Selvon and Salkey: Capturing the New Black British Generation

Selvon and Salkey:

Capturing the New Black British Generations

The West Indian novel was born out of the great 1950's post war immigration to Britain. Two West Indian writers, Samuel Selvon and Andrew Salkey, record the emergence of the Black British generation. Importantly, their London works maintain concentration on the West Indian immigrant experience in Britain. Yet in their later writings, they capture the growth of the new Black British generations. This is important as a historical record and in the vital connection it makes between the Black British experience and the West Indian experience. It is also significant for the contrast it provides between the West Indian immigrant generation and their Black British children of West Indian heritage.

Both Selvon and Salkey were part of the mass immigration of West Indian writers to Britain. West Indian writing was the second main wave of black writing that was to come out of Britain, the first being the autobiographical slave narratives recorded during the eighteenth/nineteenth century. These include A Narrative of the Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, An African Prince as related by himself (London 1770), Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (London 1782), The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa the African written by himself (London 1787) and finally the only female narrative, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by herself (London and Edinburg 1831). The second wave was West Indian writing inspired by the World War 2 immigration of West Indians to Britain. This included the exile of West Indian writers. It was not just Selvon and Salkey that decided to immigrate. Preceding all was James Berry who arrived from Jamaica on the second boat, The Orbita, in 1948. Four future writers arrived in 1950: George Lamming came at the age of 23 and Sam Selvon at 27. The other two came as students, Edward Kamau Braithwaite arrived at the age of 20 on a Barbados government scholarship to read history at Cambridge and VS Naipaul at 18 to pursue English at Oxford on a Trinidadian scholarship. Andrew Salkey removed from Jamaica to Britain at the age of 24 in 1952, Edgar Mittleholzer, originally from British Guiana, arrived in October 1956 after four years in Canada and Barbados. John La Rose was there from 1961, and Trinidadian writer Michael Anthony in 1954 at the age of 23. They came to write, to benefit from the presence of publishing houses, and to get that necessary escape that proved important to write about the West Indies only away from the West Indies. Most of these exiled West Indian writers left Britain to return to their home in the West Indies, or to reside in North America. Selvon remained until 1978; only James Berry and V.S. Naipaul have embraced permanent residence in Britain. From these initial West Indian writers were to come a further list of emergent West Indian writers and poets including E.A. Markham, Roy Heath. A.L. Hendricks, Roy Sawh, Angus Richmond, Edward Lucie Smith, Rudolph Kiezerman, Claude Lushington, John Figueroa, Frank John, and Knolly La Fortune. Importantly they were to stand in an intermediary relationship to the emergent Black British novelists. Bringing 'language' as the 'baggage' with a "weight of words to ground," their fiction, many of them came to redefine the genres of poetry and the novel, in a creative use of language infusing the standard language with a West Indian dialect (Berry's Lucy reflects that "City speaky speaky is mixed up/here with bush talk-talk, darlin/an' with Eastern mystery words.") They bequeated an oral tradition to this new stream of contemporary Black British writers.

Sam Selvon initially wrote books about Trinidad as seen in his first novel, A Brighter Sun. (1952) However, he quickly took to writing fiction about the lives of West Indians in London, and produced four books and one short story collection; The Lonely Londoners (1956), The Housing Lark (1965), Moses Ascending (1975), Moses Migrating (1983), and a collection of short stories, Ways of Sunlight in (1957). Salkey also wrote about Jamaica in his first book, A Quality of Violence (1959). Like Selvon however, he began writing about West Indians in London in his books Escape to an Autunm Pavement (1960), The Adventures of Cattulus Kelly, and Come Home Malcolm Heartland (1976). As previously mentioned, their focus was the lives of West Indians in Britain, however their fiction began to record changes in the black West Indian community from the 1970's. Around this time, West Indians were now able to return home, and those that could not return, moved to other working class districts in Britain. Coinciding with this loss in West Indian immigrant community was the growth of the new Black British generations. Both Selvon and Salkey provide some commentary and give representation to this new generation. In Selvon's Moses Ascending, the central character, Moses, is engaged in recording his memoirs of life in London. But he is criticized by his friend Sir Galahad for not relating his novel to the new black populations. In Moses's reflection on how to make his memoirs topical and gripping, he wonders whether he should "start to write about the Black Power and ESN (Educationally Sub-normal) schools and the new breed of English what are taking over the country?" (45)

This is taken a step further in Selvon's later novel Moses Migrating. Moses is attracted to a woman called Brenda, and this provides the opportunity for Selvon to comment on the attractiveness of the Black British woman. Moses comments "It is a sight for sore eyes to see them flounce and bounce about the city, even if they capsize in their platforms and trip up their maxis."(15). But this is more than just an attempt to record a man's attraction for a pretty black woman. Selvon is at pains to make the distinction between Black British Brenda and West Indian Moses. Language is a factor of demarcation as Brenda's English accent appears to Moses like "a nordic talking." She shows a racial pride: "She sound like the real thing, and I know without asking that she was a black Briton. About eighteen, or thereabouts, with Afro hair, Afro blouse and Afro gleam in the eye." Brenda, who takes care of the paper work for her Black Power party is of West Indian heritage: "'My parents came from Jamaica,' she say, 'I was born and educated in this country, but I know where I stand.'"(19)

It is Salkey's novel that provides the most explicit analysis of the Black British generations in his novel Come Home Malcolm Heartland. We confront an aggressive Black British generation during a police raid on a black power meeting. The main character Malcolm comments on these Caribbean young who are not in exile like their parents before them, but are at home in Brixton: "They were highly visible and aggressive individuals who were sharply defining themselves by way of their refreshed blackness and by the fire of their rage and by their hatred of social injustice and brotherly treachery and by their loathing for the fruitless political gestures of their parents' generation." (128). Rightly, he identifies the new orientation of the young Black British who embrace a path "more hazardous than the one of meek integration or the other of allowed clamor for the achievement of civil rights which had been the goal of Malcolm's youthful period." (129). These youth aggressively fight for their rights as British citizens and have embraced fully the violence associated with Black power and Rastafarianism.

The importance of the above analysis grows when we assess Black British works. West Indian fiction captures the growth of the Black British generations, and gives this generation a sense of history through their writings. It is significant that Selvon and Salkey realise the difference in these new generations.