'Bottoms Up' at Calabash!
Source: Jamaica Gleaner (Original Article)
Edward Baugh and Claude McKay - FileThe Calabash International Literary Festival will this year commemorate the works of celebrated West Indian author Claude McKay, among others. One of his most endearing works is the novel Banana Bottom (1933) which will be featured at the festival. Published 75 years ago, it tells the story of the social and personal conflicts that arise in a rural Jamaican village when 22-year-old Bita Plant returns there to live after spending most of her teenage years in England.”This celebration of Banana Bottom is a natural for Calabash,” says Colin Channer, the festival’s founder and artistic director. “We’re committed to creating the future of Caribbean literature while keeping in touch with its past.”important voiceIn 1912, at the age of 23, Claude McKay left Jamaica never to return. But as he became one of the most important voices of the Harlem Renaissance with novels like Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1930) in the United States, and as his publishing slowly established him as one of Jamaica’s first internationally successful writers, he would return to Jamaican settings in his later novels, short stories and poems. He would return with a combination of nostalgia and clear-eyed memory to the hill villages of northern Clarendon where he was raised.Here, Kwame Dawes, programming director of Calabash, speaks to Professor Edward Baugh Baugh about the novel, McKay, and Baugh’s ‘game day’ preparation for important readings.It is often presumed that the ‘golden age’ of West Indian literature falls somewhere between 1950 and 1970, yet it is hard to ignore the pioneering work of writers like Claude McKay. Do you see a clear path connecting McKay to the writers of the ’50s and ’60s?I wouldn’t say a clear path in the sense of McKay’s having influenced the writers of the ’50s and ’60s, or of their having written with a consciousness of McKay behind them. I don’t know that there is much evidence of that, but there is Aussie MasterCard Credit Card a clear path in terms of …continue reading