Voices of Reclamation in ‘Slave Song’
-and ‘I Is A Long Memoried Woman’
AN ONGOING fascination of mine is examining significant first books in Guyanese Literature.
At the beginning, it was a good idea, but proved to be an overambitious project which I had to scale down to one aspect of our literature: Prize-winning books.
Two books speaking to the season of ‘The Year for People of African Descent’ stood out in my research.  Those two books are Grace Nichols’ ‘i is a long-memoried woman’ and David Dabydeen’s ‘Slave Song’. Both books won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. ‘i is a long-memoried woman’ took the prize in 1983, making its author, Grace Nichols, the first Guyanese to have won that accolade.
‘Slave Song’ took it in 1984. That achievement by those two writers is evidence that although Guyanese literature is still in an embryonic stage, it is making significant impact on world literature.
Both books have added enormously to the discourse on issues of enslaved people, in this instance enslaved Africans. Previously, it was difficult to hear slaves speak. These two writers, both born in Guyana and living in the UK; both distinguished Black British writers, must be commended for their foray into difficult terrain, one of the reasons propelling their books into the spotlight and the Commonwealth award.
Both books are about enslaved people, but each writer brought different perspectives to the issue. Nichols approached the issue from a woman’s point of view, while Dabydeen depended heavily on the use of the Creolese language to get to the heart of the matter. So both writers were able to portray, to the pains and (sexual) pleasures, the traumas and triumphs of the enslaved.
And both books gave voice to the enslaved. In the poem titled ‘Skin-teeth’ in ‘i is a long-memoried woman’,  Nichols is saying:
‘Not every skin-teeth/is a smile ‘Massa’/If you see me smiling/when you pass/if you see me bending/ when you ask/Know that I smile/know that I bend/only the better/to rise and strike/again’.
Fighting massa was not always confrontational, as seen in Dabydeen’s poem, ‘The Servants’ Song’, where ‘missie’ lost her gold ring which was later found in a duck’s backside coming out in a stream of shit. The ring was washed and returned to the Mistress who ‘put am on she finga/Bu we na tell she wheh we fine am./An when she show aff am and she kiss she ring she na know why all aweh laugh so loud/she beg we foh tell till she beat we, bribe we, but leh she kiss we rass first’.
Dabydeen explains in his ‘translation’ that “the servants have the last laugh, as they sometimes did in real life; their resilience and satire are sort of self-defence, necessary for survival under tyranny.”
The enslaved also dealt with trauma through storytelling and song, but neither could diminish the pain.  Nichols hopes ‘This Kingdom will not Reign Forever’ while lamenting: ‘maybe the thing is to forget/to forget and be blind’… ‘and yet/the cutlass in her hand/could not cut through/the days that fell/like bramble’.
In Dabydeen’s ‘Slavewoman’s Song’, the woman is howling: ‘Dem tek pickni way/Mek yu knack yu head wid stone/Bite yu haan like daag-bone/… ‘Wha dem do wid yu maan/Juk yu eye an chap yu tongue/Dem trow am Demerara, feed am alligata’… ‘Belly big wid Massa’.
And the atrocities and laments go on and on in both books. But the fight for freedom continued through Nichols ‘we the women sing and weep as we work’ demanding ‘a day of rest’. While, through Dabydeen, the men seek revenge, having imagined sex with the white woman. Sex is a release; sex is a tool!
Importantly, both books spawned other books.  ‘Slave Song’ gave birth to Dabydeen’s ‘Coolie Odyssey’, taking up the central theme of his first book of poems. ‘i is a long memoried woman’ gave birth to Nichols’ ‘I Have Crossed an Ocean’, taking off from the final poem in the first book, ‘I have crossed an ocean/I have lost my tongue/from the root of the old/one/a new one has sprung’.
My foray into the first books of Guyanese Literature has led to ‘further reading’, and I hope this article will lead you to ‘further reading’ on the subject as we mark 2011 as the year dedicated to people of African descent.

WHAT’S HAPPENING:
Three new books coming your way: ‘The Heart of the Sun’ is an autobiographical work written by Jag B. Mahadeo. It is a collection of “stories of childhood memories and personal poems based on a young boy’s actual experiences” in No. 66 Village, on the Corentyne, here in Guyana, while Sharda’ is a collection of stories written by Julie K. Jailall. ‘Sharda’ is a coming-of-age work about a girl from the East Bank Essequibo, Guyana, while‘Mother India’s Shadow over El Dorado – Indo Guyanese Politics and Identity 1890s-1930s’  was written by Clem Seecharan. (To respond to this author, either call him on (592) 226-0065 or send him an email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com)