Editor's Introduction
by
Deborah Wyrick
North Carolina State University
Copyright © 2000 by Deborah Wyrick, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
- When I was a teenager, my father introduced me to the Caribbean. He had business in Jamaica, so he and my mother decided to take their daughters along during one of their trips. Before we left, we learned not only about rafting on the Rio Grande and how to dance the Ska but also about the living legacies of maroonage in the Cockpit country, about the problems of Bauxite mining, about Jamaican Creole. Thus my sister and I had a marvelous journey, our first trip 'overseas': we were tourists, of course (my father's business was incentive travel), but we were at least somewhat aware of the past and present histories layering the landscape. That visit to Jamaica inaugurated my interest in the Caribbean, an interest that has expanded to postcolonial studies as a whole, including the foundation of Jouvert. That visit also introduced me to Caribbean literature. One of my father's friends, the lead singer in a traditional Calypso band, gave my sister and me a book of Louise Bennett's poetry and Anansi tales. My little sister enjoyed the stories, and I was taken with the poems, particularly "Independence." The by-now dog-eared book, published locally by Sangster's Press, complete with recipes for crab soup and ads for Red Stripe beer, is one of my treasured possessions. It transmitted many lessons that gathered deeper significance over the years -- the interrelationship of history, art, and material culture; the importance of nation languages; the power of women's voices.
- My father always encouraged his daughters to give voice to their ideals and to their talents. Whether it was my sister's ballet or my attempts to learn Swahili, he and my mother supported our interests and eccentricities. Dad had started professional life as a journalist; intellectual curiosity combined with love for and attention to language shaped much of our home life. He adored word games, and we grew up thinking that spelling and vocabulary variation were types of play, not work. Later, he and my mother were the correctness police for written homework, leaving the good, bad, or indifferent content up to us. Whatever success I have had as a writer, academic and otherwise, I owe to my parents.
- Thus I dedicate this issue of Jouvert to my father, Richard M. Baker, who died on August 25 of this year. Given his long association with people and businesses in the Caribbean -- not only Jamaica but also the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Panama -- it is especially fitting that this issue features poems by Cyril Dabydeen and articles on Caribbean literature by John Brannigan and Samuel Durrant. Equally fitting are the millennium essays by Caren Kaplan and Inderpal Grewal and by R. Radhakrishnan. Dad's wish was to live until the year 2000, and he spent much of the months before his death assessing the preceding decades on personal and political levels. He would also have enjoyed Shanthini Pillai's discussion of K. S. Mariam's fiction; my father's World War II service in the China-Burma-India theater gave him a life-long regard for Southeast Asian culture. Similarly, he would have liked Eriks Uskalis's article on myth. As children, my sister and I would be treated to bed-time stories that starred mythological heroes from various cultures as frequently as more standard fairy-tale characters or creatures from Dad's vivid imagination. He would have appreciated Laura Moss's article on realism; although not a scholar himself, he recognized and applauded intellectual rigor. Finally, the range of concerns treated in this issue's book reviews -- by Shelly Jarrett Bromberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Charlene Regester, Laura Severin, and Harald Leusmann -- would have pleased him greatly.
- I keep writing "would have." This tense refers not just to my father's death but also to the fuzzing of mental acuity that repeated illnesses burdened him with over the past few years. He never did understand the Internet, nor exactly what an 'electronic journal' is. Two things he did understand about Jouvert, however, were that it was read by people all over the world, and that it was free of charge. He was very proud of the journal for these reasons alone, as they squared with his views on community, communication, and (perhaps oddly for a businessman) the primacy of service over profit. I'd like to thank our readership, the contributors to this issue, and the editorial board members for their continued support of the journal.