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1、 Place, Language, and Identity in AfroCosta Rican Literature This page intentionally left blank Place, Language, and Identity in AfroCosta Rican Literature Dorothy E. Mosby University of Missouri Press Columbia and London Copyright 2003 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Mis
2、souri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 107 06 05 04 03 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mosby, Dorothy E., 1970 Place, language, and identity in Afro-Costa Rican literature / Dorothy E. Mosby. p. cm. Inclu
3、des bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8262-1472-X (alk. paper) 1. Costa Rican literatureBlack authorsHistory and criticism. 2. Costa Rican literature20th centuryHistory and criticism. 3. Blacks in literature.4. Bernard, EulaliaCriticism and inter- pretation.5. Duncan, Quince, 1940Criticis
4、m and interpreta- tion.6. Campbell Barr, Shirley, 1965Criticism and interpreta- tion.7. Woolery, Delia McDonaldCriticism and interpretation. I. Title. PQ7480.5 .M67 2003 860.9?89607286dc21 2003000586 ? ? This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for
5、Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Kristie Lee Typesetter: The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printer and Binder: The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group Typefaces: Adobe Garamond, Worcester To my grandmother Dorothy Josephine Snowden This page intentionally left blank Contents Pre
6、faceix Acknowledgmentsxi Abbreviationsxiii IntroductionAfroCosta Rican Writing A Diaspora Literature1 OneRoots and Routes Foundations of Black Literature in Costa Rica32 TwoNegotiating Home The Poetry of Eulalia Bernard75 ThreeQuince Duncan and the Development of AfroCosta Rican Identity120 FourTo B
7、e Young, Gifted, and Black Shirley Campbell and Delia McDonald167 ConclusionBecoming Costa Rican233 Bibliography239 Index247 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface There is a Creole saying in Limn, Costa Rica, that speaks to the history, iden- tity, and culture of the AfroCosta Ricans. To sa
8、y “me navel-string bury dere” is an affi rmation of “belonging” to a place and a challenge to those who deny the cultural contributions of the descendants of West Indian immigrants born in Costa Rica who helped to form its modern state. To bury your “navel-string” or umbilical cord in a place is, in
9、 effect, to plant the self in a particular space or ter- ritory. The expression refers to a folk practice of “burying an infants umbilical cord in its parents home ground . . . or in some place of symbolic signifi cance.”1 It is to literally take a piece of the developing self and inter it so that i
10、t becomes part of the land and, in doing so, represents an indelible bond between the self and place. To bury the “navel-string” of the descendants of AfroWest Indian immigrants in Costa Rica is to root the self to a locationto affi rm that this place is a home, even if home neglects, denies, or ren
11、ders invisible the black pres- ence. This diffi cult affi rmation of belonging is represented in the traditional oral lit- erature, such as stories of Anancy (the trickster spider of African Ashanti animal tales) and calypsonian lyrics, and in published and unpublished AfroCosta Ri- can writers of W
12、est Indian descent, including Alderman Johnson Roden, Dolores Joseph, Eulalia Bernard, Quince Duncan, Shirley Campbell, Delia McDonald, Prudence Bellamy, Claudio Reid Brown, Marcia Reid, and Alonso Foster. The literature records an “intrahistory” often neglected by the hegemonic and ho- mogenizing p
13、roject of the Europeanized values of the dominant Hispanic cul- ture of Costa Rica. Black writing from Costa Rica reveals the story of a people who were formed and strengthened by the great waves of West Indian migrant la- borers, who began to arrive in 1872. This study developed out of research con
14、ducted in Costa Rica on a Fulbright Grant for graduate study and research abroad during the 19971998 academic year. The original focus of my project was literature by AfroCosta Rican women. After conducting interviews, meeting people in the community, visiting libraries, and speaking with academics,
15、 I decided it was necessary to expand my research to include male writers. Questions of place, language, and identity ix 1. Oxford Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage, s.v. “navel-string.” emerged as ever-present issues across the few generations of black writers of West Indian descent. I learned
16、in the course of the investigation that each generation expresses these notions in different ways and that identity is not the fi xed cate- gory I once imagined it to be. As I read more of the literature, it became apparent that identity for blacks in Costa Rica has shifted and changed over time through their engagement with place, language, and the quest for “belonging.” The early AfroWest Indian im- migrants wanted to make money from their labor and return home. The
