Checking Out Me History Analysis Flashcards
Agard’s Purpose:
- Asking Europeans and perhaps specifically white Europeans and teachers to teach a more inclusive History that isn’t Eurocentric.
- First line of his history book in school was “West Indian History begins in 1492” when the Europeans arrive > rich history before 1492, but Europeans are conquerers, we then impose our own history
Dem tell me
Dem tell me
Wha dem want to tell me
Bandage up me eye with me own history
Blind me to me own identity
- Repeated rhyme drives home his message
- History linked to identity
- Bandage up me eye… - Metaphor for being injured, suggesting his Caribbean culture has damaged by British society. His history has been taken away, and as a result he’s unsure of his own identity and place in the world.
- Me is creole of my. Emphasis on how important identity is
- Who are the dem? They are the British. Political poem attacking us for not telling the hidden events of history we suppress
Bandage, Blind, Dem, Dem - powerful
Dem tell me bout 1066 and all dat
Dem tell me bout Dick Whittington and he cat
But Toussaint L’Ouverture
No dem never tell me bout dat
AABA rhyme.
More playful > uses nursery rhyme.
Has rhyme of calypso.
He does this in order to convey a serious message.
He shifts the tone to a more entertaining one.
1066 - Britain was conquered in Norman Invasion.
Dick Whittington - asking for the opportunity for people of Caribbean descent to be given the same opportunity
Toussaint L’Ouverture - don’t know this person. Wants us to find out more.
Education never tells him about that. Also kept it from us > we’ve also been deprived.
Calypso -
- Political musical form
- Changing our view of history, better integration of white culture with Caribbean culture
- Originates in the struggle for emancipation - uses this to campaign for freedom from this narrow view of history.
Who was Toussaint L’Ouverture?
- Leader of the Haitian independence movement during the French Revolution.
- He emancipated the slaves (freed)
- Sided first with British to overthrow the french, but changed his mind when the French freed all slaves but Britain refused to do so.
- Reminding us of our British Past.
- Heard of napoleon in Europe.
Toussaint
A slave
With vision
Lick back
Napoleon
Battalion
And first Black
Republic born
Toussaint de thorn
To de French
Toussaint de beacon
Of de Haitian Revolution
French doesn’t rhyme - shows how they stood out. Rhyme shows completeness.
Beacon - blaze of light contrasted with black. Shows how the black people of the Caribbean are a blaze of light - symbol of hope. Beacon is white - shows not much difference between black and white.
Dem tell me bout de man who discover de balloon
And de cow who jump over the moon
Dem tell me bout de dish ran away with de spoon
But dem never tell me bout Nanny de Maroon
- Nanny De Maroon - from Jamaica.
- Leader of the maroons at the beginning of the 18th century. Outstanding military leader who became a symbol of unity and strength for her people. > what poem seeks to become.
- Defeated the British through guerrilla warfare, during the First Maroon War from 1720 to 1739. Metaphor for the continual struggles against racism, poverty and disadvantage that Caribbean have faced in Britain.
- Her influence was seemed to be supernatural and connected to her powers of obeah (a form of magic and healing) - we are becoming closer together
Nanny
See-far women
Of mountain dream
Fire-women struggle
Hopeful stream
To freedom river
- MLK I have a dream - educated people picks up on references.
- Struggle still not won
- Hopeful stream to freedom river - metaphor > world which is more peaceful through equality.
- Nanny is comforting > British > shows the culture as the same as the British
Dem tell me bout Lord Nelson and Waterloo
But dem never tell me bout Shaka de great Zulu
Dem tell me bout Columbus and 1492
But what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too
- Not dismissive of British events
- Saying the black experience is equally relevant
- How have we wiped out the people and their history (de Caribs and de Arawaks)
Shaka Zulu -
- Great Zulu king and conqueror.
- More than a hundred chiefdoms were brought together in a Zulu kingdom which survived not only the death of its founder, (stability) but later military defeat (towards the British) and calculated attempts to break it up.
BUT -
- When his mother died, he ordered that any woman who became pregnant was to be killed with her husband - savage.
- 7,000 insufficiently grief-stricken were executed, cows were slaughtered.
- Assassinated by his half brother.
- Napoleon was flawed like Shaka Zulu but also responsible for killing his own men.
- Saying great people are complex, come from all parts of the world - we have the same culture - same strengths and flaws
Carib and the Arawak -
- people who inhabited the Caribbean at the time of Christopher Columbus’ discovery
- spread throughout the Caribbean and South America (no longer strong), British established a reservation for them (forced them out and isolated them)
- Similar isolation in our cities
- Our culture would be interwoven just like our History in the past
Dem tell me bout Florence Nightingale and she lamp
And how Robin Hood used to camp
Dem tell me bout ole King Cole was a merry ole soul
But dem never tell me bout Mary Seacole
From Jamaica
She travel far
To the Crimean War
She volunteer to go (allies of British > unity)
And even when the British said no
She still brave the Russian snow
A healing star - star in western literature > star led three wise men - beacon of hope and Christianity. Comes from the same culture.
Among the wounded
A yellow sunrise
To the dying
Mary Seacole:
- Jamaican mother, Scottish Father - mixed culture
- nursed wounded men from both sides of war - image of healing (Nanny de Maroon) - poem trying to heal divide Between cultures
- 80,000 attended a gala in 1857 to raise money for her (drafted out of history despite everyone in the past knowing)
- Died in 1881 in Kensel Green, London
- Recent > not so long ago, we were welcoming of this culture
But now I checking out me own history
I carving out me identity
Carving > permanent > poem permanence?
Also form of art > wants to change the future
Structure:
- Counterpoint of two voices
- One voice speaks in nursery rhymes, written in quatrains.
- The other voice celebrates historical characters, written as a rhyming list of historical facts > more memorable.
