On The Map: ON THE MAP at Advanced Seminar, UWI, Cave Hill

April 10, 2008

ON THE MAP at Advanced Seminar, UWI, Cave Hill

I screened ON THE MAP today to a small group of third year students in Lits 3501 Advanced Seminar in West Indian Literature at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados. After the screening we spoke about the issues raised by the film for nearly an hour. It was an honest and open discussion with an articulate group of bright, young students from around the Caribbean.

One young woman confessed to wanting to turn Guyanese into the Immigration Dept for a reward of BDS$75.00 - much to the surprise of her class mates. Another said she was unaware that people who were living as illegal immigrants were afraid and unable to seek recourse for being disadvantaged because they were completely outside of the system. Another felt that the film should be screened at all secondary schools to help students be more aware of the issues surrounding integration. Some students shared positive experiences in other Caribbean countries where they were warmly hosted by Vincentians and it made them realise that we could all do well from being more hospitable to our neighbour. They wondered how we could change things to make integration work better. I suggested that the value of literature, art and film was that they provide platforms for discussion, to challenge fixed points of view by offering another way of seeing. I welcome their participation and feedback on this site.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: The film was a total experience. An opportunity to open a window on a world that lies beneath the surface of our society. The existence of illegal migrant workers is taken for granted, what is also taken for granted is their humanity. Everyone who lives in the Caribbean should see this film; we need to open our eyes and ears and hearts and stop running.

Shawn Adderson Forde; 4/18/2008 5:35 AM
Annalee Davis said...: Shawn, Thanks so much for your sentiments. I have felt that some of the negative banter about illegal immigrants can turn into bullying and violence and we cannot take for granted that this cannot d/evolve into more than just talk. We must challenge the zenophobic, racist and intolerant language when we hear it and begin to speak more about our own experiences which have forced us to, as you say, open our eyes, ears and hearts. Be well.; 4/18/2008 6:54 PM
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We accept cheques or International postal orders included with your complete return mailing address and sent to Annalee Davis. Email Annalee for the mailing address.

You may also contact Annalee to schedule a screening at your school, university, artists' collective or gallery, community group, library, place of worship, private sector entity or government department. This can include a Panel Session which allows the issues raised by the film to be constructively discussed with the Director, invited Pannellists and the audience.

Statement

The Caribbean was the cradle of New World globalization. Our people all came from somewhere else, into the belly of the Americas.

Characterised by waves of migrant experience, the Caribbean became a place of confluence, transience and hybridity which for years romanticized the struggle to be whole, to become one Caribbean people. In spite of this ideal, we remain as fragmented as ever, locked into nationalist crevices, linguistic divides and exclusivist cultural legitimacy.

The repeated production of idyllic images of an eternal playground for tourists on the one hand, and notions of the region as fragmented, failed and chaotic on the other; mask a complex history, leaving Caribbeans ambivalent about a sense of self.

We must answer the question, both creatively and critically, what is the Caribbean? What image of ourselves do we wear and to what extent do these images represent who we actually are? What is the truth of our own lived realities and how do we speak to each other of this reality?

The challenge is to remove the mask created by the visitors’ gaze, to see through the rigid stereotypes, and to honestly reflect on our states of being.

My work exposes tensions within the larger context of a post-colonial history and the more recent experiences of post independence and 9/11. More personal explorations of home/land, longing and belonging, and creoleness, serve as cartographic meanderings of Caribbean space, and investigations of the self within that space; in an effort to discern the territory.

September 9 2007
St. George, Barbados

(complete text)

I am the complex Creole
My context is the Caribbean

An archipelago crocheted into a crossbreed
Of carnival, class and comess
Cognizant of Columbus
And the Commonwealth
That created these confused colonies
Correctly criticized for the callous treatment
Of the Amerindian
And the reconstitution
Of a Caribbean caste system

Several centuries later
My coronary artery crackles
When I think of the creatures
That created this cacophonous confusion

And although we collide
There is more chaos than community
Some feel like foreigners
As though uncharacteristic
Of these now ex-colonies
Our natural native islands

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

But I have a creed that I wear
Like a crest on my chest
My credentials are that I am created equally
Credible from my cranium to my coccyx

I cleave to no church, temple nor country
I sing the canticles
And practice a yoga
I chant
I breathe
I made my jappa and wrote a creed
I owned a crucifix
And acknowledge the crescent

I anoint myself with a communion of
Cinnamon, coffee and cumin
Cocoa, cotton and cane
It is with composure and compassion that
I conceive my compatriots as compatible
Whether Cuban or Guyanese,
Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew

I contemplate a Caribbean conservatory
That is a consanguineous conscious community
Confidently confirming a conglomerate
Who speak patois, Papiamento, Spanish and Creole

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole Chant

As a complex Creole
Confronting this crossroads of centuries
I cannot condone the corruption
Nor those who configure the conflict –
I outcast them from community

I contradict the unicursal way
And commemorate the cobweb we have become
I come to you
Not as a comedian
Nor as a clown
I come to you as a coalition
Of combustible matter
A civilized collective
Sometimes caustic, but never counterfeit
I am a cordless creator of culture
Conveying my codes
To a community that isn’t convinced
Of the credit of cultural producers

And now I wear coronet
A continuous circular

In my cipher
I chuckle
I weep

I celebrate the chorus of the Creole chant

April 10, 2008

ON THE MAP at Advanced Seminar, UWI, Cave Hill

3 comments:

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Statement

Creole Chant

(complete text)

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