Abstract
In 1929, there were at least two significant developments in anglophone Caribbean literature. The first was Seepersad Naipaul’s appointment to the Trinidad Guardian as a columnist. His column addressed debates on social and religious reform that dominated Indo-Trinidadian communities. Issues and even sections from these columns would feature prominently in his fiction.1 In 1929, Naipaul was already established in Indo-Trinidadian literary institutions. He was a member of the Star of India Literary Club of Tunapuna and in 1929 published poetry in the East Indian Weekly.2 Naipaul’s move to the Trinidad Guardian from the Indo-Trinidadian press was a critical advance for him but also for his community, as Indo-Trinidadians would now have a significantly larger voice in the national press. It was also a significant event in the development of West Indian literature as his journalism provided material for his short story collection Gurudeva, and Other Indian Tales (1943), which was published in Trinidad and sold very well. In the early 1950s, before his death in 1953, Henry Swanzy featured his short stories on the BBC’s Caribbean Voices along with the writing of Lamming, Selvon, and other now-canonical writers.3 Furthermore, Seepersad Naipaul provided his son V. S. Naipaul, one of the region’s most influential artists, with a model, in fact an imperative, to succeed as a writer. The elder Naipaul has never been incorporated to any degree within the literary tradition; certainly his 1929 arrival at the Trinidad Guardian has escaped notice.
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Notes
V. S. Naipaul, foreword in The Adventures of Gurudeva, by Seepersad Naipaul (London: Heinemann, 1976), 9–11.
Kris Rampersad, Finding a Place: IndoTrinidadian Literature (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Press, 2002)
C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary (1963; reprint, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 3–4.
Reinhard Sander, “The Turbulent Thirties in Trinidad: An Interview with Alfred Mendes,” World Literature in Written in English 12, no. 1 (April 1973), 66.
Albert Gomes, “Local Fiction,” Beacon 1, no. 10 (January–February 1932), 1.
Mendes, commentary in From Trinidad: An Anthology of Early West Indian Writing, ed. Reinhard Sander and Peter Ayer (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1978), 21–26.
Kenneth Ramchand and Louis James, who wrote the first scholarly studies of West Indian literature, present the Beacon group in these terms, as does Reinhard Sander, who has written the only book-length study on the group. See Ramchand, The West Indian Novel and Its Background (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), 64–71
Sander, Trinidad Awakening, 153–154. For the significance of calypso to this later tradition, see, for example, Keith Warner’s analysis of the works of V. S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, and Earl Lovelace in his Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso: A Study of the Calypso as Oral Literature (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1982)
Bridget Brereton, A History of Modern Trinidad, 1783–1962 (Port of Spain, Trinidad: Heinemann, 1981), 160–161
Kelvin Singh, Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad, 1917–1945 (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1994), 15–18
Nigel Bolland, The Politics of Labour in the British Caribbean: The Social Origins of Authoritarianism and Democracy in the Labour Movement (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2001), 193–194
Jo-Anne S. Ferreira, The Portuguese of Trinidad and Tobago: Portrait of an Ethnic Minority (St. Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1994), 17.
Daniel Segal, “‘Race’ and ‘Colour’ in Pre-independence Trinidad and Tobago,” in Trinidad Ethnicity, ed. Kevin Yelvington (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993), 84.
Michael Anthony, Parade of the Carnivals of Trinidad, 1839–1989 (Port of Spain, Trinidad: Circle Press, 1989), 1–5
Gordon Rohlehr, Calypso and Society in Pre-independence Trinidad (Port of Spain: published by the author, 1990), 30–31
Peter van Koningsbruggen, Trinidad Carnival: A Quest for National Identity (London: Macmillan, 1997), 36–37.
Arthur McShine, “Biographical Sketch of the Late the Honourable Dr. A. H. McShine CBE MD CM of Trinidad and Tobago, a Memorial Lecture of the Medical Society of Trinidad and Tobago” (Marquette, Michigan: printed by the author, 1973), 8–9.
Singh, Race and Class Struggles, 115; Rhoda Reddock, Women, Labour, and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago (London: Zed Books, 1994), 47.
Raymond Quevedo, Atilla’s Kaiso: A Short History of Trinidad Calypso (St. Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies, School of Continuing Studies, 1994), 28.
Mendes, The Autobiography of Alfred H. Mendes, ed. Michèle Levy (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2002), 79–80.
Sander, Trinidad Awakening, 55; Clytus Thomasos, “The Dougla,” Beacon 2, no. 10 (April 1933), 9–11.
Mendes, “Sweetman,” Beacon 1, no. 7 (October 1931), 3.
Mendes, “Five Dollars Worth of Flesh,” Beacon 1, no. 6 (September 1931), 13–15.
Reddock, “The Indentureship Experience: Indian Women in Trinidad,” in Women Plantation Workers: International Experiences, ed. Shobita Jain and Rhoda Reddock (New York: Berg, 1998), 30
Shalini Puri, “Canonized Hybridities, Resistant Hybridities: Chutney Soca, Carnival, and the Politics of Nationalism,” Caribbean Romances: The Politics of Regional Representation, ed. Belinda J. Edmondson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 32.
C. L. R. James, “La Divina Pastora,” in The C.L.R. James Reader, ed. Anna Grimshaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 25–28
Percival C. Maynard, “His Last Fling,” Beacon 2, no. 11 (May 1933), 13–16
Mendes, “Good Friday at the Church of La Divina Pastora,” Beacon 2, no. 2 (June 1932), 7–11.
Mendes, “Boodhoo,” Beacon 1, no. 11 (March 1932), 18–25
Nancy Stepan, “Biological Degeneration: Races and Proper Places,” in Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, ed. J. Edward Chamberlin and Sander Gilman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 103.
Mendes, “Boodhoo,” Beacon 1, no. 11 (March 1932), 20.
Robert Young, Colonial Desire (New York: Routledge, 1995), 19.
Mendes, “Boodhoo,” Beacon 1, no. 12 (April 1932), 26.
Mendes, “Boodhoo,” Beacon 1, no. 11 (March 1932), 21.
Mendes, “Boodhoo,” Beacon 2, no. 1 (May 1932), 9.
Kathleen Archibald, “Beyond the Horizon,” Beacon 1, no. 3 (June 1931), 29–31.
Eleanor Waby, “Trinidad Then and Now,” Beacon 2, no. 2 (June 1932), 21–23
Jean de Boissière, “Germany: As I Saw It in 1931,” part 1, Beacon 2, no. 1 (May 1932), 22.
Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art, and Homosexual Fantasy (New York: Routledge, 1993), 99.
Boissière, “Impressions and Experiences in the Austrian and Italian Tyrol,” Beacon 2, no. 4 (August 1932), 27.
Boissière, “Via Appia,” Beacon 2, no. 11 (May 1933), 11–12.
Boissière, “The Albergo Bengazi,” Beacon 3, no. 3 (October 1933), 56–57.
James, Beyond a Boundary (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 21–38.
Patricia Mohammed, “Writing Gender into History: The Negotiation of Gender Relations among Indian Men and Women in Post-Indenture Trinidad Society, 1917–47,” in Engendering History, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Bailey (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle; Oxford: James Currey, 1995), 35.
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© 2007 Leah Reade Rosenberg
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Rosenberg, L.R. (2007). The Realpolitik of Yard Fiction: Trinidad’s Beacon Group. In: Nationalism and the Formation of Caribbean Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09922-8_6
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