Here are some reading/discussion questions for the Phillips reading:
Choose one of the major characters of the novel and describe their major personality characteristics, life history, motivations (what makes them act they way that they act?)
How does Phillips depict plantation slavery? Such as, the day to day relationships between enslaved Africans and overseers? African culture on the plantation?
Discuss the intellectual evolution of the daughter of the absentee plantation owner. She starts the novel as a person opposed to slavery. How do her ideas about slavery change as she encounters enslaved Africans?
Religion, its role in the story.
Cambridge, the character.
Describe the plantation at the outset and be able to describe the "myth and the reality" of the plantation. In other words, discuss the differences between "appearances" and "realities" of slave plantation life.
What appears to have been the overarching purpose for writing this novel?
As you transition to Melville, the disjuncture between appearance and reality in the Transatlantic slavery system only becomes more pronounced!
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Author of Cambridge
Author of Salt
So when you count the number of dark-skinned people in the Western Hemisphere you can see that there are probably over 100 million...And this 100 million on the inside of the power structure today is what is causing a great deal of concern for the power structure itself. --Malcolm X’s Final Speech, February 14, 1965
Black Liberation in the African Diaspora Seminar Blog
C.L.R. James
Aime Cesaire
Frantz Fanon
Wilson Harris
George Lamming
Caryl Phillips
Author of Cambridge
Earl Lovelace
Author of Salt
Herman Melville
Wole Soyinka
Reading List
*_2008 African Diaspora Independent Study Reading, Spring Quarter (In order) _*
1) Caryl Phillips, “Cambridge” (Tumult and Silence on a Caribbean Sugar Island)
2) Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno” (The Middle Passage and “whiteness”)
3) Aimé Césaire, “Discourse on Colonialism” (Slavery, Colonialism, the Holocaust)
4) Wole Soyinka, “The Lion and the Jewel” (Nigeria, 20^th century)
5) C.L.R. James, “Minty Alley” (Trinidad, 1930s)
6) Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth” (Algerian War of Independence)
7) Earl Lovelace, “Salt: A Novel” (Trinidad, from slavery to the 1970s)
8) Wilson Harris, “The Secret Ladder” (Magical Realism) “The Guyana Quartet”)
9) George Lamming, “In the Castle of My Skin” (post-colonial Barbados)
And, read the CMMU 1136 course reader essays on African and African American women throughout the quarter.
1) Caryl Phillips, “Cambridge” (Tumult and Silence on a Caribbean Sugar Island)
2) Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno” (The Middle Passage and “whiteness”)
3) Aimé Césaire, “Discourse on Colonialism” (Slavery, Colonialism, the Holocaust)
4) Wole Soyinka, “The Lion and the Jewel” (Nigeria, 20^th century)
5) C.L.R. James, “Minty Alley” (Trinidad, 1930s)
6) Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth” (Algerian War of Independence)
7) Earl Lovelace, “Salt: A Novel” (Trinidad, from slavery to the 1970s)
8) Wilson Harris, “The Secret Ladder” (Magical Realism) “The Guyana Quartet”)
9) George Lamming, “In the Castle of My Skin” (post-colonial Barbados)
And, read the CMMU 1136 course reader essays on African and African American women throughout the quarter.
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