of his childhood had been replaced with thin wisps of hair that lodged themselves underneath his arms and between his legs. His voice, which had once murmured and trickled like a stream, had erupted into a noise so sharp and brutal he couldn't recognize it. Was that his nose, round and smashed like a lump on his face, and were those unshapely logs shooting out from underneath him his legs? And why had people taken to staring at him so, the young girls hiding their smiles behind their hands? And there was his skin rising and rising each time the men's eyes moved on him. He saw that his father had grown more gaunt, more silent and sullen and hostile, more abstract. He felt for the first time the mother's glare searching the arches of his limbs and the cut of his clothes, which mimicked his father's, her glare on his disheveled hair. One day Lowe turned thirteen and realized that over the years he had acquired no playmates at all, his only companion had been his father, and now all of a sudden his body had changed and his father had' disappeared neatly into himself and there was no one now, nothing at all but his head full of stories, his head full of dreams."

This passage stands out to me because, on the face of it, it would appear to be merely a basic depiction of the male puberty experience. Still, upon closer inspection, this is the birth of what is likely Lowe's dysphoria. To me, this is apparent via the description of other people's reactions to the changes, namely his parents'. It is also apparent, given the usage of repetition in repeating Lowe's age at the time, with the description sectioned off into 3: the physical, the sociological, and the psychological changes in Lowe's life.

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Reading “The Pagoda” was eye-opening. It unveiled the rarely explored stories of Chinese immigrants in colonial Jamaica. It sheds light on their struggles and how someone like Mr. Lowe a Chinese woman had to disguise herself as a man in order to survive. I chose the following passage. “A cry escaped his lips. He crumpled the sheet and it sat tortured in his hand. He looked out into the lamplit silence, willing his racing heart to quieten, willing his shaking and wet hands to be still, the roar in his head to cease.”

Powell uses personification frequently. For instance, the statement, “he crumpled the sheet and it sat tortured’, Powell uses the crumbled sheet as a tangible symbol of Lowe’s pain and shattered confusion. She uses the phrase, “Lamplit silence” as another subtle form of personification. By describing the environment as silent and “lamplit,” Powell wants the reader to visualize the setting as isolated, allowing the character to feel profound emotions. She also uses repetition to emphasize her point. Here, the phrase, “willing” emphasizes Lowe’s lack of control and effort to calm himself. In addition, the “racing heart” and “roar in his head” are powerful metaphors that convey Lowe’s severe anxiety and panic. Particularly, “roar” suggests the mental noise that disturbed Lowe, because he knew that his past and secrets were catching up, making it hard for him to maintain the disguise as a man.

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For the 2nd half of The Pagoda, I chose this paragraph - "As if in preparation for the downpour that was later to flood the streets and uproot thin, brittle trees and dismantle the mud-and-waddle houses crouched on the hillside and sail away with small, unsuspecting animals, the days had not grown dusky, as only a jagged and hazy light cracked through the clouds." Powell uses metaphor to compare the approaching rainstorm to the emotional torment Lowe is facing. The thin brittle walls refer to Lowe's emotions, and they are about to be uprooted since the identity he built was fragile, just like the mud and waddle houses. The jagged and hazy light would be some moments of clarity in his unsettled emotional state.

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"But each time Lowe watched Miss Sylvie's invitation curling up into flames, he worried. For there was Liz going on three and he didn't know whom to ask about a decent school, just in case the villagers took it to mean their government schools and one-room classes weren't good enough. There was Liz going on three, with no real mother, just a woman who had given birth and was now playing at being a man, on a West Indian island full up of brown people swiftly growing more and more infuriated with their economic status and the snail's pace at which change seemed to be approaching and what they considered to be the opportunities the government was doling out to his Chinese people. There was Liz, going on three, with no real family, no future, no guidance, no homeland, no country, no people, nothing." Each time Lowe got rid of an invitation from Miss Sylvie to come back, this only made Lowe more stressed, since by this time he was aware that Sylvie knew about his true identity all along. Lowe is regretting, or I guess in the quote's context, she, how she was and is as a mother to Liz. The repeated mention of "going on three," shows how important this age is to her, yet Liz doesn't really have the proper support. Lowe states how she is living as a man to thrive, causing Liz to have no real family, no proper guidance, essentially nothing at all. In addition, Lowe has a hard time deciding where Liz would fit in given their current [economic] status and the little change occurring in their society.

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"The old man calls the bartender for another round. For two, he cries. There is froth foaming at the corners of his mouth, with the remaining twelve teeth. He is an old man now, decrepit, with the sharp, thin blades of his shoulders sticking out. The voice is still the same. Faltering voice outline magnanimous expedition by sea. She smells the glue on him, the wood shavings in his shirt, the varnish on his skin. There is the smell of ink. The girl refuses to meet eyes of the bartender." I chose this line because I noticed it relies heavily on sensory imagery. Each of these pieces can help depict more and more information. The froth foaming at the corner of his mouth shows a form of sickness and paints an image that may be disgust. The smell of glue, wood shavings, and varnish on skin shows that this is a man of the working class and he may identity with his craftsmanship. The repetition of harsh descriptions such as froth foaming, sharp thin blades, smells glue helps paint the picture of ruggedness.

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"He didn't feel as if he had agency, as if he had voice. For who is to say she wouldn't fold up her fantasies into him and turn him further into something he wasn't, as his father had done and then Cecil? And who is to say she wouldn't abandon him once her mission was accomplished. Who is to say! And so Lowe just lay there prostrate, so overwhelmed by his fear, allowing Miss Sylvie to love him, those nights after Cecil had come, and left again, those nights after Whitley had gone, those nights after Liz had gone to sleep, and later, after she had eloped with the carpenter and escaped the convent school, which only as an exception admitted the children of the Chinese and those of the porcelain alabasters, those nights after the store had prospered and he had expanded and met Kywing, those nights when it was just the two of them, just the two of them and the dark and impenetrable night. And for all those years, Lowe had never wanted to touch her in that way, never wanted to love her in that way, never wanted to stroke the lines on her forehead or the ones by the corners of her eyes and lips. For who is to say what he would have raised up in her! He had never wanted to touch the mole on her back or the one on the right side of her neck, never wanted to inspect the insides of her legs or thighs, never wanted to fondle her nipple, never wanted to possess her body or snatch her from the claws of that woman, never wanted to kiss her parted lips or the smooth column of throat, never wanted to smell her perfumed skin or to taste her sea-salt silkiness, never wanted to travel inside her, never wanted to crawl or push, never wanted, never wanted till that moment. For at that moment, he was a child not so afraid of death, and of darkness and of solitude. At that moment, he was a child full of innocence, ebullient with faith."

The description of Lowe's complicated attraction and what can be described as a mixture of fear and excitement is enticing. There is a manner in which his internal world is portrayed that I find very dynamic, particularly when detailing his lack of agency and the way in which he basically objectifies himself. I think that repetition does a lot here to illustrate this. The refrain "who's to say" is almost meta in its address to the reader, as it forces us to question and sit with the complexities of the relationship unfolding here alongside Lowe's response. Furthermore, the maternal imagery invoked here makes the passage all the more disturbing.

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For the second close reading I chose the passage from page 41. “Further in the future, he saw this club, this benevolent society writing its own newspaper, reporting on events affecting Chinese both here and abroad. There would even be an obituary section and another announcing weddings and births, and still another reporting on those murdered in cold blood by the warmongering people, on those whose shops they looted and burned down, on those opening up new businesses. He would call it… And he thought for some time, until he arrived at the tide of one of his father’s short stories. The Pagoda.” This passage shows Lowe’s hopeful vision for the Chinese community.

For example, through the use of Juxtaposition, Powell writes how Lowe has plans for this newspaper to capture the “obituary section” and still announce “weddings and births.” The difference the between the two emphasizes that the newspaper has only one purpose and that is to document the Chinese community’s existence. It will capture the full cycle of life, and that includes birth, growth, life, and even death. However, Powell displays the threat facing such an existence using a powerful metaphor and imagery. In particular, in the statement “those murdered in cold blood by the warmongering people,” the term warmongering people functions as a metaphor for the hostile individuals. Powell, explores the idea that these anti-Chinese people commit arson and murder against Lowe’s community, further perpetuating violence stemming from racism and fear of cultural difference. In addition, “shops they looted and burned down” creates a visual imagery of the violence and destruction. It differs with Lowe’s dream of people, “opening up new businesses” highlighting the continuous struggle between ruin and creation.

Moreover, “the title of one of his father’s short stories. The Pagoda” acts as an allusion of Lowe’s past and his familial heritage giving the name a much deeper meaning.  By naming the club, “The Pagoda” Lowe connects his future dream to his roots building that cultural legacy. Lastly,  this name functions as the central symbolism, representing cultural preservation, community, resilience, and identity in a world where there is no togetherness.

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‘"Is that what you want, then, for me to look like that old whore, that nasty whore? You not interested in the meetinghouse, you not interested in me, what I want, you just interested in you. What you want!" His voice sounded…’

From this excerpt we see one of the reasons why the main character always refers to himself as he, from a very young age the father of the main character instilled in her ideas of how to act and her years of observation as she played her role as a Man she developed a deep disdain for herself and women in general, but also and deep admiration for women. Throughout the book, the main character voices herself to be a man because even in her own thoughts, she feels she’s unworthy of being a woman and simultaneously distances herself from who she would be if she was a woman.

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Young and Gay: Jamaica's Gully Queens (Full Length)

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Taken from the Kingston section in the introduction, "Man, we're going into the heart of the ghetto! exclaimed the driver of my cab as we sped down Olympic Way to Bay Farm Road toward the Waterhouse district of West Kingston where King Tubby's studio had been located. The name "waterhouse" is a colloquialism that is not always printed on maps; the name refers to an area of Kingston II just south of Sandy Gully, bounded by the neighborhoods of Tower hill on the east, Nanse Pen on the west, Balmagie on the north, and Spanish Town Road on the south. The area struck me as somewhat of a tropical war zone: its crumbling buildings, debris-strewn lots, and treacherously potholed streets would be better traversed by a military jeep than a conventional automobile. The area is in fact a literal war zone, one epicenter of a decades-long struggle between Jamaica's two dominant political parties, the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and the People's National Party (PNP). The formerly left-leaning PNP seemed dominant in Waterhouse, judging from all the graffiti proclaiming socialism and warning visitors that they were now entering "Moscow." I was lucky to get a cab at all, as many licensed cabbies refused to drive into the area. My cab driver pointed to two indentations above each of his ears, proud of the fact that he had survived a direct gunshot wound to the temple while being robbed in this very area."

This paragraph describes Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, as the heart of the ghetto, and a place of poverty and ongoing violence. We see this same description shown to us visually in episode 1 of Get Millie Black which happens to take place in Kingston. There are certain groups of people such as the ones at local bars who've established their own "gang," and also those who contribute to the violence there, such as the group of men who attacked Hibiscus and members from the queer community. The society of Kingston is depicted as divided, where queer people are forced to live in the Gully for safety, a place that suffers from poverty and is essentially an abandoned sewage channel. The Waterhouse described in this paragraph of Dub is like the Gully in Get Millie Black, an area shaped by violence, threats, and neglect.

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In part two of the Pagoda, we continue to learn more about Mr.Lowes life and about his past life in china. He tends to get more into depth with what he had experience in china and his journey to Jamaica. He does talk about his relationship with his late wife and other people in the community. Lots of tension grows in Mr.Lowes life when it comes to gender roles. His true identity is also reveled and he feels like it’s more difficult for him to be accepted in his community.

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For this week, I was intrigued by this paragraph from chapter 1 - “What really gave me the idea that we needed to produce some local recording [was that] at about 1960 the rhythm & blues dried up and in came the rock & roll, but rock & roll wasn’t so popular in Jamaica. It never went over. So I figured, more or less, then we’d have to get in the studio and get with that heavy dance beat, you know. So that’s how we really thought of doing it. This turn to the local was a significant cultural landmark; as Davis and Simon point out, Jamaica, like other formerly colonized cultures, was then in the grip of a cultural mindset that privileged all things foreign (especially British and American); producers only turned to local musicians as a last resort. In the broad view, however, Jamaican music has often functioned—at least partially—as the most provocative Caribbean commentary on mainland African American popular music. From this period on, Jamaican and African American music would develop in and out of stylistic phase with each other until—with the post-1980s symbiosis of Jamaican ragga and American hip-hop music—the musical influences became almost completely complementary.” - The author refers to rhythm and blues as dried up to show this musical transition between genres. However, even though rock n roll came in, it did not become popular in Jamaica, because Jamaicans has an emotional attachment to the blues. The author describes Jamaica as being in the grip of a cultural mindset to show how colonialism still influenced their way of thinking. He describes Jamaican music as significant cultural landmark, which shows that the music was not just for enjoyment, that it was also a turning point for jamaican culture.

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In chapter one, we get inttroduced to Dub and Veal who are both a musical form and cultural practice that he discovered around the 1960’s and 1970’s. In chapter two he then explains the historical roots and social roots of reagee and how it connects to Jamaicas history. In chapter rbree he does continue to explain his inspiration for this music and he introduces the instruments that he does use behind the creativity of Dub. Chapter four is all about the sounds and the techniques that he does tend to use to create music. Chapter five is based on the political sounds and how the musics structure connected to Jamaica and Dub is truly based on political statements. Finally choager six talks about how dub spread across Jamaica and he is an inspiration to the people in Jamaica since he does give the opportunity for reggae to be spreaded worldwide.

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“…On a later visit, however, I was met outside by a young boy returning home from school, who lived in the house with his family. "You a tourist!" he asked me as I raised my camera to take a photo of the famous carved door that still stands at the studio's entrance. "Not exactly," I told him, "I'm writing a book about King Tubby." "He died" was the boy's simple reply.

In a way, that simple sentence became a recurrent theme during my trips to Kingston. The challenges and occasional surreality of researching a music that had reached its social, commercial, and stylistic apogee more than two decades earlier was compounded by the fact that many of its most important practitioners had since perished in the violent climate of King-ston. I had the impression that I was sometimes researching in a ghost town, despite the profusion of life - including musical life— at every turn.

Ironically, this impression was reinforced by the reverberating sound of the dub music I listened to following my daily travels around the city.” I find this to be a reminder that the music of Jamaica came from an era when a persons art was deeply political and influenced by political violence. Creating music was rebellion revolutionary and could get you killed. It had a message and meaning that would voice the truth of problems that people suffered. And it could and would be cracked down on violently. It makes me wonder if the music that was more dancehall was made by artists who had revolutionary ideas but were concerned for the safety of themselves and their families so they instead tried to mold their music to just make money and avoid violent intervention into their lives.

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Chapter 4 ‘Just Like a Volcano in Yuh Head”

“In dub, silence and sound are placed in dialogue. What was once background becomes foreground, and what was once the center disappears. The mix is no longer a container for a song; it becomes a landscape of echo, space, and eruption.”

In chapter 4 of Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, Michael Veal states, “In dub, silence and sound are placed in dialogue. What was once background becomes foreground, and what was once the center disappears. The mix is no longer a container for a song; it becomes a landscape of echo, space, and eruption.” Veal encapsulates how dub transforms music making it a fluid, spatial experience. Veal describes silence and sound as being “in dialogue”. He states that silence or absence of sound in dub is not emptiness but instead a creative power. The gaps and echoes define meaning. When  Veal writes that “the background becomes foreground,” he identifies the way dub engineers like King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry have revolutionarily reversed musical hierarchies, by sending bass and rhythm to the front while fading the singer’s voice into echos and/or reverb. This reversal demonstrates a broader cultural act of resistance where dub challenges and undermines the structure of Western pop that place the emphasis on the individual. Instead, dub celebrates collective or shared rhythm and the art of experimentation. Lastly, Veal’s description of the mix as a “landscape of echo, space, and eruption” speaks to and reminds us of the geography of the Caribbean as well as the creativity of postcolonial Jamaica. Veal shows that dub is more than a remixing technique through this metaphor, Dub is a revolutionary reinvention of sound itself as an expressive and spatial art form.

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"This centrality can be felt in the comments of legendary drummer Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace: “The people respect you in Jamaica when you can put forty and fifty bag a ganja on a plane! We don’t call that drugs. That is ganja business…. We do those things like we are revolutionary. We put forty bag on a plane and feel good…. We send those so people in America could smoke the good ganja, not just for money alone.”"

Wallace recontextualizes what "drug trafficking" is to be something other than that. Ganja isn't seen as criminal to Rastafarians. It is greater than something illicit. It's medicinal, spiritual, and holds cultural significance. It's not just destructive or recreational. By calling it "Ganja Business", he restructures it from drug trafficking to an economic context, rather than being a part of a criminal enterprise. "We send those so people in America could smoke the good ganja, not just for money alone." This is tied to a sense of generosity towards the people abroad, so that they can have a quality product from Jamaica.

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For this week’s book “DUB” I was captivated by the following passage. “During the era of slavery from the mid-1600s to 1838, colonial planters also encouraged their subjects to form “slave orchestras” for the masters’ entertainment during various slave and Christian holidays. Blending African- and- European- derived musical traits, these orchestras represented Jamaica’s first documented indigenous musical forms.” p.27. This passage is not only historically rich but very thought-provoking. From the opening clause, Veal introduces his audience to the era of slavery, where the word, “encouraged” is very ironical. While it sounds generous that the colonials allowed their slaves to sing, this specific phrasing means they were coerced. The iron is that Jamaican musical creativity emerged under conditions of domination. Also, “slave orchestras” symbolize both oppression and resilience. Why? Despite producing music under threats, they transformed the European musical styles into songs that carried rhythm, and had a lot of African expression. Veal’s description of mixing European musical traits with African rhythm marks the beginning of the Jamaican musical identity. In addition, the idea of creating something ‘indigenous’ or Jamaican while still under colonial rule poses a strong contradiction. It means that even without freedom, these enslaved individuals found meaning in music, making it their own. As such, it acts as a metaphor, showcasing how this idea gave birth to the current Jamaican music history, the world enjoys. Overall, the passage established historical continuity. Veal wants his audience to understand that even though Jamaican music began as coerced performance, it evolved into a rich and powerful tradition of Jamaican cultural identity.

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From the section, Lyrical Violence, in chapter 3 Murderation, "Everybody wants to be somebody, Ask the youth dem whey dem want, do you want to be a lawyer, he says no, do you want to be doctor, he says no, do you want a job, he says no, so den what do you want, gi mi one gun, two gun, three gun please...The M1, mack 10, the bwoy dem naw cease, but the tek 9 bring dem to dem to knees, I walk with mi gun, talk with mi gun, bathe with mi gun, dress with mi gun...and if a bwoy try a ting, him life ago dun, so give 1 gun, 2 gun, 3 gun please."

These words are the lyrics to the song, "Gun Disease" by Cutty Ranks, an example of how violence was incorporated into dancehall lyrics. Songs like these weren't promoting violence, they were more of warning about the current economic status in Kingston, Jamaica. Relating to the poverty that the youth face, it describes how the youth may resort to violence for economic survival. We usually associate the word "gun" with violence, but in this case it is used to represent the difficulties of survival, and the limited options the youth have due to their living conditions.

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In chapters 1-2, Niaah introduces us to Dancehall as a cultural world that blends with music, space, identity, and social politics. In chapter 1, Niaah explains how dancehall is a cultural system in Jamaica and that it's lived in an enviomrent that has all sorts of different types of fashion, dance, preformance, and social interaction. In chapter 2, she talks about representation. Niaah focuses on how the people communicate with politics and their opinions by their prefomances. Men preform hypermasculinity and women present themselves as spokespeople. In chapter 3, Niaah shifts into rituals and space. Dancehall is often used in rituals. She breaks down the sound systems, street dances, and organizations that are used while having the dancehall preformances.

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“Indeed, where Rasta and various Black Nationalisms and Negritudes tended to segregate women into a phallocentric ghetto - voices, identities and bodies covered in some kind of revolutionary propriety - the ragga moment is one which is dominated by explicit representations of the sexuality of black women… . But not only do women function in the symbolic order of raggamuffin sound, they are very present in the culture itself. They consume more records than the men do, and they control the dance floor. Most deejays today - acknowledging the market - orient their lyrics toward these women. From a Western liberal-feminist perspective these lyrics, because they are boldly heterosexual and disdainful of bourgeois sentimentality, seem very sexist and objectifying of women. However, down there in the mire of postcolonial reality, where power is a rare but prized commodity, these women find both affirmation and power in the fear that their sexuality creates in the men. It allows them the freedom and security to navigate in and around a world of brutality, violence and economic deprivation.” It interesting that the revolutionary movements and music of earlier generations avoided the sexuality of women( in general) but the new generation that is not as revolutionary has been created music centered on the importance and power of black woman sexuality. It has become empowering for women even if the lyrics often either sound like derogatory or objectifying. I wonder if the unbalanced nature of male and female leaders this revolutionary movement has anything to do with the current music cultural portrayals of women in the music.

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For this week’s reading, I was drawn to chapter 1 of the Dancehall Reader. A decision that proved fruitful for understanding the complex historical origins of popular Jamaican music. The passage I focused on states, “It is tempting and partly justified to see the more lavish of these entertainments as descendants of the type reported by Stewart and others during the period immediately after slavery. Stewart had observed that the “creole negroes” showed a “decided preference for European Music” as against the “rude” music of the enslaved people. Writing in 1823, he reported that the instruments of Europe, “Its tunes, its dances are now pretty generally adopted, by the young creoles, who indeed sedulously copy their masters and mistresses in everything. A sort of subscription balls are set on foot, and parties of both sexes assemble and dance country dances to the music of a violin, tambarines, etc.”

The opening phrase focused on highlighting the cultural tensions present in post-slavery Jamaica. By quoting Stewart, an observer from 1823, the passage foregrounds how music became a site where racial hierarchy and social aspiration were in play. Stewart’s language personifies “European Music,” attributing it to superiority and refinement. The phrase also serves as a symbol of social aspiration and power. He continues to label the music of the formerly enslaved people as “rude”. Moreover, the phrase, “creole negroes” can be read metaphorically, as Stewart preferred European music over their music. He argued that they imitated European dances, which served as symbols of social mobility. According to him, they created music that made them superior to what they were, former enslaved people. Unfortunately, Stewart’s word choice exposes his discrimination, reflecting just how much the colonial period used classism and power to differentiate people. Ultimately, the passage not only documents musical preference but also illustrates the complex negotiations of identity, power, and belonging that shaped what dancehall is today.

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The Harder They Come - Discussion Questions

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The Harder They Come - Discussion Questions

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1.     How does the film depict Ivan’s transformation from an aspiring singer to a rude boy? Identify one specific scene where your sympathy for him shifts, and explain what cinematic choices (music, framing, pacing) shape that shift.

2.     Choose one song featured in the film and analyze how it deepens the meaning of the scene it accompanies. How does the soundtrack function not just as background music but as social commentary on Jamaica in the 1970s?

3.     The film portrays Ivan becoming a folk hero through media circulation. How does the movie portray the relationship between violence and celebrity? What visual cues or editing choices highlight the spectacle of his rise?

4.     Pick a specific moment when the camera lingers on Kingston’s streets, markets, or communities. How does this sequence reveal the social, economic, or political realities shaping the characters’ lives? Why couldn’t the story be told the same way without these details?

5.     Consider the scenes involving the church and the pastor. How does the film critique institutional authority through these interactions? Point to a moment when the pastor’s behavior or dialogue reveals larger systemic power dynamics at play.

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3. I find the final scene of the film to be the most indicative of the overlap between violence and celebrity. As Ivan begins his final shootout with the police, the scene is intercut with stabs of an audience of children cheering, presumably at his behavior. This is a mirror of an earlier scene where Ivan was in the crowd watching spaghetti westerns, demonstrating that he has now become the character himself. Interestingly, this scene has been sampled extensively in hip hop music.

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1. The film depicts Ivan’s transformation from an ambitious, naive country boy intending to make it using his music. However, in a series of systematic disappointments such as producer exploitation and the pastor’s stinginess and judgements, Ivan’s desperation led him to become a rude boy.

My sympathy for Ivan’s shifted once he stabbed the mechanic for cheating him of his wages for fixing the bicycle. The framing of the scene was a close-up, showcasing how Ivan’s anger erupted making the it raw and unpredictable. Also, there was no music playing in the background. The silence, however was too loud. Not only does it make the viewer focus on Ivan’s and the Mechanic’s actions, it marks the exact moment when Ivan changed. He crossed from being an exploited victim to a violent man, embracing the rude boy persona, who adopts violence as a moment as a means of survival.

2. The one song that captured my attention was “The Harder They Come,” especially the studio recording scene. Although it functions as the film’s theme song, Ivan transforms it into an emotional declaration. In that moment, the camera lingers on him and the band highlighting their fierce determination. In addition, the song is an explicit manifesto because its lyrics directly articulate the reality faced by the marginalized communities in Kingston. Ivan sings lines about oppression, “the oppressors are trying to track me down, they are trying to drive me underground.” The lyrics also reveal that he feels targeted by systems that want to silence him. The tone in his voice reframes his performance as a protest and a declaration of resistance, not just a recording session. Ultimately, the soundtrack serves as social commentary, highlighting how systemic injustices shape Ivan’s identity.

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The very earliest scenes of the movie, where Ivan is on the bus heading to the city, show the lack of infrastructure and the mass of people who linger on the streets, many hustling in different ways. After this, a scene shows Ivan trusting a man with his belongings, placing them on the man's cart, and helping push it. Shortly after, the man makes up a reason for Ivan to distance himself from the cart and his belongings, so the man with the cart can steal Ivan's stuff, and he does. These scenes show just what the economic state of the streets of Kingston is like. People are out for themselves, even if it means doing harm to someone else. This surrounds Ivan due to the economic difficulties that Kingston faces. If the financial problems hadn't been portrayed through these scenes, the story told would be very different. Instead of depicting political realism, it would be just another crime thriller.

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4. A specific movement that lingers on Kingston's streets is when Ivan is looking for work. We see a person outside a construction site asking for work. Ivan is behind him and gets denied. After Ivan is denied work, the camera pans to a long line of men all asking for work from the construction site. Then the scene cuts to a nice wealthy-looking neighborhood. We see some people sitting in the trunk of a car driving down the road, and then Ivan walking by himself. Ivan then wanders into the yard of a woman asking her for work, only to be told to leave. The scene then shows the streets of Kingston, where the houses are shacks in comparison to the nice homes we saw earlier. There is a market that Ivan walks through. He grabs a fruit, and a woman puts a machete to his hand. Then the camera cuts to a landfill and tons of Jamaicans cleaning the landfill together, presumably for work. The scene helped show how bad Kingston was doing economically. Work was hard to come by, and money was scarce. Based on the reaction of the lady in the market, crime is also high, meaning distrust is high. It's clear there aren’t many social services to support Jamaicans in poverty. These scenes give the viewer a better understanding of the lives of characters like Ivan, Elsa, Pedro, and Jose. The story without those details would lack reality. Ivan's desire for money wouldn't be as understandable if we didn't see exactly how hard it is for the average Jamaican to come across money.

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The pastor of the church, who should be a figure of guidance and purity, shows his true side when confronting Ivan. Ivan is looking for help and moral support, but the pastor only presents things such as obedience and patience instead of being more empathetic. Eventually, the pastor even benefits from Ivan's work, and also tells him to not to question authority and to not pursue independence. With a calm and paternal tone, this helps the pastor hide the true meaning behind his words, which is to make sure Ivan knows his place. Other things in the film also do this where legitimacy is claimed even though the main goal is to maintain to goal.