1

Vol 24 / No. 2 / November 2016

Special Issue

Caribbean
Ecocriticism
 Volume 24
Number 2
November 2016
Elaine Savory
Guest Editor, Special Issue on
Caribbean Ecocriticism

Published by the discipline of Literatures in English,

University of the West Indies
 CREDITS
Original image: Urchin Skeleton, 2015 by Nadia Huggins
Anu Lakhan (copy editor)
Nadia Huggins (graphic designer)

Enquiries should be sent to

THE EDITORS

OR

SUBSCRIPTION RATE

Journal of West Indian Literature

 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

Lisa Outar
Ian Strachan

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

EDITORIAL BOARD

Victor Chang

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Anne Collett

Aaron Kamugisha
Geraldine Skeete
THE JOURNAL OF WEST INDIAN LITERATURE

in the region
 of Contents
7 Elaine Savory

11 World

27
46 Anthropocene
Eric Prieto

Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco

63 Identity

74 Enlightenment Emancipation

96
Book reviews

104 Time
Elaine Savory

109 British Atlantic

112 Sarah Phillips Casteel

115 Notes on contributors

 7

Elaine Savory
Guest Editor, Special Issue on Caribbean Ecocriticism

realize that huge progress has been made in raising consciousness where it counts and a

Ecocriticism on the Edge

The Chosen Place, the Timeless People and to the
 8

Ecocriticism

Animals, Environment

Wilderness

and World Narratives

The God of Small Things

African and Diasporan Literatures and Sustainability

Environmental Justice, and Political Ecology

The Cambridge Introduction to Literature

and the Environment
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

got an important start with

What is the

Casteel’s (2007)
 9

(2011), the

Postcolonial Green
South America and the Caribbean (there is an essay on Walcott’s Omeros
and Ecocriticism of the Global South
Slow Violence,

A Small Place,

Caribbean Studies Journal)

The Journal of West Indian Literature
chance to view Small Change
Small Change
tries to start conversations in multiple spaces: grassroots, private and public sectors hoping to better the
 10

It has been particularly rewarding to edit this issue because it has widened and deepened my
 11

Security during the Conquest

Source: Wikipedia

La historia general y
natural de las Indias
 12

indigenous workers known as encomiendas

A Plague of Sheep, would call an

1
 13

Oviedo described the crisis thus:

hutías quemis,
and other animals they called mohuy, and all the ones they call coris, that are like young

island
.

(Oviedo, my emphasis, 50)

to be able to return to Spain looking

as yellow as the gold they were seeking
so eagerly, having turned the colour

cause severe health problems through

diseases like trichinosis, pentastomiasis,
gnathostomiasis, and sparganosis, to
which we can add microbiological
 14

places pigs have returned to the wild and become savage and are hunted like wild boar, as in Hispaniola

Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies

astes
 15

encomiendas

encomendero

“distributed the lands so that the Spaniards could build their houses, as they did, and showed them
the lands and cattle that would belong to them, together with the holdings that would become their

The Drake Manuscript

 16

titled

Verlyn Klinkenborg, in the

the scenes captured in the paintings as

depicting “a world already shaped and
overlaid by two highly sophisticated

Spanish colonization in drawings depicting

by indigenous populations (whose “great

but weaves his most charming

(Illustrated

images, as Klinkenborg argues, are the most

manuscript, where each drawing and caption stands on its own, a continuous narrative

several scenes, culminating in The Drake Manuscript

 17

It goes like this: a young man visits his loved

producing, they leave it and go to live in another place where they cultivate the land where they know

The Drake Manuscript

ascribes so appealingly to indigenous Caribbean populations contributes, ironically, to the parallel

The
Drake Manuscript

The Drake Manuscript

A Plague of Sheep
 18

La historia natural, Oviedo describes the speed with which Spanish

“ships were returning to Spain loaded with skins and it had happened that they had rounded up and

The Drake Manuscript

Who came to the islands, and what they ended up eating, were outcomes that turned

European conquest underscore how the Caribbean region’s subordinate entry into global mercantilism

(Neomonachus tropicalis or West Indian seal)—the only subtropical seal native to the Caribbean and the
19

and recorded history in Christopher

to his newly discovered territories—at

about the same time that the indigenous

how “as they were leaving the island

 20

them were large mammals (whales, seals, manatees)

appears particularly disturbing, as it is placed in a

 21

Narrative Narrative of a Five

,
The Drake Manuscript surrounded by the

La historia natural

alcaide
 22

alcaide’s reply:

in our hunger and toil until this moment, I would like to remain in your company and

(51)

the alcaide

The Drake Manuscript

indigenous population had essentially declared war on them through agricultural attrition), they had to

alcaide
 23

In

( Landscape and Memory,

bétonization

Biblique des derniers gestes,

colonization and independence complicates environmental issues, particularly those related to control
 24

Notes
1

Works Cited

The journal of Christopher Columbus and documents relating the voyages of John Cabot and
 25

The Buccaneers of America

mar Océano que llaman Indias Occidentales

The Drake Manuscript

Etnofoor

genus Monachus

“ International Journal
of Food Microbiology
 26

Gastronomica

The Prodigal

12
 27

2
28

Forged

The Plains of Caroni

 29

and

***
 30

territorial resource that is highly centralized as

property around the state
 31

(Williams, Forged
 32

Against what was presented as sugar’s retrograde divisiveness and its association with the
 33

I want to turn to Selvon’s The Plains of Caroni

The Plains of Caroni

 34

The
Plains of Caroni

***
 35

The Plains of Caroni registers certain

Modernity

(Capitalism 27)

Modernity

Guerrillas
 36

A cynical and disturbing novel, Guerrillas

is

Guerrillas

Guerrillas

prose:
37

Guerrillas
 38

same time produces conditions which directly challenge and question those very same, and hallowed,

Oil drilling, money making

So when you sharing your oil bread

Ah say remember me
 39

Ah cyar get butter

And when Ah get rice the thing so dear

And my old bus stalling

already touched on oil’s displacement in Naipaul’s Guerrillas

A Casual Brutality springs to mind), and the island’s more

Oonya Kempadoo’s All Decent Animals

deus ex machina: “a
 40

deus ex machina: win

Guerrillas

necessity, and overdetermined by his personal neuroses—gestures to the problems posed to novelistic

most recent novel, Is Just a Movie

 41

Prior to Is Just a Movie, however, Lovelace’s work had already demonstrated a capacity to

Guerrillas

Dragon

allotted roles or identities come to be recognized as hollow shells, the meaning they may once have

corresponding to Dragon

is

is meaning too, Lovelace has declared (Growing

 42

inspiring:

(27)

Notes
1

2
 43

Works Cited

Critical Perspectives on
Sam Selvon

Communities in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Short Stories

In Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon

International
Journal of Energy Sector Management

Journal of American Studies

Modern Language Quarterly

Shah of Shahs

A Brief Conversion and Other Stories

Is Just a Movie
 44

Capitalism in the Web of Life

Caribbean Studies 11:1

Guerrillas
The Writer and The World

Small Axe
Green Letters
Social and Economic Studies

World Development
The Caribbean Postcolonial
The Political Calypso

1:1

The Plains of Caroni

The Poor and The Powerless

Violent Environments

Geopolitics
45

Oil Culture
 46

Anthropocene
Eric Prieto

Image courtesy Nadia Huggins

informal

be ever more urban, meaning that any attempt to think seriously about the environment

1
Given all this, I believe that there can be
47
 48

Climate change and informal urbanism

Planet of Slums
 49

these conditions, it is not at all clear how, or by whom, radical change could be brought about, and so

City of God Les étoiles de Sidi Moumen provide some

Whole Earth Discipline.

An eco-pragmatic approach to the informal city

Whole Earth Discipline

Why dense cities, nuclear power, transgenic crops, restored wildlands, and geoengineering are necessary
 50

Quarto
de despejo

The geopoetics of eco-urbanism

lumpenproletariat
 51

Waste management

Quarto de despejo
Orlando Patterson’s The Children of Sisyphus
Boca de Lixo Estamira
catadores It might be

Boca de Lixo makes it immediately apparent how dangerous, dirty and dehumanizing this

Still, despite such considerations, commentators like Kirsten Seale have been able to make

Seale takes care to emphasize the important distinction between the symbolic and physical
Quarto de despejo
favelados
despejo
 52

book, whose English translation was titled Child of the Dark

Orlando Patterson’s The Children of Sisyphus .

Myth of Sisyphus to depict

Urban ecologies (policy perspectives)

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God

 53

supply, but this is a case where a service provided to the squatter settlement would also accrue to the

the whole and vice versa), keeping in mind that urban ecologies include more than physical space,
 54

Natural mystics

The Children of Sisyphus

Brother Man John

The Children of Sisyphus

to

honour
 55

The Children of Sisyphus

qua

in Patterson’s novel, then, would be to believe that the only way to transcend their degraded condition
was to move on to a better place, whether to an idyllic past, an idealized motherland, salvation in the

home is somehow improper, but that, pace

7

Second nature and the urban mangrove

Texaco, which
comes very close to Patterson’s novel in its interest in preserving a more traditional, sustainable

Texaco
 56

Such programmes have become widely accepted throughout Latin America and make it possible to
alleviate the most severe problems in these neighbourhoods at a cost that is relatively manageable

an urban
mangrove swamp

emphasis in original)
 57

Texaco are able to make such arguments intelligible

Concluding thoughts on sustainable cities

Anthropocene era, as we reach the point where the planet’s resources are being stressed on a global

breakthrough or advance in social organization will make it possible to break through even this ceiling
 58

djobeurs

10
 59

Notes
1

2
Planning Sustainable Cities, and
New Urban
Agenda

and downloaded at:

5
Estamira

Children of Sisyphus

10
 60

Works Cited
Graceland
Dancing with the Devil in the City of God
Shantytown Kid (Le Gone Du Chaâba

Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays

Texaco
Peões Boca de Lixo

New

Planet of Slums.

Quarto de despejo

Caribbean Literature and the

 61

Latin America.

Urban Latin America.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies

Waste Land and
Estamira

Abandonment.
City of God

Brother Man

The Atlantic

The
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry

Invisible Chapters
 62

Capitalism

Traditional Dwellings and Settlements

Journal of Asian and African Studies

Estamira

Survey.

Urban Imaginaries of Waste, Excess, and Abandonment

Settlements 2009

The Country and the City

 63

Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco

Identity

phenomenon proved to be the real

languages, races, religions, customs,

world were brutally uprooted and

transplanted in an environment where

Éloge de la Créolité
 64

Éloge de la Créolité Créolité

département

Créolité movement would have it—resulting in radically

1
wrongly and hastily reduced to its mere linguistic aspects, or to one single

Éloge de la Créolité

Negritude—as articulated in
natal
Negritude gives way to Antillanité, inspired
Discours Antillais.

must—in Glissant’s approach—consolidate all that is uniquely Caribbean as leverage against and in
 65

La Lézarde and later in Mahagony

Éloge de la Créolité
Negritude and Antillanité
Éloge de la Créolité displays a remarkable

Éloge de la Créolité

pulsates

Éloge de la Créolité
prize, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco
Créolité

Texaco
 66

Texaco and Éloge de la Créolité

Texaco

Transforming the landscape trope

So I took a real deep breath: I had suddenly understood that it was I, around this table

Nuit Blanche, Patrick Chamoiseau develops the idea that the

to his novel Texaco

 67

(meaning both city and urban space

lanvil

Planner in his copious notes indicated that:

mangrove swamp, an urban mangrove swamp

original)
 68

placedness, which the

pulsates around it:

Texaco: Place/habitus

Texaco,

secret name:
 69

I named myself a secret name

in original)

habitus

structured structures
structuring structures) her own

Texaco as habitus is the

can and are able to act:

the slope, like my Esternome had taught me,

carefully weeded my space, packed down the land within my tent, made

We fastened the sheets [of tin] with stones and two nails
it was my anchor
 70

concretize the improvisation and innovation inherent in the habitation

place and being

else braced by her secret name, who could mangle Castrador with words but also with

a good sort to better sting his heart, Well, my Monsieur Castrador, tell me one thing, where would

here?

Place and
Self
and changed by place and place is structured by human interaction:

to beat/pulsate

Texaco: from landscape to I/dentity

that:
 71

I named myself a secret name

there is no place without self and no self

without place

hutch, her habitation, “it was my anchor

 72

Conclusion

Levantine cultural elements united on the same soil

Texaco

Notes
1
Migan

Works Cited

The Logic of Practice

Annals of the Association of American Geographers

Éloge de la Créolité
Texaco.
 73

University of Toronto
Quarterly

Caribbean
 74

Enlightenment Emancipation

the story were synonymous when the oral tradition was the one through which

Jan Carew
 75

in
Indian Novel in English

environmental crisis and transpires in a

wrote,
 76

Asia and Europe, as well as indigenous peoples

Location and agency

Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago.

Courtesy Paria Publishing
 77

We call this vision the subsistence perspective, because

instead, nature’s subsistence potential in all its

Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago

Courtesy Paria Publishing
 78

In Nalo Hopkinson’s novel

in the children’s story,

The Mermaid Escapade

griot, who educates

would sing, sitting on a rock by the river, soon a mawnin’—early in the morning—

His lines speak to the

 79

of the Caribbean

that
 80

central way, such as William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Cosmos

ethic, as Lissa Paul’s (2011) makes clear

Alice
in Wonderland ) and Peter Pan

combining and not being

 81

as Praxis

hybrid being, both bios and logos bios and mythoi

mythoi bios

Folklore and cultural memory

In the introduction to Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood
 82

Character, and Continuity

relationship between the artists creating oral and written story throughout the Caribbean, as innovative

Le Jour Où La Mer a Disparu

while

sea, saying

their contemporary realistic story

takes his granddaughter, Celita, out on the water in his jolla

becoming one with the vines and roots so that his limbs grow entwined, all the while his body and
 83

come to mind:

One such story is Jessica

 84

standpoint in her book The Mermaid Escapade

In Parental Absence as a Consequence of Migration

Caribbean, parental migration is not uncommon, as several parents may leave in order to improve their

The Mermaid Escapade

Green Boy
Sara in The Mermaid Escapade

AUNTIE

Pre-colonial roots
 85

Ozain, the Secrets of Congo Initiations and Magic Spells Palo

(Mami Wata

Sacred Waters

Mami Wata

In
 86

Edward

sic

Elm (aka Helen Williams) in Delroy in the Marog Kingdom the

In its original

Sylvia

supports
 87

think we must choose between modernity and tradition, between Europe and the Caribbean, between

mythoi) will condition the

bios

Vatsyayan states,
Sagara), the
 88

to the other elements makes the distinction that the Ganges does not birth the serpent but rather is

Espousing an ecological view, Vatsyayan states: “All ancient religions have given a special

Escape from Silk Cotton Forest

his mother:

Vatsyayan also cites the Nagas and Naginis and draws attention to the “coiled serpent as the
Naga

The Parrots &

Papa Bois tells a tale using repetitive rhythm in

with clasped hands, stooped over in a sneaky,

requests a carambola

staring at a snake holding him down in Escape from Silk Cotton Forest.
 89

Delroy and the Marog Kingdom

reptiles changing to birds or reptiles and birds seemingly antagonistic to each other being

Looking at The Parrots & Papa Bois

It is indeed possible that the

bios and mythoi

 90

Folklore

Trinidad
Folklore

limpia de sangre
by the Spanish
 91

mythoi and bios

 92

Notes
1

or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic,

2
 93

legally or conceptually equivalent to human beings while at the same time not being precisely

Works Cited

Santería, Obeah, and the Caribbean.

Illustrations
Folklore & Legends of Trinidad and Tobago

Ozain, the Secrets of Congo Initiations and Magic Spells Palo

Savacou
The Power of Myth
Caribbean Quarterly

Tenniel)
Trinidad Folklore

The Parrots and Papa Bois

Green Boy
 94

Delroy in the Marog Kingdom

Escape from Silk Cotton Forest
The Mermaid Escapade

AUNTIE

Le Jour Où La Mer a Disparu.

Jessica
Osain Espíritu Del Bosque

Ecofeminism

South Asian Diaspora

 95

English

the Americas

Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo

In
.

The Tempest, William Shakespeare

The Tempest.
Caribbean

Children and Cultural Memory in Texts of Childhood.

Trade Investment and Development in the Contemporary Caribbean

Environment.

Dream on Monkey Mountain, and Other Plays

Caribbean Studies
 96

In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will
understand only what we are taught.
 97

Environmental discourse

In addition, more and more Caribbean countries are turning to ecotourism as a solution to both
 98

Goat Island, Jamaica

with the East Asian country have shown that employment opportunities were generally directed toward

question: What does the Jamaican government mean when it speaks about development and who is this

On Goat Island, ancient

mangroves seemed to walk out

rich, succulent green and cast

in the waters that it was hard to

tell what was up and what was
 99

While we made our

within and around them,

spatial considerations were
collapsed into the distinctive

were talking about the need to

protect Goat Island and their

people, a woman and a man,

captured not only through

camera lens, but through the

discovered that day on Goat

were not the only ones in

the water that morning:

waters where buoys clearly

people who, perhaps like

themselves this place that

lately in the newspapers and

that the then government

thought it so easy to destroy
 100

Places of intrinsic value

It so happens that at the time that I came to see Goat Island, I was yet again in graduate school,

Since my trip to Goat

Island, I have come realize that I
had long been going to Goat Island

it represented so many places

that should be held dear—places

holding intrinsic value—but
seem to be vanishing due to the

and consequently our policies—get

In writing a thesis on species

in the dark blue Portland mountains (and

the world, the endangered endemic Giant

101

would be able to write about now, but among

the things that the community has done is

anecdotal evidence suggests that once again

 102

Many thanks to Kaia Niambi Shivers who helped me think through many of the ideas in this essay.

Works Cited

Trouble in Paradise. Globalization and Environmental Crises

in Latin America
103
 104

Caribbean and
Postcolonial

Urgent Time
Erin James,
Narratives

London,

Global

Combined and Uneven

Elaine Savory

the imaginative and empathetic response to ecological crisis, as well as a deepening

 105

The Storyworld Accord: Econarratology and Postcolonial Narratives, Erin James

A Brighter Sun and The Lonely Londoners and

An Area of Darkness and

A Brighter Sun. The Lonely Londoners,

claiming that The Lonely Londoners

A Brighter Sun

, the narrator is less in control

 106

has a global

Postcolonial

New Day

My Garden.

does say “it would be invidious to see these attributes as purely postcolonial—the European cottage
 107

editors Campbell and Niblett remind us that concerns over the environment have been present in the

is

edited by Elizabeth

Omeros
 108

debate in

collection
 109

Witnessing Slavery in
British Atlantic
Joseph Childers

relation to Atlantic and Caribbean slavery, while it also produces new takes on slave
narratives such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.
 110

as a result of
 111

Spectacular Slavery
 112

Jewishness in
Caribbean Literary
Imagination
Sarah Phillips Casteel,
Caribbean Literary Imagination.

and Jonathan Schorsch Jews and Blacks

in the Early Modern World

Calypso Jews

many provocative ideas, including her suggestion that the Caribbean is a better place to
 113

Chancy’s novel The Loneliness of Angels Free Enterprise

Moi, Tituba, sorcière noire de Salem (I, Tituba, Black Witch

of Salem

seeing Jews as individuals who aid in the slaves’ eventual emancipation, in Surinamese author Cynthia
(The Cost of Sugar

and Paul Gilroy

Land of the Living

 114

Mr. Potter

mis

in the young adult novel Daughter

(The Black Star

Abeng with Caryl Phillips’ novel The Nature

of Blood
autobiographical Abeng
Diary

The Nature of Blood

makes up the Caribbean whether one is a Caribbean scholar or one with a more general interest in
 115

Notes on
Contributors
Jacqueline Bishop
The Gymnast and other Positions, was awarded

Bodies
of Water Digital The Female
Sexual Desires Project

Dialogues in the African Diaspora Project

Joseph W. Childers
Novel
Possibilities The Columbia
Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism
Sublime Economy On the Intersection of Art and Economics with Stephen Cullenberg and Jack
The Great Exhibition
and Its Legacies

Michael Niblett
The Caribbean Novel since 1945

Culture The Caribbean:

Ecology, Politics
 116

Louis J. Parascandola

latest book is

Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert

Biography

Eric Prieto
Literature, Geography, and the Postmodern Poetics of
Place (2012) and

Melissa Lee Garcia Vega

Keithley Woolward

Caribbean Quarterly
 117

Elaine Savory

Out of the Kumbla . She has recently

118