Fresh Milk Books

Served Fresh

[freshmilk-books]

Guest #CCF Review - The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of                          Seeing

By: Dominique Hunter

Looking. We do it all the time, often without considering the fact that we are indeed looking. Just looking. Aside from the obvious inclusion of an adverb, what is the difference, if any? Implicit in both is the idea that the eyes are observing people and objects, and the brain is processing information (however trivial) about these things. James Elkins in his book titled The Object Stares Back posits that there is no substantial difference between looking and just looking. The same action is involved and the intention is often the same in both cases. We look because our interest has been piqued. But perhaps the addition of the word “just” is an indication that our interest has been piqued for a shorter time because the person or object being looked at has not kindled enough interest.

Elkins makes an introduction to his thesis by discussing the casual manner in which we consider sight, if at all. He points to the very simple functions of our eyes and the linear way we assume they work everyday. We wake, open our eyes, observe our environment, and finally close our eyes to sleep at night. The pattern continues the next day and the day after that. This cyclical routine remains unbroken, and then we die. Grim though it may be, Elkins presents an alternative that is not so deceptively simple. He uses this preconceived idea of looking as a platform to subvert the idea of simplicity altogether. Equipped with just enough knowledge on psychology, literature, art history and science, he problematizes this simple theory of looking in an attempt to underscore its shortcomings. “The truth is more difficult: seeing is irrational, inconsistent, and undependable. It is immensely troubled, cousin to blindness and sexuality, and caught up in the threads of the unconscious.”[1]

The act of looking, he goes on to say, is driven by force, desire and intent. Looking therefore becomes synonymous with “[…] thoughts of using, possessing, repossessing, owning, fixing, appropriating, keeping, remembering, commemorating, cherishing, borrowing and stealing.”[2]  The result is an aggressive type of looking which Elkins describes as an act of violence. This may seem like a stretch but he explains that looking distorts what is being looked at. In the case of people, it transforms the person being looked at into an object while simultaneously removing the shame the observer would have felt from staring at said person. The picture is a classic example. “[It] presents itself as an unapproachable object forever detached from the nets of possessiveness and violence, and yet it urges on its viewers, impelling them to walk up to it, to touch it, to move into it or run away.”[3]

Elkins provides an intriguing perspective on looking and the way the eyes and brain work. Although there are times when re-reading is essential to understanding the complexity of his ideas, his book is well worth the read. He admits that the book could have been anywhere between five hundred and five thousand pages long. While this could be true, there was quite a bit of fat that could have been trimmed from the book as well. But perhaps one could make an argument for the author’s choice and prerogative to create a certain type of atmosphere. Regardless, what becomes clear throughout the entire book is how little we understand vision. We take for granted the fact that, although not always glaringly obvious, we are making specific decisions about what we choose to see. Elkins has undertaken the enormous challenge of peeling back the layers to reveal the intricate network of factors that work together to expose the restrictions and fallibilities of just looking.

Sources:

 1. Elkins, James. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. 11.  2. Elkins, James. 22.  3. Elkins, James. 32.

The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing is available by request at our library. - FMB

For more information on Dominique Hunter, who recently completed an internship with Fresh Milk, click here. 

[freshmilk-books]

The Wretched of the Earth

By: Ronald Williams

Boo!!!

Ha ha, you scared of me?

Nah…I mean really?

I only got a sharp tongue and a sharp attitude

Some nice clothes and some hard shoes

Officers…

I’m not a knucklehead or a fool

I mean

What did I do?

There’s only one of me and five of you

I don’t have drugs or a gun

Don’t shoot!!

I’m not gonna run!

I’m on the ground

I’m down!

Your knees in my back

My hands…they’re flat

Is it because I’m black?

My pockets... empty

Can’t you see?

I can’t breathe

You’ve humiliated me

No gun, no weed, no knife

I’m choking

Soon I won’t have a life

I can’t fight back

Even if I tried

My world fades to black

Would you care if I died?

I wanted to try something different for Frantz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ so I stepped out of my comfort zone and dipped into poetry. Throughout this text the complex role violence plays in decolonisation is central. Fanon minces no words in stating this fact: colonisation, which was achieved through violent means, could only be effectively reversed through extreme force.

However, this violence is a two way street. As the colonised rise, the colonisers react in fear and direct their military force to uphold the colonial system. Their tactics were to carry out ‘blameless’ acts of violence, which were required to keep the savage native in check. It’s this fear that struck a chord with me. This fear is a deep seated emotion found in the oppressor, a subconscious part of his psyche.

My mind kept drifting across the Caribbean Sea as I read. It drifted and eventually channelled into the relatively recent acts of police barbarism in the U.S.A. It’s not because it’s a current issue that I feel connected, it’s slightly personal. I could just as easily be at the mercy of this brutality had I been born 20 degrees north and west.

I see strong parallels between the colonised states Fanon tried to inspire and the United States which demoralises the black population. Colonialism isn’t in effect, but the American armed forces are still tasked with ensuring the system runs smoothly (a system which still disadvantages the Negro).

In my opinion, fear—an irrational fear, still drives the oppressors and is the root cause of these killings. Fears of the vengeful Djangos, of the bad mofos like Shaft they helped create and celebrate on screen, and ultimately fears that the system created by unspeakably violent means will be destroyed when this violence comes full circle.

Source: Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1961. Print.

The Wretched of the Earth is available by request at our library. - FMB

[freshmilk-books]

Walking / Writing for Rebirth

By: Versia Harris

This week I chose to review A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros; a book drawing attention to how walking has been an integral factor in the lives of many great thinkers, and the role it plays in the creativeness of the mind. I specifically concentrated on Chapter 14: Regeneration and Presence. It focuses on the pilgrim's long journey as he encounters various landscapes and 'holy places', shedding his old self and creating anew. My response to this chapter was to write it out multiple times, all the while stripping it of words each time I rewrote it. The last re-write is representative of the rebirth of the pilgrim. 

See full review here.

Source: Gros, Frederic. A Philosophy of Walking. Verso Books, 2014. Print.

A Philosophy of Walking is available by request at our library. - FMB

[freshmilk-books]

Guest #CCF Review: Purple Hibiscus

By: Jordan Clarke

Purple Hibiscus (2003) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie follows the story of Kambili, a young girl growing up in a strict household dominated by her father, a wealthy Catholic in post-independent Nigeria. Kambili’s father has created an isolated environment in which she, her brother Jaja, and their mother, Mama, are to live. Controlling by fear and punishment, Papa uses the severe interpretation of the Bible and Catholicism that he received in colonial Nigeria as a way to maintain order in the compound. The novel takes place during a time in Nigeria when the country is falling into civil disorder.  

Two concepts that I found particularly interesting were the need for approval and the lack of voice. We watch the beginnings of Kambili’s transformation from fearful, silent obedience to self-respect and independence.

The search for approval really resonated with me because it is something all children and even adults constantly seek in life. I think that when you receive approval at home, you don’t worry so much about receiving it out in the world since you already have a sense of self-worth. In Purple Hibiscus, however, Kambili wants most of all to please her father and to be praised by him. Papa’s approval unfortunately is dependent on conforming to his abnormal, brutal standards.

A related theme running through the novel is silence or the idea of unspoken secrets. On many occasions, Kambili talks about feeling “suffocated” or not being able to speak.  While considerable physical and mental abuse is happening openly in Kambili’s home, no one ever talks about it. At one point, Kambili suggests that it’s almost easier not to think about it. The family members discuss only ‘safe’ matters: “We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.”

Early in the novel, Kambili talks about her mother’s ballet figurines which she would polish religiously. This is Mama’s way to escape from the beatings that are happening in their household: “I used to wonder why she polished them each time I heard the sounds from their room, like something being banged against the door.”

The act of laughing freely is part of having a voice, but laughter has never been a part of Kambili’s life. This changes when, because of increasing civil unrest, Kambili and her brother are sent to live with their Aunty Ifeoma, a university professor and her two children, Obiora and Chima. While staying with Aunty Ifeoma, Kambili notices startling differences in the households. One morning during prayer, for example, Aunty Ifeoma prays for laughter amongst other things. “As we made the sign of the cross, I looked up to seek out Jaja’s face, to see if he, too, was bewildered that Aunty Ifeoma and her family prayed for, of all things, laughter.” Laughter, until then, has been a foreign concept for Kambili.

Throughout the novel, Kambili and her brother navigate between the extremes represented by these two households. On the one hand is their oppressive family atmosphere where no one is given a voice. On the other hand is their aunt’s household where everyone speaks freely and respectfully. The model of her aunt’s family and the encouragement of a caring young Nigerian priest help Kambili begin the transition from a terrorised subject of abuse to a happier, self-aware survivor.

Source: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus. New York: Anchor Books, 2003. Print.

Purple Hibiscus is available by request at our library. For more information on Jordan Clarke, who recently completed a residency with Fresh Milk, visit her artist website. 

[freshmilk-books]

Wide Sargasso Sea: Can you be insane if you are alone?

By: Tristan Alleyne

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea guides us through a long road of despair, narrating the story of Annette and later her daughter Antoinette Cosway as forces beyond their control cast them down a path of loneliness and social exclusion. Rhys couples this with an unforgiving society and a rapid succession of events which push both of these women to the edge.

Rhys makes it immediately evident that seclusion is a key aspect of life for the Cosway family and the Coulibri tenants. Antoinette stated this when she said “no one came near us. I got used to a solitary life.” While solitude can be self-enforced, for the Cosways the greatest trial was being shunned by the surrounding villagers, never noticed nor acknowledged; condemned as “white cockroaches.”

Antoinette’s childhood directly informed her troubles later in life, whether it was the rejection by her cold-hearted mother who was only attached to her brother, the constant abandonment by her close friends and family (most of whom used her for personal gain) or the anger of the local people and her status as a pariah. This exclusion only led to further isolation in her mind.

In many ways, Rhys has shaped loneliness within these characters as a ‘getaway’ from reality, so much so that Antoinette would ignore the surrounding world and became intolerant towards people. This alienation, compounded by acts of betrayal, causes Antoinette's personality to twist. Her issues followed her to her stay at the convent, continuing to chip away at her sanity.

In an attempt to shake the isolation of her life, Antoinette weds an Englishman – Mr. Rochester – but this match only worsened the situation. Both husband and wife respond to each other in peculiar ways; Rochester’s removal from the society in which he has been forced into creates a rift between the two. He cannot part ways with his previous lifestyle, and with his doubts towards his marriage, his withdrawal from his wife only grows. They both fail to trust or understand each other, sending Antoinette further down a pathway of mental instability. Rhys has now made Antoinette the bearer of her mother’s own insanity, deranged and alone. As was with her childhood, the one thing that could save her was never there: someone to be attentive to her. This culminates in her seeking a final escape — suicide.

Rhys explores how these constant feelings of desolation and loss, whether it is from the death of Pierre or watching the Coulibri estate burn, can affect the mind. Both mother and daughter implode from their social outcast, and with each loss of a piece of their reality, they slowly sink into the abyss of their inner turmoil.  

Looking at madness from the outside is always easy; we are quick to judge and conclude if a person is crazy. Wide Sargasso Sea affords us an intimate look into the struggles of a person suffering from mental illness, providing a level of understanding and compassion which I would never have imagined before. It can prompt the frightening questions of what truly measures a person’s sanity – especially if they are ostracized and without support – and what you would have done under the same circumstances.

Source: Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: André Deutsch, 1966. Print.

Wide Sargasso Sea is available by request at our library. - FMB

Fresh Milk is currently hosting Australian resident artists of Caribbean extraction Willoh S. Weiland and Halcyon Macleod. They will be with us between April 20 – May 23, 2015 working on their collaborative project ‘Crawl Me Blood’, a sound installation inspired by the masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea. For more information about their project, click here.

[freshmilk-books]

The Art of the Essay/The Essay on Art (Part 2)

By Kwame Slusher

In a recent interview, a Guyanese art student at the Barbados Community College said that she was given an assignment where she had to do an abstract self portrait of herself. She decided to focus on her origins, and the result was an overhead topographical map of Guyana. She wanted the art work to show a landscape with all of the bumps, hills and groves that correlate with the complexity of a person's emotional layers.

The second and final session of The Art of the Essay/The Essay on Art was really about creating maps. Like the art student, we were challenged to move away from the established contours and chart emotive and critical pathways with our writing. Christian challenged us to navigate our own ways through perilous territory—ourselves.

The first thing we did was to review the reading assignment that we were given from the previous week, The Map by Elizabeth Bishop. After a not too close reading of Bishop's poem, Christian brought up a map of Barbados on his Mac and asked us respond to it, keeping the poem in mind. The result was the charting of emotional territory as we found unique ways of connecting with the familiar landscape; from immediately coherent political statements to abstract, but poignant, word associations.

After that we looked at another reading assignment that we got during the week via email. It was an essay called Never Trust a Big Butt with a Smile by Greg Tate, which explored implications of the phrase 'Black Comedy' amongst other things. What was immediately apparent, even before the subject matter of the article became clear, was Tate's use of colloquialisms. After discussing the reading, we were encouraged to make a list of all the colloquial words and phrases we could think of within a given amount of time.

Next, Christian brought up the image of Jean Michel Basquiat's Self-Portrait on his Mac and challenged us to respond to it using some of the same colloquialisms that we had written down, or any others that we could think of during the free writing exercise. This proved problematic, because the use of dialect and colloquialisms seemed to peel away the seriousness of our responses to Basquiat's work. We had mapped ourselves into awkward territory and tried to laugh it off. This exercise really forced us consider our relationship with standard English and dialect, and the existing linguistic hierarchy that privileges the former over the latter, ultimately considering our own identities.

There is always that fear of transgressing an existing border, but the workshop showed us that we need to untangle ourselves from preexisting imaginary lines. We need to toss our compasses, and form our own Keys and Legends, and really try to chart our own personal geographies.

Artwork: Jean Micel Basquiat, Self-Portrait, 1982.

[freshmilk-books]

A lovely selection of Journal of Artists' Books (JAB), donated by Melissa Potter and Brad Freeman. Available in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room.

[freshmilk-books]

The Art of the Essay and Folding Paper (Part 1)

By Kwame Slusher

The word origami means folding paper. For it to be authentic the paper folder is expected to create a paper sculpture without cutting, gluing or marking the paper in any way. Despite these restrictions, the possibilities of paper sculptures from a simple flat piece of paper are inexhaustible.

On Saturday December 6th, the Fresh Milk Art Platform hosted the first half of a two day workshop titled, "The Art of the Essay/The Essay on Art". Led by the Toronto based, Trinidadian-Bahamian poet and cultural critic, Christian Campbell, the workshop was geared toward encouraging us, as artists and writers, to rethink and reexamine our idea of the essay. Campbell demonstrated to us that, like a flat piece of paper, the essay can also take many different forms.

In our first activity we were challenged to analyze an elegiac essay titled Etta James: Her Lonely Sound by Hilton Als. We looked at how his piece deviated from the traditional form of the essay while simultaneously maintaining an analytical authority—how Als expertly weaves the personal with the analytical.

After that, we watched Janis Joplin's very dark rendition of Summertime on YouTube, and wrote a paragraph long response, bearing in mind the techniques used in Hilton Als's essay. When we were finished we all read our responses aloud, and Campbell critiqued them. Some of us he encouraged to put more of ourselves in the essay and others to be a little more analytical, but on a whole it was clear that we all were beginning to understand the potential elasticity of the form.

At the end of the session Campbell passed out printed copies of Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Map' to be read for the next session, which will be held on Saturday December 13th, from 10 to 12. As we packed notebooks and pens or pencils away, Fresh Milk Director Annalee Davis served slices of cake/pudding, while we were locked in lively discussion on what it means to be a "...millennial in the Caribbean right now", and the inexhaustible shapes in which we can sculpt the space/s around us.

[freshmilk-books]

On a Symbol

By Versia Harris

The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols & Sacred Objects' by Barbara G. Walker is a book listing symbols and objects associated or originating with the feminine. I have drawn some of these symbols, many of which have been re-appropriated to represent the the masculine, unto my navel (also a feminine symbol). The image is my response to the book.

[freshmilk-books]

FRESH MILK will be hosting a two day workshop on “The Art of the Essay/The Essay on Art” with Christian Campbell on Saturday December 6th &13th. Join us from 10:00am – 12:00pm, to discover new ways of writing about expressive culture. Registration and fee required.

[freshmilk-books]

Reading Pictures: What We Think About When We Look at Art

By: Kwame Slusher

The first time I stepped into an art gallery I was lost. I didn’t know how to engage with the the works that were mounted and framed on the walls. I didn’t know how to read or find a narrative in the beautiful, sometimes disturbing pictures that I was seeing.

Manguel’s book Reading Pictures: What We think About When Look At Art is not a how to book, it makes no pretentious claims about what the reader should have achieved after closing the back cover, instead what his book offers are few examples of how certain art works can be interpreted based on common understandings, iconography or image writing.

This book isn’t a textbook either; it is one-sided conversation or a casual lecture where the student doesn’t have to be furiously scribbling down the speaker’s every word. However, that doesn’t mean that the reader should be complaisant. Manguel makes ahistorical leaps through history bouncing from Joan Micthell to Pablo Picasso to Peter Eisenamn, just to name a few. He flits around to various major artistic movements just to give the reader a sense of how he/she could think about a piece of work, both inside and outside of the specific work’s historical context, while interjecting anecdotes about his own personal responses to some of the works under discussion.

He is careful to point out that not every story elicited from an image is closed or exhaustive—in addition to an understanding of iconography, the reading of a work of art can also be affected by social experience. Manguel illustrates this by giving us the example of a “dejected lover”, Encolopius, wandering through a museum looking at the “images of the gods painted by the great artists of the past” (13) and with his emotions reflected on the images he thought “that even the gods in heaven were touched by love” (14).

Manguel also presents the reader with the case that not all works are meant be read, like Jackson Pollock’s “splattered canvases” which aim to exist “beyond understanding” (28). “The terrible paradox” as Manguel puts it, is that after a while “…the absence of language becomes language in the eye of the beholder”. The critics, who are responsible in an official sense to elicit narratives from the images, add a layer of meaning to that “absence of language”.

After putting down Reading Pictures I don’t necessarily feel equipped enough to tease a coherent narrative out of a work of art, but at least Manguel has got me off the starting blocks. Now it is up to me take the initiative and continue the journey of learning how to read pictures.

Manguel, Alberto. Reading Pictures: What We think About When Look At Art. New York: Random House, 2002. Print.

The book is available on request at our library.

[freshmilk-books]

Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice

To be honest, the book felt personal. I could relate to my grandmother’s and mother’s continued self-sacrifice, but it also didn’t challenge the statement I’m about to share at the start of this essay.

After making the misguided statement that “Men are better leaders than women,” and having to defend myself in a series of debates that followed, I was pressured into reading a book on feminism so I could ‘get my mind right’. So I selected the one that caught my attention—Stephanie Golden’s Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice...

It may have been the wrong choice.

Slaying the Mermaid analyzes the philosophy of woman as the ultimate subject of self-sacrifice through the use of interviews with various women and proven experts. Its analysis of this idea’s effect on society is captivating—a great example of storytelling—but it didn’t provide the mental adjustment I seem to require. In fact, it kind of supported it.

Here are some case studies: At the start of the book, there is the affair of a group of nuns working at a homeless shelter being influenced by a distasteful volunteer named John. He manipulated their compassion and eroded their emotional well-being until they were shells of their former selves. Directly related to politics was the case of Assembly woman Joan Millman, who made the distinction that men usually view politics as an extra—they already have careers as lawyers/businessmen etc.—while women sacrificed time and social well-being and held a political position as a full-time occupation. Men were more able to compartmentalize their duties and make decisions toward monetary gain while women concentrated more on serving those they were responsible for. Expert analyses supported Millman’s claims, so while it may be a stereotypical idea, there is definite truth in the matter. In these cases, the women became too emotionally invested in matters they care about.

Golden emphasizes that historical factors, more than a woman’s inherent nature, have led to this cycle of harmful self-sacrifice. While I agree that over time women’s roles have been twisted, fundamentally, woman has been the primary care-giver, nurturer and she has sacrificed her body in order to bring life into the world. Golden  acknowledges this, and at no point does she stress that in order to slay the mermaid, women must also become individualistic and self-centered. This is personal, though…I do believe a woman—a mother’s—empathy and unconditional love makes her a suitable leader.

So, in retrospect, my statement needs an adjustment. Generally speaking, men are better leaders than women—within the context of politics and circumstances that still exist today.

Maybe that’s something to think about. 

[freshmilk-books]

Offset Issue #1: The Man Who Travels With a Piece of Sugarcane

By: Kwame Slusher

Above: Cover of Offset Issue #1 by Delvin Howell and Tristan Roach

In late 17th century and early 18th century Japan, there was a famous Ronin swordsman by the name of Miyamoto Musashi. The term Ronin was normally applied to samurai who didn't have a master, either because the master died or the warrior was in disgrace. In Offset Issue #1: The Man Who Travels with a Piece of Sugarcane (2014), the main character Kyle Harding is a little like a stick/sugar cane fighting Musashi—who happens to attend University in contemporary Barbados.

If he is Ronin, it is not because of the death of a master, but because of an absent father and dead mother. The closest thing that Kyle and his younger brother have to a parent is the ill-tempered Mr. Beckles, who has been "...helping...take care of things" (Howell and Roach). Harding is a man apart, an object of ridicule by fellow bus passengers and classmates because he walks around with a piece of sugar cane, but why he does this is not obvious. The closest thing to an explanation comes when Harding falls asleep in the university library and a dream challenger, with dreadlocks and a cutlass, in a bit of very manga/anime style exposition, explains:

The thing about the collective is that they practised a martial art utilising weapons...very much like the stick you have carrying on your waist...ever heard of it? (Howell and Roach)

To find a contemporary popular culture reference, Kyle Harding is similar to Ichigo Kurosaki from Tite Kubo's Bleach (2004). In the beginning, Ichigo is portrayed as an average outcast high school student in Japan. He lives with his father and two siblings in a home that is filled with his mother's absence until a series of supernatural events change everything. So far, the major difference between Kyle and Ichigo’s stories are the landscapes, the race of each protagonist and their chosen weapon.

While the similarities may seem like a negative, consider that fact that as Kubo's Bleach (2004) grew, so did the complexity of the story. Bleach is now bursting with a mythological framework partly based on Japanese mythology and partly of his own invention—Kubo took something familiar and made it his own. It would be interesting to see what kind of a world Howell and Roach build around their Bajan Ronin and the mythologies/folklore it embraces, if any at all. I can't help but see Kyle Harding as a metaphor for Beyond Publishing Caribbean—an unorthodox collective without a master, with their creativity on their waists like a samurai swords or pieces of sugar cane.

Frustratingly, Offset Issue #1 (2014) leaves the reader with more questions than answers, as Howell and Roach have planted the seeds for something new: the mysterious cloaked and masked figure that is always preceded by "the flute music" which stalks Harding at night, and the hint about a mysterious martial arts collective, that the cutlass-wielding dream fighter was not supposed to know about.

Howell, Delvin (w), Roach, Tristan (p), Chiu, Jenny and Ludwig Olimba (c) Marshall, Jeremy (l) Offset Issue # 1: The Man Who Travels With a Piece of Sugarcane. Bridgetown: Beyond Publishing Caribbean Inc., 2014.

This graphic novel is available by request at our library. 

[freshmilk-books]

The Art of Loving Google

By Versia Abeda Harris

Recently, some friends and I kept joking about how the answer to everything can be found by Google. Typing: ‘How to code a website’, ‘How to make alfredo sauce’, ‘I fell and now my tail bone hurts’ and, with this review in mind, I Googled ‘how to love’.  A 30 step guide—with pictures—was one of the first solutions the search engine provided. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes too much, I browsed the guide. Step by step, I increasingly noticed similarities between this ‘how to love’ and The Art of Loving.

The Art of Loving is a small book about love written by Erich Fromm in the 1950s. A social philosopher and psychoanalyst, he discusses types and effects of love and goes so far as to identify ‘real love’ and even how to put it into action. For example, two of Fromm’s biggest issues were the way humans saw love and how they saw each other. He asserts that most of us don’t know what the word ’love’ really means and consequently are incapable of loving. Further, he talks about the effects of the capitalist era and how this resulted in people seeing everything, including themselves, as a commodity. You are bought, sold and valued according the market. Humans think of themselves and their emotions and actions as consumable packages: MY LABOUR IS FOR SALE--MY HELP IS FOR SALE--MYLOVE IS FOR SALE.

Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation in the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume. Fromm, 97 

We think in terms of presentation, consideration and possession, like going into the supermarket and looking at the shelves of bread. The types of bread are all in different shapes and packages, with various brands. We consider which ones suit our desire best and then we take them into our possession. Fromm believes we have transferred this way of seeing objects to ourselves, therefore contaminating honest emotion and action. Humans are put into neat categories and marketed as desirable or discarded as not, and so love is treated the same way. Fromm believes that this is how we have lost sight of the essence of love and of ourselves. But this book is also (and I guess it is inescapable) a neat package to be consumed. It is prescriptive, as plainly said via ‘The world famous psychoanalyst’s daring prescription for love’ on the cover of the book. Fromm believes in the value of love and feels the need to reconnect others with that value. Yet, if love has turned into a saleable product to be cheaply consumed and discarded depending on the market in this capitalist society, how is creating a small neat product on this complex emotion, to be sold, the solution?  

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying that Fromm has said nothing valuable or that I wouldn’t recommend this book. However,  by the end it becomes nothing more than, for example, a 30 step guide one can find through google filled with the do’s don’ts and what is not true from what is true love. It seems like another quick way to fix ourselves.

Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. New York: Harper & Row, 1956. Print. 

This text is available by request at our library. 

[rudelyearly]

FREE READ/DOWNLOAD HERE  #weneeddiversebooks #weneedcaribbeanpublishing

KEYWORDS:                                                                                                     stoner, purple flower, sunsets with gran-gran, blood sisters, talamak, sexual assault, empathy, love

CREDITS: Writing/Direction by @domalene  Graphic Design by lounahill0  Illustration by versiaabeda 

Published via Fly Books Issuu on Wednesday August 13th, 2014. Released online via Fresh Milk. 

[freshmilk-books]

Sovereignty of the Imagination: Conversations III

By Ronald Williams

George Lamming’s Sovereignty of the Imagination: Conversations III is an interesting dialogue. It explores how European imperialism and colonialism has influenced the cultural identity of the Caribbean. Separated into the essays Sovereignty of the Imagination and Language and the Politics of Ethnicity, the noveladdresses the way social institutions are founded in imperialism, and the way this shapes the social constructs of race, class, nationalism and popular ideas about language. It is this latter essay, and in particular Lamming’s discussion on the race relations between the Afro and Indo-Caribbean populations, which resonates with me the most.

There has always been racial tension (at times subtle, other times severe) between the black and Indian societies in Barbados and the wider Caribbean region. An example of the subtle kind is in ignorant and vain—but quite normal—quips I used to hear at school about wanting ‘pretty babies with good hair’. In contrast, Indo-Caribbean participation in politics or any influential societal role is met with suspicion, while even their perceived strong community spirit is somehow negative. Tension also arises from the Indo side as well; they don’t see themselves as a full part of the creolization process, perhaps due to the fact that they can more accurately trace their history than the Afro-Caribbean can. Too young to fully grasp what the real issue is between the two races, (other than the lazy and damaging perception of “d Guyanese tekkin’ we jobs”) Lamming helped illuminate that dark part of my brain.

To illustrate his points, Lamming referenced the characters Jo-Jo and Feroze from Earl Lovelace’s novel Salt (72-75). The conflict arises between the rebel African Jo-Jo who encounters the indentured Indian worker Feroze working on the plot of land given to him. Land which should have been given to Jo-Jo and his African brethren by the Imperial powers, in what would have been the first step of reparation, was handed to the contract workers. I believe this strikes at the heart of the matter; generations of Africans were born in these lands and knew no other place as home, while the indentured workers made a conscious decision to stay and build something of their own. One set of people were born into a situation they saw no way of drastically altering while another set came and noticed opportunity. The subsequent tension which arose seems almost natural in hindsight; blacks perceived “…the Indian as alien and other, a problem to be contained after the departure of the Imperial Power” (Lamming 70).

According to Lamming, and I agree with him, this kind of thinking should have no place for a Caribbean seeking to define itself in its own terms. He states on page 78:

“If African labor…constitute the first floor on which this Caribbean house was built, then the second floor and central pillar on which its creative survival depends is the total democratic participation of the Indo-Caribbean presence.”

The European originated concepts of race, nationalism and ethnicity must be resisted if we are to truly have self-governance, for “the free definition and articulation of the collective self, whatever the rigors of external constraints” (Lamming 48) is the mark of cultural sovereignty.

Lamming, George. Sovereignty of the Imagination, Language and the Politics of Ethnicity - Conversations III. House of Nehesi Publishers, 2009.

This text is available by request at our library. 

[freshmilk-books]

Happy Friday!

This week’s #CCF features a look at Carla Freeman’s High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work and Pink Collar Identities in the Caribbean. Check out Amanda’s response here.