FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SAM
SELVON’S “THE LONELY LONDONERS”
(Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners. Edinburgh:
Longman, 1985).
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TALKING POINTS:
LANGUAGE
In The Lonely Londoners Selvon does not use
Standard English but vernacular Caribbean speech patterns. The Lonely Londoners opens up: “One grim winter evening, when it
had a kind of unrealness about London… Moses Aloetta hop on a number 46 bus at
the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to go to Waterloo to meet a
fellar who was coming from Trinidad on the boat-train.” (23) From the
beginning, Selvon weaves his narrative establishing the Caribbean dialect in
literary form. Furthermore by addressing his readers with a Trinidadian dialect
Selvon draws on the poetics of the
oral tradition, as the dialect has a musical air, evident in the rhythm
and rhyme of the lines.
NARRATIVE STYLE
Selvon’s
narrative style is very optimistic; it seems to echo the early, hopeful migrant
Calypso songs about London such as Lord Kitchener’s song, “London Is the Place
for Me”. Perhaps in an effect get the British public to sympathise with the
migrant experience?
IDENTITY & THE CITY
British identity
is reconstructed in the landscape of Britain, particularly London, as the
Caribbean migrants adapt but also introduced their own unique culture and
customs to the city. Selvon’s migrant characters rename landmark destinations
in their Caribbean vernacular so that familiar destinations, such as Notting
Hill, Marble Arch and Bayswater are reinvented.
The products
available are also another indication of the impact Caribbean migrants having
on the city as: “Before Jamaicans start to
invade Brit’n, it was a hell of a thing to pick up a piece of salt fish
anywhere, or to get thing like pepper sauce or dasheen or even garlic. . . But
now, papa! Shop all about start to take in stocks of foodstuffs what West
Indians like, and today is no trouble at all to get salt fish and rice.” (76)
RACISM & THE ‘OTHER’
In The Lonely Londoners the idea of the
migrant as an outsider is a recurrent theme, for example when Galahad pushes in
the queue and a lady says in response: “They’ll have to do better, you know.”
(44) The woman’s language creates an immediate binary between Galahad and
herself classing him as an outsider.
CALYPSO & MUSIC AS A UNIFIER
In The Lonely Londoners Calypso music plays
a very important part within the narrative. The Calypso music played at the
Fete, which is largely Caribbean event, is attended by a mix of people and
creates a convivial atmosphere. Thus the music acts as a bridge between
cultural and racial barriers.
MULTICULTURALISM, CULTURAL INTERMIXING
& MISCEGENATION
Racial
intermixing is rejected in The Lonely
Londoners, when “The father want to throw Bart out the house because he
don’t want no curly-hair children in the family” (65) but it is also
celebrated, as Moses describes: “Thus it was that Henry Oliver Esquire, alias
Sir Galahad, descend on London to swell the population by one, and eight and a half months later it had a
Galahad junior in Ladbroke Grove and all them English people stopping in the
road and admiring the baby curly hair when the mother pushing it in the
pram as she go shopping for rations” (35).
These images are a forecast of the changing face of Britain, since Britain
is now one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world.
FUTHER READING
Dyer,
Rebecca. “Immigration,
Postwar London, and the Politics of Everyday Life in Sam Selvon's Fiction.” Cultural
Critique No. 52, (Autumn 2002), 108-144.
Hall, Stuart. “Calypso Kings” Friday 28 June 2002. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/jun/28/nottinghillcarnival2002.nottinghillcarnival
Proctor,
James. Writing Black Britain, 1948-98: An
Interdisciplinary Anthology. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2000.
Wambu, Onyekachi. Black British Literature since Windrush. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/literature_01.shtml.
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