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World recognized Guyanese writers
These notions return us to Mr Rampertab’s insistence that Guyana has produced no “world recognized literary figure.” We do not know upon what criteria he bases his judgement, but it is certainly out of tandem with the hard evidence. Perhaps Mr Rampertab is thinking about the western canon including Shakespeare, Donne, Bronte and Dickens, but contemporary concepts of “world recognized” go well beyond these figures. Truly, David Dabydeen, Fred D’Aguiar and Pauline Melville are not in the same top flight as Walcott, Naipaul and Brathwaite, but we would be deceiving our readers if we did not present reasons, not based on our opinion, but on documented evidence, to show why they are “world recognized.”
Their work is very well known and celebrated in the UK, the European countries, USA and Canada. Dabydeen is further acclaimed in Australia, the East and Turkey and his work has been translated. Their work is to be found on the prescribed lists of any university world-wide where Caribbean, Commonwealth, Third World and Post-Colonial literature are studied. They have won such international literary prizes as the Commonwealth and the Whitbread, while Dabydeen was short-listed for the IMPAC-Dublin.
Wilson Harris
However, Guyana’s most acclaimed literary figure surpasses Dabydeen, Melville, D’Aguiar, Roy Heath and John Agard in recognition. Both Mr Ruel Johnson and Mr Rampertab have dismissed Wilson Harris as a trivial, irrelevant, obscure writer based on insufficient information about the man and his work. He is not a “popular” writer and his fiction has even been called difficult, but Harris is very well known as one of the top rated writers and his work is studied on even more university campuses than the others. In addition he is recognized and studied as a theorist in post-colonial criticism.
His birthday was celebrated by large international conferences in Britain, Germany and other parts of Europe in 2001. Some of the world’s most prestigious journals in the USA, UK and Europe devoted entire volumes to Harris, who was selected alongside Gabriel Garcia Marquez by world leading publisher, Faber and Faber as one of four international writers whose best known works were re-published in a special series in 1999. He has been writer in residence and lecturer at several universities around the world. That is not such a bad record for a trivial, obscure, irrelevant writer.
This dismissal has even been turned on Martin Carter, the nation’s best poet to date, whose “best work” according to Mr Rampertab, is “over forty years old.” Of Carter’s four books, only one, Poems of Resistance, was published more than 40 years ago. If Mr Rampertab regards it as Carter’s best work, that is his personal choice, but prevailing published critical opinion seems to look more favourably upon work published in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Mr Rampertab complains that Carter is over-quoted, but when did that become a discredit to the poet? On the contrary, it is a compliment to the author. Several of Shakespeare’s best-known lines have been so often quoted, they have now become cliches.
Guyanese literature
Further attacks on Guyanese writers overseas have come from Mr Johnson and Mr Krishna Nand Persaud, who have argued that these authors cannot write about Guyana if they do not live in Guyana. Further, they restrict Guyanese fiction to include only works set in Guyana about internal matters written by persons who live in the country for the exclusive readership of an audience which lives in Guyana. This prescription goes so far as to tell the writers what they must write about. It is a parochial outlook that expresses a limited understanding of literature, reducing it to ideology. Furthermore, Guyanese literature would soon perish if it were so confined.
Those Guyanese writers with international reputations will tell you that while they have travelled, their writing has never left Guyana.
They make no effort to write “international,” they do not change their language, their subject or their style, yet, if the work is of good quality, it is read by an international audience. Professional authors would find it impossible to survive as writers without an international readership, since Guyana’s local reading population might number no more than two hundred thousand. If a book sells 5,000 copies in Guyana it is considered to have done extraordinarily well, and many of the Caribbean’s best writers migrate because such sales cannot sustain an author.
Eye-pass for local writers
Mr Nand Persad goes on to accuse the Guyana Prize of eye-pass. He claims that it disregards the local writers or is an insult to them. This, too, is out of tandem with the evidence. The original concept of the Prize was that it is for published books. But almost immediately, the local problems with regards to publishing were taken into consideration and self published or privately published works were admitted. Then, in 1994, this consideration widened to include a special category for unpublished manuscripts. After that year, this category was discontinued, but as long as a writer is resident in Guyana, he is allowed to enter an unpublished manuscript. Those living abroad must still have a published work. The Prize has also organized several workshops, readings, public lectures and sessions with the members of the jury, all with the best interests of the local writers in mind.
Yet, the ongoing controversies and debates around the Prize have generated genuine issues about how to improve the Prize and its service to the local community. Mr Johnson, quite rightly, voiced a disappointment that the Prize management did not institute or announce new measures to assist in the improvement of local writers. This did not escape the committee.
Strategies for improvement
Strategies have been mooted and a few already attempted. These include trying to ensure that the shortlisted and the winning books are indeed available for the Guyanese reading public. This has not been happening. Were the books available, the idea of encouraging reading would be more easily accomplished. There is a plan to organize systematic writers’ workshops in Guyana with established writers such as Olive Senior as tutors and, in addition, facilitate the sponsorship of local writers to attend workshops in other countries. It is even possible to run a course at the University of Guyana, which could be the resuscitation of the now dormant course in Creative Writing. An even larger undertaking would be the establishment of publishing houses in Guyana, since it is extremely difficult for local writers to get published. That is why Roopnandan Singh was given a Special Prize in 2000; not only did he have a novel shortlisted, but he has been responsible for the publication of many local writers. Guyanese publishing houses could mean the availability of professional editing which can go a long way in improving the work of all writers.
However, any scheme of this sort will need further support from the education system in which there is a need to change attitudes and enforce the greater, wider study of literature in schools. Unfortunately, the most important support that such strategies need is the one most hard to get. Money. While the Prize can see these needs and plan to meet them, very little can be done without larger inputs of funding into the Prize. Its current meagre resources of funds and personnel will not cope with these kinds of extended roles of strengthening the local infrastructure for writing.