Here’s a crash course in #CaribbeanLiterature in the 20th century:

It might seem ironic that the business of Caribbean lit took hold in London, but it was here, in the 1950s and 60s where writing became a real career prospect for people from the region
#AcademicTwitter

Before we go any further, did you noticed I havent used to the term 'West Indian' yet? It's contentious to those of us who grew up in the region (kinda like BAME in the UK). Here's why, TL'DR in thread below https://zakiyamckenzie.com/2020/09/caribbean-vs-west-indian-bame-vs-poc-whats-in-a-name/

I dont know any Jamaicans (who lived in JA for most of their lives)that refer to themselves as West Indians. First off all, Columbus was wrong, he thought he was in India when he arrived in Haiti in 1942. Once they found the real India in the East, the rest of us became 'West'

Wow, 1942 should be 1492. Promise I know what im talking about

When I use 'West Indian' in my work on Black Britain and Caribbean journalism/lit, I am talking about a specific time and place. I am talking about the 'Windrush gen' (and those who came before) and the 'Windrush years'
-Screenshots from link above-

#AcademicChatter

Thus, secondly, I consider 'West Indian' to be an identity born of migration from different countries in the region, to one central city (Stuart Hall talks about this). Here, London, also NYC since the Harlem Renaissance with man like Claude McKay and big woman like Claudia Jones

Highly recommend that anyone interested in this very critical time in British and Caribbean history reads George Lamming's The Pleasures of Exile and Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners. Lamming (Barbadian) and Selvon (Trinidadian) came to UK on same ship, were great friends

With the post-war call to the empire for workers, there were lots of creatives - writers, calypsonians etc- who came over too. Lucky for the writers, UK publishing was ready for something new. ALOT of them were published, it was somewhat of a golden period https://twitter.com/ZakiyaMedia/status/1300805726110208000?s=20

This has been well documented, there are names that you will just hear over and over when talking about early West Indian lit - Lamming, Selvon, VS Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Edgar Mittelholzer, Andrew Salkey etc.... My research is concerned with those on fringes, those we dont know

My work is about memorialization, canonization: who decides what goes into canon, who writes narrative, what might have been left out, what might be over represented? For this, I refer to memory scholars like @OlivetteOtele, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Paget Henry's Caliban's Reason