Exploring The Complex Legacies Of Racial And Cultural Heterogeneity In The Caribbean

Caribbean literature often features a complicated, multi-faceted and important relationship with race as Mardorossian explains: 'racial and cultural hybridity [have] long been recognised as a foundation of Caribbean identity' (Mardorossian 2005: 115). Created by slavery, the modern Caribbean population is a mixture of races; including people of African and English descent, plus Indian, Amerindian, Chinese and many more. The Long Song and The Ventriloquist's Tale both explore the legacy of nations formed by cultural and racial diversity. The Long Song by Andrea Levy focuses primarily on a young black slave and the relationship between a girl and her white employees at the time leading up to emancipation, exploring the racial tension that was prominent during 19th century Jamaica. The Ventriloquist's Tale examines similar themes, but does not follow the conventional Caribbean slave narrative; instead it focuses on the Amerindian people of Guyana. It differs to Levy's tale, as although Guyana is a country that was affected by slavery, it has retained its indigenous population. Both writers create a vivid picture of life in a multi-cultural society, although their characters often suffer as a result of racial and cultural heterogeneity.

The Long Song's female protagonist July is herself a product of a mixed race interaction. However, the nature of the relationship is representative of the violence and inhumanity shown towards black slaves by their white masters, as July's mother Kitty is raped by the Scottish overseer Tam Dewar: 'when he finally released himself from out of her, he thrust a crumpled bolt of yellow and black cloth into Kitty's hand as a gift' (Levy 2010: 9). This piece of cloth goes on to be made into matching dresses for Kitty and July, showing the legacy of such an encounter; Tam Dewar's power over his slaves is visually apparent as Kitty is forced to clothe herself in the material given to her after her rape. July's status as mixed-race enables her to rise above her mother in the ranks of slavery, as while Kitty is a dark skinned slave hand, July is light skinned, and therefore able to work in the main house as a servant. July is taken away from her mother by Caroline Mortimer, the plantation owner John Mortimer's sister. During this passage, July and Kitty are seen in Tam Dewar's fabric: '[Kitty's] skirt, once striped yellow and black was only whispering its former lustre.but the child walking at her side was attired in a dress of the same fabric.this miniature displayed the cloth almost in its original hues' (Levy 2010: 38). The fabric is then representative of both Kitty and July being forcibly taken by their masters. The freshness of July's dress could also be symbolic of her being young and new; an undeveloped slave ready to be moulded by her masters to fit their needs. Kitty has lived through many years of hardship and slavery and her faded dress shows a tiredness; an acceptance of her fate. Much is made of July's status as a light skinned slave. She is often disparaging of people with dark skin, even of her own son, and sees herself as of a higher class because of her ancestry; 'July, as she is quick to remind us, is herself a mulatto, and rivalries over the comparative lightness of skin tone and provenance recur frequently and disquietingly' (Clark 2010). Even in the black community light skin is of value, and therefore shows the institutionalised racism present in Levy's Jamaican society. This highlights the complicated relationship July has with her parentage and culture, as she is proud of the fact that her father is Scottish; though he is a violent and cruel man. July becomes fixated with the categories that mixed-race children fall in to; 'a mulatto who breeds with a white man will bring forth a quadroon, and the quadroon who enjoys white relations will give to this world a mustee; the mustee will beget a mustiphino; and the mustaphino.[will] at last stride within this world as a cherished white person' (Levy 2010: 240-241). Later in the novel July gives birth to a child by the white Robert Goodwin, who is taken from her to live in England; the child is wanted because her skin is light enough to be acceptable in Britain. The legacy of white men reproducing with black slaves in The Long Song creates a population that has no set place in society, as they belong neither with their black African slaves nor their white owners. July is pulled between both cultures and races, but ultimately her black ancestry causes her to lose both her mother and daughter.

The loss and destruction caused by the mixed race relationships in The Long Song can also be seen in The Ventriloquist's Tale. As Shemak explains, 'the novel struggles with questions of indigenous identity in the interstitial space between tradition and modernity as it explores two generations of an Amerindian-Scottish family' (Shemak 2005: 353). Melville's protagonist Chofy McKinnon is born as a result of his grandmother's marriage to the Scottish Alexander McKinnon. The way they are married is reminiscent of The Long Song; McKinnon marries both Maba and her sister Zuna without considering their feelings in any way; they are taken without asking, much like July and Kitty. McKinnon's relationship with his wives is clinical and unromantic as they exist to provide him with sex and children. Maba and Zuna are therefore a product for the white west to consume at its will. This also draws interesting parallels with The Long Song, as both novels show European dominance over people and landscape. Whilst in Levy's novel the British slave owners cultivate the land for sugarcane, in The Ventriloquist's Tale Melville shows another side to the destruction of the Caribbean region. For Chofy and his family, the influx of Europeans does not represent slavery, but the more modern issues of Guyana being raided for its natural resources. By taking Maba and Zuna as his wifes, McKinnon is asserting western dominance over their home ground, and claiming it as his own so he may exploit it as he wishes. Maba sums up the Amerindian's feelings towards outsiders succinctly 'blue eyes meant ignorance' (Melville 1998: 97). As with The Long Song, the mixed race marriage of McKinnon and Maba results in negative consequences; namely the incestuous relationship between two of their children, Danny and Beatrice. As Bragard perceptively notes: 'the motif of incest, an extreme metaphor for the refusal to mix, links all versions of the eclipse myth and introduces the novel's core question, of whether cross-cultural encounters are viable' (Bragard 2008: 416). Both Danny and Beatrice have encounters with different races and cultures before they begin their affair, so they have experienced the outside, the 'other', and chose to refute it. In many ways their relationship is a form of protest against the western explorers and developers who seek to invade their land. In tying in their incest to an ancient myth, Melville is tying the couple to the earth that surrounds them; they are intrinsically part of their ancient culture. Outsiders such as professor Wormoal study the mythology of the Wapisiana tribe, but are never able to fully understand its meaning; therefore Danny and Beatrice's connection means their culture and traditions are kept secret from others. Their incest, and subsequent son, is a manner of self-preservation; not only for the landscape but the tribe's ancient culture.

In The Long Song, the slaves of African origin are also faced with the complexity of keeping their own culture alive. The novel is set around the time of the 'Baptist war' of 1831-1832; as the slave trade started in around the 16th century, July's ancestors may have been in the Caribbean for hundreds of years. The slave's African heritage and their customs, language and beliefs become amalgamated with the culture of their oppressors: Colonial Jamaica was never encouraged to have any sense of national dignity...we were instead to have a sort of Empire dignity, and the literature was really a by-product of an educational system geared to ensure loyalty to England, and designed to make us look outside for standards and values (Oakley in Donnell and Welsh 1996: 92). July and Kitty have no access to a formal education, but are expected to speak English and behave in a manner that is deemed acceptable to their English masters. July is taught to write, but it is only to further Caroline Mortimer's power over her slaves. However, the slave population in The Long Song is able to offer a small resilience to European culture by creating noise. The noise Kitty creates whilst giving birth to July infuriates Tam Dewar, and on her arrival in Jamaica Caroline Mortimer is dismayed by the 'calamitous din' (Levy 2010: 33). In her essay on The Long Song, Rahbek associates the title of the novel with a repetitive song: 'the title is aptly chosen: a long song is a cyclical song that has no real ending, but that is sung over and over again' (Rahbek 2010: 147). The title could be a criticism on the generations of slaves that were abused; showing that the legacy of slavery was one of terror, repeated with each new generation. Levy herself is of Jamaican descent and another of her novels, A Small Island, reflects on the relationship between the british and their racism towards Afro-Caribbeans in the 1950s. This shows that the 'long song' did not end with the abolition of slavery. The title is also strikingly similar to that of A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid; a jeremiad on the legacy of slavery on Antigua, showing that Levy may have been influenced by Kincaid and her views on the post-colonial Caribbean. Pauline Melville's origins as a Guyanese writer of mixed African, Amerindian and European descent is apparent in the text. The relationships between the different ethnicities and civilisations in The Ventriloquist's Tale are complex due to the variety of contrasting cultures, as Lawson Welsh explains there are 'imposing narratives of missionary, colonial, postcolonial and neo-colonial forces' (Lawson Welsh 1997: 118). Set 100-150 years after The Long Song the novel not only explores Amerindian culture, but the decedents of Indian and African slaves that were brought to Guyana. The novel's characters are often named by their race; the Cuban doctor, the East Indian nurse, the English nun, the Portuguese school girl. This says much about the importance of being a certain race even in a seemingly well integrated community. In Melville's portrait of a modern Georgetown, Portuguese, Afro-Caribbean and Indian people seem to assimilate well; it is the Amerindians that are the outsiders. Perhaps this is due to a Guyanan mindset of all races being superior to the native tribes, or it may be that all races are seen as inferior to white. When Beatrice forms a connection to an Afro-Caribbean worker Danny states 'I'm ashamed of you' in their native tongue, and Beatrice replies 'Too bad, isn't it?' (Melville 1998: 161) in English. Shemak argues that this is a crucial passage in the novel as Beatrice is asserting her opinion in English, the language that she shares with the Afro-Caribbean man: 'this is a critical linguistic moment that signals the role of translation in defining cultural identity.Beatrice's reply in English indicates her disruption of the cultural and racial boundaries that Danny attempts to maintain by speaking Wapisiana' (Shemak 2005: 360). Three of the McKinnon children are educated in Georgetown at an English speaking convent. Beatrice faces racism from her classmates as one calls her a 'dirty buck girl' (Melville 1998: 141) and she is 'introduced to the complicated colour-coding that afflicted Georgetown society' (Melville 1998: 139). A few years before Melville's novel was published, Paul Tennessee, leader of the Democratic Labour Movement in Guyana, argued that racism towards the Amerindian people was prevalent in Guyanian society; 'the Amerindian people of Guyana, the original owners, are victims of racism among the Indian and African people' (Tennessee 1992: 44). Tennessee does not mention that both the Indian and African communities were brought to Guyana by Europeans who used them in slavery; in many ways Guyana would have been a negative and punishing place for them. Therefore they may have associated the native people with oppression of their ancestors. In The Ventriloquist's tale, the different cultures born of slavery create a melting pot that the Amerindians are excluded from- perhaps due to their lack of a shared history with the immigrant population.

Both The Long Song and The Ventriloquist's Tale highlight negative consequences of racial and cultural heterogeneity. In the end, all of the prominent white British characters- Alexander McKinnon, Father Napier, Catherine Mortimer and Robert Goodwin- return to their homeland. In her essay on The Long Song, Fisher argues that 'the legacy of slavery corrupts most relations between white and black people, as well as distorting interactions among black people.the few white people who fail to uphold white supremacy find themselves brutally ostracized and vilified by other whites' (Fischer 2010: 38). This statement then shows that the multi-cultural society created by slavery is detrimental to all areas of the community. Levy's portrait of white characters in Jamaica is one-dimensional in that they are all uncaring and violent towards their slaves; even Robert Goodwin, who appears kind at first, eventually becomes racist and cruel. Though this view of race is simplistic, Levy's characterisations are neither unfounded nor unfair. Whilst is it possible that some plantation owners were kind to their slaves, historical evidence shows that overwhelmingly they were not. By making the issue of mixed-race children and their place in society prominent in the novel, Levy reflects the power that light skin had over 19th century Jamaican society. Melville chooses to focus often on skin colour, but follows a lesser known Caribbean narrative as Dabydeen explains: 'scholarly research has been focused overwhelmingly on the African dimension' (Dabydeen and Samaroo 1987: 10). Other well known Guyanese writers such as Janice Shinebourne with her novel The Last Plantation have focused on the country's African heritage, so by Melville focusing on the native people of Guyana she is helping to remedy Dabydeen's statement. As with Levy, Melville's picture of racial integration is not a happy one; for example, the influx of American oil developers directly causes the death of Chofy Mckinnon's son, Bla-Bla. Whilst The Long Song and The Ventriloquist's Tale may paint diversity in a pessimistic light, it is important to note that in both novels multiculturalism has developed through force, and often violence. The stories show how the legacy of slavery and exploration creates a complicated relationship between races and cultures, as the dominant white Europeans force their traditions upon the indigenous and slave populations. However, through small acts of resistance they are able to preserve their own culture and in many cases start a new one altogether; showing that the damaging legacy of forced heterogeneity can be overcome.