A.E.: The Cultural commentator, Donna Bailey Nurse, says of you: “When I think of Austin Clarke, I think of how his fiction irrevocably etched West Indians, Bajans, black people, and himself into the landscape of Toronto and the collective imagination of Canadians. I think of the courage with which he exposed to white people the psychological realities of being black in the world.” What is the psychological reality of being black in the world, in Canada precisely?
A.C.: I think I am going to answer by saying that general white Canada does not understand the pressures, hopes, fears and anxieties of black Canada. One commentator put it well – Doug Sanders in the Globe and the Mail of July 16, 2016. He compares it to the situation blacks face in the USA. I refer to his article “Why Black Canadians are facing U.S.-style Problems”: See it at:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com. But the article adopts a justice-system-critique approach. I will talk from a more overarching cultural vantage point. There is a silent marginalization of not only black but the immigrant community – right from when they do come in… Remember our past government hierarchizing immigrants as second order Canadians? I think that says it all. In officialspeak we are all Canadians but in terms of the ways in which institutional and official bureaucracies and the general culture actually work, visible minorities are on the fringe of the society. They are economically marginalized, they are socially marginalized in terms of not being properly integrated into white society; they are forced to mostly re-create the home they left by seeking Jamaican, Bajan, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Indian, South African etc. communities to attach themselves to. Politically, I am not sure if they have any real impact as a collective group. The shortfall is that those marginalized immigrants and Black Canadians cannot contribute all their talents and resources to the nation. Canada as a country loses.
A.E.: In your memoir you wrote, “I have never held a Canadian writer as a model of my own work. This is simply because the theme and the style of Canadian literature are irrelevant to my work. I do not therefore see any connection, in the sense of ‘literary ancestry,’ to my writing. I am alone, singular, peculiar, and foreign to the establishment that governs and controls Canadian literature.” Do those words mean that you felt alienated even while living in Canada all those years? Words do come to haunt.
A.C.: I like the ghosts of these words because they are true. I was an insider-outsider… My writing drew sustenance from my Caribbean experiences even though I began living in Canada since September 29, 1955. You must also have read somewhere that I delayed taking a Canadian citizenship until 1981. This reflected my ambivalence. Barbadian-Canadian; split down the middle, but with one side torn more towards the Barbadian left than the right that Canada can be.
A.E.: So this is why your former publisher, Patrick Crean, says that your work was “an early example of the literature of diversity and displacement, a quality which now informs our literature.” He also says that your “influence was huge”, that your work “broke the mould of white Canada” – specifically in relation to your first book in 1964, survivor of the crossing. What writers of colour would you say you have influenced?
A.C.: David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, Shyam Selvadurai, Rohinton Mistry, M.G. Vassanji… to name a few. Don’t get me wrong, those influences might not be very direct – as in the case of writers who are closer to, or not too far apart from, my earthly age before I left the body. I am thinking of Mistry and Vassanji, who are more or less contemporaries. However, contemporaries still do influence each other. I opened the floodgates so to speak. As for the younger writers – Edugyan particularly…. Just read the electric and jazzy vernacular in her powerful Half-Blood Blues and you will clearly see the influence of The Polished Hoe.
A.E.: You opened the floodgates you say…. See why I said you are privileged?
A.C.: Ah, come off it, Amatoritsero. You mekin’ sport. I am darkness made visible as I have said with all the punning intended. Being literary-visible did not remove my ‘darkness’ and all the accursed Freudian symbology attached to it and to my being a black man in a white world. Literary celebrity only made me a token – I was the exception to a ‘keep-dem-down rule; an example to be pointed at as proof of the fairness of a system rigged against the coloured immigrant. Remember that sealed and deadly reference letter (meant for employment purpose in white America), which a white school principal gave to the black protagonist in Ralph Ellison’s invisible man? It said without flourish: “To whom it may concern; keep this boy running.” I was just a token.
A.E.: But there are new minority writers coming along as you have noted. Maybe things are changing. I mean Chariandy, Edugyan, Shyam…younger generation…
A.C.: They are part of that token few. Look at the numbers. Go to any Canadian writers’ festival and count the coloured writers you see as invited guests. They are token and few.
A.E.: Finally, I will like to ask you to lighten up the prospects. Some word of hope. What advice do you have for black or immigrant communities, especially young writers trying to thrive under the conditions you so eloquently painted for us?
A.C.: I am out of it. I did my part. I would say it like Bob Marley and Peter Tosh did: “Get up; stand up; don’t give up the fight!”
A.E.: But….
A.C.: Okay; okay, oh lordie! I did not mean they should join the black panther or things like that. Self-help, group help, community building, education by hook or crook, economic self-reliance. Start businesses, support each other; solidarity. Don tear the family down through ‘crab-in-the-bucket’ behaviour, the PhD ( pull-him-down). Remember that song by the Toronto musician, k-os, – Crabbukit? Aluta continua!
A.E.: MTLS, our readers and I would like to really thank you for giving me audience in the spiritual realm to have this chat. Rest in peace, maestro.
A.C.: I am rested and peaceful already. My soul is liming here. I have gone into the light. It is you on earth who live in the darkness of Kali Yuga and have no peace. Sadly, you all live in an age of ignorance and quarrel. That is the nature of Kali Yuga.
A.E.: Thank you. Bye for now, my astral body must now re-enter my physical body before my silver cord breaks and I cannot re-enter or realign well.
A.C.: Hurry. Good luck. You don’t want to kartspraddle into your physical body.
window.newShareCountsAuto=”smart”;