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August 31, 2023
Commemorating Emancipation provides apt opportunities to recognize the spiritual and intellectual forces that have kept us going during enslavement and our ongoing quest for self-determination and reparatory justice. Our African-retentive Kaiso music originated in our struggle for emancipation and permeates our essence. Yet, our indigenous arts have been slighted, not given fair credit in scholarships compared to the established icons of social and political sciences and art flowing from ‘our’ European ‘heritage.’ August 1 marked 189 years since the end of enslavement in the English-speaking Caribbean and the start of the most significant event in Caribbean history.
In this wrap-up of Emancipation Month, we feature “Dara Wilkinson Bobb’s ‘Gods Of Bruising‘ Through An Emancipatooty Lens” and Rex Lassalle’s “Lieutenant David Brizan, That Stoic, Elusive Warrior!“
Former British colonial countries across the Caribbean commemorate Emancipation Day beginning August 1. The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) further inspired a rebellious region. This was exemplified by Jamaica’s Sam Sharpe Rebellion, one of the largest slave rebellions in the British-colonial Caribbean, Bussa’s Rebellion in Barbados, Fedon’s Rebellion in Grenada, and The Berbice Slave Rebellion in Guyana, which were central to Britain’s sense of self-security, which reluctantly led to the abolition of slavery in 1833.
Referencing August 1, 1838 (following the so-called apprentice) as the actual Emancipation Day compels reflections on the impulse to freedom throughout the region. Yet, while that passion burned within the soul as it existed in Africa from whence the enslaved people came, its first realization outside Africa was Haiti. In “Happy Emancipation Day!” Martin Felix underscores the importance of the Haitian Revolution of 1804, which “birthed the first post-slavery independent Black Republic,” thus inspiring and inciting change in Latin America and the
The Caribbean. If, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o affirms, “In colonial conquest, language did to the mind what the sword did to the bodies of the colonized,” then by defeating the colonists, language became the new theatre of war as Haiti “turned history upside dung!” Later on, countries determined to decolonize their space through language, hence the conscious development of Haitian Creole and Jamaican and other variants of patois.
Little wonder that as early as 1966, the Jamaican poet Louise Bennet-Coverley would contest consignment to the world’s periphery by positing “colonizin in reverse,” thereby, like Marcus Garvey, anticipating and laying the groundation for “decolonizing the mind.” Furthering the quest to affirm ourselves through our distinctive languages, Black Stalin offered, “Africans always resisting European language. Ah, mean, we get licks to learn English. So, we speak Resistance [Language.].”
Against this backdrop of language contestation, we share Ketlie Camille’s review of Joanne Kilgour Dowdy’s “Olympic Hero: Lennox Kilgour’s Story,” translated into Haitian Creole by Fequiere Vilsaint. This initiative is part of our commitment to including more regional languages as we embrace a multi-media frame. Emancipation Day was first declared a holiday in T&T on August 1, 1985, and is now celebrated throughout the region.
Read on, and be stimulated on Emancipation Day and Beyond! Join the conversation below by posting your Comments.
From BDN Editors