#caribbeanliterarycontext

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So every night while the mapmaker expands / on his network of secret roads… / a question has wedged itself between his learning / and awakening: how does one map a place / that is not quite a place?

Kei Miller A Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion p.50 

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Caribbean Literary Context

This quote collection is sourced from Caribbean authors, representing a sample of the Caribbean culture’s perspective of dreams and sleep. Caribbean authors frequently acknowledge dreams and visions in their novels while creatively exploring the blurred boundaries between daytime and dreamtime. After all, storytime is the classic segue to sleep. This literature composes the content of the Modern and Contemporary Literature course instructed by Rebecca Schneider at University of Colorado Boulder, the inspiration for this project.

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Throughout Kei Miller’s A Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, the cartographer and the rastaman argue over the validity of the cartographer’s attempt to capture a moment of Jamaica’s shifting landscape. The rastaman accuses the foreign cartographer that he cannot dream up an honest map of Jamaica; his lines will be too smooth for the jagged jungle the rastaman knows the island to be. 

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In the meantime(of a Trinidadian community confused by a common sharing of dreams with strange spirits) on their own initiative, people were consulting obeah-men and obeah-women and religious people who knew how to handle spirits, and in many homes we began to smell to get the smell of incense burning, and on trees blue bottles and red tied to the branches of trees to repel the spirits

Earl Lovelace Is Just a Movie (p. 333)

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...was a bad bad dream // & the dream was like a snarl of broken copper wire zig zagg / ing its electric flashes up the hill & splitt. ing spark & flow...

Kamau Brathwaite “Middle Passages: Stone” (p. 60)

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'Acting on the assumption that the spirits removed by Dorlene from the sick had taken up residence in the town, some in our dreams and others in the heads of children, the Ministry of Health ordered that small children and pregnant mothers be moved to other districts so that when the spirits were released they would not find the souls of the innocent to enter,' (Lovelace 332). 'This quote magnifies the Caribbean culture's deep respect for dreams. If a similar situation in America were to occur, it is very likely that the media would divert the concept of spirits to another explanation,' (Akers).

Earl Lovelace Is Just a Movie (p. 332)

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The rest of the day I was puzzled over the dreams. That afternoon, I went over to Sonnyboy's place. I found his shop packed with people telling each other their dreams. Nobody could give a satisfactory interpretation of what this meant.

Earl Lovelace Is Just a Movie (p. 332)