Texturing the Word. 40 years of Caribbean writing in Britain - ACE438.2

Map showing islands in the Caribbean. Commentary talks about the results of colonisation on the indigenous populations and on people of African descent, and introduces Dr Edward Kamau Brathwaite to discuss "the erasure of African history from the textbooks of his childhood education". Brathwaite VO explains, over films of drummers and Zulu warriors, that his Barbadian upbringing gave him no idea of the realities of African life. George Lamming, Novelist, says that West Indian high schools "siphoned off a minority of people who would later function as a kind of buffer group between the colonial power and the broad base of the population". Caption: "Part One. On Colonization." Linton Kwesi Johnson, poet, talks about how poets develop their own styles, usually first reading the work of earlier generations. He wonders if he is really a poet as he didn’t do this: he only read what he had to learn for GCSE exams in Jamaica. Prof. John Figueroa says that the culture and heritage of places like Caribbean countries is always mediated by Europeans who were responsible for taking Africans there, and illustrates this by reference to George Lamming’s Season of Adventure (1960). Lamming suggests that the elementary school curriculum was intended to train children to be loyal to the colonising power and "to be an agent of social control". Newsreels of official functions, parades, etc. Film of West Indian schoolroom. Kamau Brathwaite on education in Barbados where they were taught English history and literature to encourage them to be "good colonials". He talks about pupils taking advantage of teacher shortage to educate themselves in "Modern Studies" and bring in texts which gave them information about the achievements and situation of black people elsewhere in the world, and about discovering Barbadian folk culture. Film of banana harvest. Roy Heath, novelist, on developing a dual consciousness under colonialism, with part of that being "foisted" on him. As an example, he compares Gothic and Islamic architecture, saying that West Indians have accepted the colonist liking for Gothic buildings but they are actually far less attractive than Islamic ones. He realises how important – in a negative way – was the imposition of colonial ideas on him.