Essay On Caribbean Literature

Yet each child’s experience is unique because of factors within that child 's culture. Geta Leseur1
I know of no other area of the world, where so many important writers and poets are born in so small a population. Janheinz Jahn, qtd. in James 1.
A favourite genre of the Caribbean writers has been the Bildungsroman, which is often anti-colonial narrative that accounts the protagonist’s development “as a mirror to his or her society’s progress from colonialism to independence” (Paravisini-Gebert 86). Although the Caribbean literature remained unnoticeable until the 1980s, in the process of decolonization they started to appear. During the first half of the twentieth century Caribbean writers wrote mainly “novels of manners”; and in the 1950s

It is fragmented into islands, many of them very small, and discontinuous areas on the rim of the American continent. There is no common language. Its countries have inherited English, Spanish, French or Dutch, modified into Creole forms which are different within each area” (1).
In 1492, Christopher Columbus mistakenly discovered the islands of the Caribbean, believing that he had found the Indies and called the folk he met Indians. Later, to make distinction from real India, they attached to it the West (my indications). The Caribbean was the first non-European lands to be conquered and colonized by Europeans. The native inhabitants of the Caribbean suffered from European expansionism and exploitation, in the form of slavery. The islands have remained for hundreds of years as a colonial exploitation through the production of sugar and other cash crops. As a result of long domination, Caribbean literature and culture has a strong European influence. Booker and Juraga depict the Caribbean culture as “the mixture of European, African, and East Indian cultural traditions”, however, none of them dominate