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Wyclef Jean is a Haitian musician. He composed a song titled “New Day.” New Day is a song that encourages students to stay in school, gain an education, and praise mothers for making sacrifices for their families. I choose this song by Wyclef Jean because it supports the narrative and themes in the author’s Danticat novel “Breath, Eyes, Memory.” It also discusses some of the struggles that affect Caribbean people. I believe the song is a reminder to Haitians to be resilient in their battle for equity and equality. The Wyclef Jean song New Day supports two themes of education literacy and family values in Caribbean literature.

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Poet Tato Laviera and Author Edwidge Danticat used language in their literature to conceptualize the multifaceted beings in the Caribbean Island. While each writer used a different approach to demonstrate the sum of colonizers, Caribbean culture and identity are juxtaposed between African identity and other European identities. For example, Laviera's poem “Graduation Speech” uses repetition and language to explain how identity is a part of the countries that developed those languages. Danticat incorporates some French words into the literature to show the French influence in Haiti. Language is a significant factor in Caribbean culture. It shows the history of Caribbean culture through language and systemic oppression. Danticat also used oppression in her literature to show why emigration is used as a temporary remedy for Haitian people.

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Edwidge Danticat's book "Breath, Eyes, Memory" is a novel that explores the complexity of family relationships, education, and culture. Danticat’s novel enters the world of a Haitian family to unpack how family structures, government policy, and immigration affect the upward mobility of Haitians. The author incorporates language to demonstrate how people are the composition of multicultural colonialism. As Danticat travels into the history of family social structures, she uncovers some secrets and sacrifices that affect Haitian families. Some Haitians had to emigrate to make a better life for their loved ones. The author also incorporates emigration in the novel to express the lack of educational resources for undeveloped nations. Danticat's book "Breath, Eyes, Memory" is a novel that supports Caribbean Literature. The reoccurring theme in her novel includes education, emigration, language, faith, and Colonialism. These themes are economic and social-economic issues that continue to plague the Black Diaspora.

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Bob Marley is a Jamaican Legend who used his music to unite all variations of Caribbean identity. Despite racism and oppression by institutions of oppression, Marley reinforced universal love for all people. Marley includes faith, love, and appreciation for humanity in his music. His music is compassionate activism to support the progression of Caribbean people. Marley’s song, Is this Love shows what love looks like for Caribbean culture. Marley uses a compassionate approach to get a powerful message across to oppressed people. Marley's music is a representation of Caribbean literature because it connects people to the core of human existence, Love.

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Caribbean Literature is contingent on the expression of the writer or creator of the text. Author Earl Lovelace novel, The Dragon Can’t Dance is a tourist’s guide to experience one of the Caribbean Island. Lovelace offers the reader an in-depth experience to life inside Trinidad and Tobago, during a Civil War. The Author incorporated Trinidad’s culture as a catalyst to explore the Identity of Caribbean Culture and to correct biased narratives of Caribbean Culture projected by other Literary scholars.

Meanwhile, Author Michelle Cliff provides an intimate novel, IF I Could Write This in Fire, that defies the expectations of social norms. Cliff’s novel was a narrative that I have yet to see presented in Caribbean literature. The main character in her novel was unapologetically certain of her identity and her position in life. The two texts share different writing styles and approaches to racial identity however, this is written by a woman in power.

Both texts tackle the social concepts of identity, class, and gender norms but the authors use different writing styles and techniques to present a particular message. Lovelace incorporates symbolism, metaphors, and satire to disclose hidden messages. Author Michelle Cliff does the complete opposite. She opens the door to her world and allows her truth (characters truth) to unfold as she sees fits. Both novels are a piece of history for the Caribbean Literary puzzle.

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Michelle Cliff is the author of the 2008 Novel, If I Could Write This in Fire, the author tells a complex narrative of sexuality, colonialism, colorism, and nationalism in Jamaica. The story takes place in Jamaica while the country is under British rule. The main character is a privileged mixed-race woman who shares her life and her perception of Jamaica culture. The main character is in a same-sex relationship which is contrary to the social norms of Jamaican culture. She does not hold the same ideologies, beliefs, and customs as most Jamaican women. She presents her narrative and perspective of Jamaican History. If I Could Write This in Fire is a riveting novel that gives an alternative perspective of Jamaican History from the observation of a Lesbian Bi-Racial Middle-Class woman. I was shocked by Cliff's candid openness about social topics like sexuality, nationalism, and privilege. Author Michelle Cliff used her life as a reference for historical exploration of gender roles, religion, and social class. Caribbean literature is a platform for all people from the Caribbean Diaspora to tell their stories the way they experience them. While the story does not care to interpret the experience, the novel is more of a platform of liberation. This novel is aligned with the Caribbean Literature Course because it is not subjective to a particular narrative. It is an all-inclusive experience to help people to embody Jamaica as a Colonized country and a culturally diverse institution.

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Mighty Sparrow is the Calypso King and A Caribbean native. His birth name is Slinger Fransico however, he gained the name Sparrow from his elders who, teased him for his majestic moves. Instead of being humiliated, he embraced himself and his culture. He eventually added on the name Mighty when he became a professional musician. Mighty Sparrow was a natural-born entertainer and would begin writing music in his teenage years. In the video above is a collection of Mighty Sparrows' classics. Sparrow is unapologetically a revolutionary musical activist. His music is a direct reflection of his beliefs, environment, and culture. In the songs above Mighty Sparrow is taking the “Yankees” on a Caribbean experience and ensuring that non-natives know that Caribbean Island belongs to Caribbean Natives. Mighty Sparrow's musical work is connected to Earl Lovelace's novel "The Dragon Can't Dance" because it streamlines unified messages for the Caribbean community. Calypso King's music covers colonialism, sexism, community, and relationships affecting the Caribbean community.

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Author Earl Lovelace is a creative genius. In his novel, “The Dragon Can’t Dance,” Lovelace outlines the positive and negative effects of colonialism in the Caribbean. In chapters five through seven, the characters go through a metamorphosis. The carnival was the cosmic experience that would force the natives and non-natives to engage in life to the fullest. The author uses literature to ask thought-provoking questions that force the reader and the characters on a self-discovery journey. Lovelace’s literature is a positive reinforcement for the literary community to gauge their desires against their goals. Lovelace’s literature raises many thought-provoking questions. He uses satire and symbolism to impose philosophical inquires that suggest the characters and readers should face their darkness and shadows within themselves and communities before judging others. From the title of the novel’s chapters to how he guides the reader through some of the most important events for the Caribbean culture, Lovelace's novel “The Dragon Can’t Dance,” is one of the best Caribbean Literary novels that correct the narrative of Caribbean People and History. Chapter One through four was the introduction or to culture and society. Even if you have been a resident of a territory, it does not mean you are a native. Again, Lovelace takes the non-natives on an inside edition of Caribbean culture. The author is using race or ethnicity to develop meaningful relationships with the Caribbean. Lovelace gives the reader a chance to experience their rich culture or the choice to disconnect from attempting to classify a group of people you have no intimate connections.

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Author Earl Lovelace is a Trinidadian author and in 1979 he wrote and published a novel titled "The Dragon Can’t Dance." In his 1979 novel, Lovelace engages the reader with the natives' cultural experience of Trinidad. In chapters one through four, Lovelace introduces us to a host of characters, community, and environmental standards. Lovelace used the narrator to walk the reader through the Caribbean island as if the reader is a visitor to the country. The Dragon Can’t Dance is an intimate novel that depicts traditional customs, family expectations, gender roles, male misogyny, female naiveness, social status, and faith. Lovelace's novel, "The Dragon Can’t Dance," is an authentic revelation of true Caribbean Identity. This novel is relevant to this course because it defines Caribbean Literature. Lovelace’s novel leads the inquirer on a detailed and revolutionary experience through many streets in Port of Spain. The novel attempts to show how interconnected the environment, people, culture, and government, are connected to developing social and economic structures. Lovelace removes the mask of isolation. Author Earl Lovelace's novel, “The Dragon Can’t Dance,” is an all-inclusive journey to the Caribbean.

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Calypso Rose is A Trinidad native who wrote music that channeled sexism, gender roles, and racism. Rose’s music is revolutionary and culturally impactful for the people of the Caribbean islands. Author Naipaul’s Novel, Miguel Street, share distinct themes in Rose’s song Calypso Queen. Both artists use their platforms to create awareness about social concepts and institutions of government that affect the people in the Caribbean during WW2. In Rose’s song, Calypso Queen, Rose demands respect for herself and her country while simultaneously presenting a piece of Caribbean culture.

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In chapters eight through ten, Author Naipaul's characters attempt to take on societal roles and assert their masculinity within their community. In these chapters, a young man narrates what he observed and the changes he sees with the people in his environment. As the characters develop, they created a class system or a group to create a better community. Unfortunately, their desires and needs do not coincide with their behavior or the political agenda at the time. However, the author uses symbolism to identify how isolation and lack of knowledge impeded the black man's ability to be a leader in his community. At the beginning of the novel, the men were presented as naïve boys who lack direction.  The development of the characters is used as a form of symbolism to demonstrate the destruction of minority communities. By the middle of the novel, some characters develop, while others are complacent in their immaturity.  Many of the natives abandon their communities and relocate due to humiliating circumstances and strange events that force them to face their truth and their roles in society. In chapters eight through ten, the author focused on gender roles, male misogyny, entertainment, and economic status. In the first seven chapters, the author exposed the effects immoral family values, environments, nationalism, and cultural identities can create segregation and develop complex beings. The result of these environmental circumstances is embodied within the characters between chapters eight through ten.  

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Author V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, but he was of Indian ethnicity. His travels and experience with different environments gave him a well-developed sense of social construction and knowledge to create literature that tackled cultural identities, economic regimes, faith, and gender roles. Naipaul’s 1959 novel, Miguel Street takes place during WW2, and Trinidad was significantly involved in the war. Naipaul used his literature to capture the event, culture, and political climate of the minorities in Trinidad. At the beginning of Naipaul’s novel, Miguel Street, the narrator presents the concept of the Bogaritian attitude. The false sense of masculinity in Naipaul’s characters created conflict within their communities and their ability to be leaders for their families.  While the story takes place on an isolated street in Trinidad, Naipaul uses this as a form of symbolism to demonstrate how the inner minorities are oblivious to the state of the Caribbean Island and their condition. The overarching theme in Caribbean Literature and this course is isolation from cultural identity and economic stability. While the young men in the stories attempt to create their institutions to support their agendas, their lack of community, resources, and gender roles affect their ability to excel. Author Naipaul Caribbean Literature explores agency within the context of gender roles, culture, unity, and colonialism. This novel can be used as a tool to examine colonialism, race, poverty, and social class. The  hidden message in the novel is relevant to this course because it engages the reader's perception of the Caribbean people, the culture, and the outside influencers which molded the Caribbean island.

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Villa de la Vega (Exile) is a song that describes colonization and decolonization in Spanish Town Jamaica. The artist talks about isolation, destruction, and religious persecution. These themes are consistent with the narratives  told in Caribbean Literature.   

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In part one of Author Jean Rhys's novel Sargasso Sea, Rhys highlights some historical issues in the Caribbean. One of the premises that sets the novel storyline in motion is the Emancipation of Slaves. This historical act creates a great storyline, but it exposes how slave masters and elite families had to cope with losing their property, slaves, and prestigious social status. One of the reoccurring themes in Rhys’s novel, Sargasso Sea is relationships. He opens the beginning of the novel by discussing how relationships between families, siblings, environments, and slave masters are affected by economic status and race. While the story heats up once the elite families’ estates are burned to the ground. They were forced to flee their comfortable dwellings and find a place to begin a new life. These situations are counterproductive to the establishment’s agenda. Relationships are another factor in the Caribbean culture. Caribbean literature uses relationships and life experiences to narrate how difficult circumstances can be affected by culture, values, and government. These issues that have affected the Caribbean community are also prevalent in other Caribbean Literature like Aime Cesaire’s poem, Notebook Of A Return to the Native Land. Cesaire is also conflicted with identity and cultural issues as he depicts his life experiences in his lengthy poem. His identity is influenced by his environment and the political climate of the Caribbean. Decolonization in the Caribbean has left many natives or non-natives perplexed with identity issues. Caribbean literature uses life experiences to discuss colorism, race, political, and environmental issues.

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Author Jean Rhys writes an intriguing and layered novel titled Sargasso Sea which takes place in the early 19th Century in Spanish Town Jamaica. The author covers several social, economic, political, religious, and cultural constraints within Jamaica. While the town was divided, so were the people. There are a few main characters in the novel.  Antoinette is a young-wealthy woman scheduled to marry an older married man named Richard Mason. Next, we have Christophine, a black woman who is Antionette’s mother figure and protector. I believe Christophine is of Haitian descent. At the beginning of the second portion of the novel, Richard, Antoinette’s perspective husband narrates how thrilled he is to be marrying this young, vibrant, and beautiful young woman. Antionette is struggling with identity issues as a white creole living in Jamaica. The difficult circumstances in Antionette's life pulled her in every direction. Antionette cannot grapple with the deterioration of her family's economic, social, and cultural status. Antionette looks to Christophine for guidance and support during the most traumatic and life-altering changes occurring in her life. Antionette decides to decline Richard Mason’s proposal to get married, which further ignites racial tensions between the natives of the Caribbean and the previous colonizers. The race tensions continue to spill over into religious beliefs and cause discomfort within the family structure. Antionette is conflicted in her beliefs, who she can trust, and the direction of her life. Surprisingly after a heated discussion, Antionette marries Richard Mason, and her life becomes more complicated and entangled with racial conflicts, social and economic class loss. There are some reoccurring themes of racial identity, economic status, social class, and exclusion that are prevalent in the Caribbean Islands. Rhys's vivid imagination depicts some key historical events the Caribbean people had to endure. Rhys's novel Sargasso Sea,  is connected to Caribbean literature because it exposes how politics, culture, and status affect the natives and ruling classes.

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Author Derek Walcott was one of the most distinguished and influential Caribbean authors who created literature that expressed their relationships with Caribbean culture and the condition of the Caribbean people. In his 1986 poem, “Ruins of a Great House”, Walcott tells a descriptive and vivid synopsis of the darkness that overshadowed the Caribbean Island. In his poem, he uses language that suggests the condition of the environment and the state of the inhabitants of the Caribbean during the 20th century. The selected language used in his poems like disjecta membra, leprosy, exiled, slave, and dead are terms that alluded to the devastation of the Caribbean Islands. The touristic, beautiful, and ‘great’ place has in fact fell into a sunken place. Writers like Walcott use their literature to document how the Caribbean Islanders became engulfed in darkness. The Saint Lucian native doesn’t look to define what Caribbean Literature is, but he shared how his existence and disconnect from the mainland has left him and his peers engulfed in darkness with a glimmer of hope to be rescued from the shadows of colonialism. “In memory ancestral murders and poets, more perplexed In memory now by every ulcerous crime. The world’s green age then was a rotting lime whose stench became the charnel galleon’s text. The rot remains with us, the men are gone.” (Walcott 1986, 19-21) While Walcott's poem, “Ruins of a Great House”, does not lead to a clear definition of What Caribbean Literature is now, Walcott’s fragmented poem reflects the fragmented state of the institutional conditions of the Caribbean Island and its isolation from African and American history and literature. 

 Meanwhile Author Mahadai Das's poem, “They Came in Ships” takes a historical approach to documenting the immigration, slave trade, and exploitation of colonialism in Guyana. In her 17th century poem, Das documents how colonialism affected the Guyanese, the enslaved, and the ‘brown’ people who were victims of war. Das reflects on her own family’s history to draw connections and a source of reference to the injustice experienced in her own culture. As a result of her own reflection, Das uses her literature as a form of activism to stand up for oppressed people in Guyana. Das’s poetry is not only used to document history but it was used to prepare her for future events. In Das’s book, A Leaf In There Ear, she describes how she uses history to determine patterns in future events. “I do not forget the past that has moulded the present. The present is a caterer for the future.” (Das 2010) Das’s reflection on slavery and the British Crown's involvement in slavery and breakdown of the Guyanese identity from the black culture had a huge impact on her decision to align with black people and fight injustice. In Das’s search for the truth, she pledges allegiance to her blackness. Das’s poem, “They Came in Ships”, is a declaration of loyalty to her black ancestors and her vow to show support and document the truth against colonialism and slavery. 

 While these texts can be used as historical information on colonialism and oppression in the Caribbean islands, the literature itself does not solely define Caribbean Literature. It is only a page in many untold stories. Caribbean authors are writing literature that will be recognized for more than just voices of activism, but for people who want to come out of the shadows of darkness to expose the light. These people are some of those who’ve been lost in transit through the slave trade, migration, and immigration. I have yet to find the meaning of Caribbean Literature now. However, their works of art leave a trail of stories that demonstrate a connection to people in the world. 

Artist are including music to demonstrate how social class systems and colonialism has destroyed the economic state of black people. Legendary Calypso singer Black Stalin is a Trinidadian and Tobago musician is known for making music that speaks against colonialism and poverty. In his song Suffers, Stalin sings about the effects of colonialism, social class, and poverty. The rhythmic tune is melodic and soulful. The tunes are known to make one move their body out of depressed states. Listed below is a link to enjoy the tunes of the Caribbean. 

Caribbean Literature now, is surrounded by musical tunes, literature, and activism that focuses on ratifying the social and economic status of Caribbean people and eliminating poverty. 

https://youtu.be/7suUKcjnRk4

   Works Cited

Das, Mahadai. 2010. "They Came In Ships." In A Leaf in His Ear: Collected Poems. , by Mahadai Das, 25-27. Leeds, UK: Peepal Tree Press.

Walcott, Derek. 1986. "Ruins of a Great House." ProQuest. Accessed September 2, 2021. https://login.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/login/url=?url=https://www.proquest.com/books/runs-great-house/docview/docview/2148005729/sec2?accountid=13626.