Checking Out Me History

Question 1

Key concepts

Answer 1

• exploration of cultural identity
• reclamation of personal history
• empowerment through knowledge
• resistance against external influences (colonialism)
• resistance and agency

Question 2

Context

Answer 2

• Agard was born in Guyana - a Caribbean country
• part of a British colony
• moved to Britain in 1977
• taught British history in Guyana - not his Carribean roots
• felt unsure of his identity
• poem reflects a single character speaking about his own cultural identity
• ‘check out’ - wants to investigate
• names white rulers / European colonisers
• arguing it was only a one sided view of history
• not enough, denied his own historical/cultural background

Question 3

Structure

Answer 3

• structure - all his history (scale) as if opening up a dam - the ‘freedom river’ of his identity. Emphasised something continuous and ever changing, recognising the beauty of his uncontained history
• lack of punctuation - agency over his identity and history
• alternates between the Caribbean (italicised) and Eurocentric - puts them side by side which forces us to see them as equal

Question 4

Creole dialect

Answer 4

‘Dem’ - repetition of creole dialect emphasises the author’s refusal to conform to Eurocentric culture, separating himself to create his own identity

Question 5

‘de cow who jump over de moon’

Answer 5

• nursery rhyme - fictional European
• sing song quality used for white stories in oral performance - made infantile and trivial, satirising (because they are trivial to him, don’t belong to his identity )

Question 6

‘carving’

Answer 6

• dynamic verb
• actively changing and shaping his identity
• seeking to change and make permenant

Question 7

‘Nanny’

Answer 7

• reference to Nanny de Maroon who led Jamaican resistance of slaves against Britain
• uses African culture to counter an oppressive regime, metaphorical symbolism of what the poem does

Question 8

‘freedom river’

Answer 8

• metaphor for flow of history revealed - delivering us to a greater future and history, frees him from abused power and conflict