The Humorous Figures of Tanty Bessy in Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners and Man Ya in Gisèle Pineau's L'exil selon Julia
Rachelle Okawa (Universidade: The University of California, Los Angeles)
In an interview with Peter Nazareth, Sam Selvon explains the use of comedy in his writing: "The comedy element has always been there among black people from the Caribbean. It is their means of defence against the sufferings and tribulations that they have to undergo. I always felt that this is a very strong element indeed…It seems to me that if this gift for laughter, of being able to laugh at everything and to laugh at themselves, is so much a characteristic of the Caribbean people, how is it possible to write about them without due emphasis on this particular trait?" (Critical Perspectives on Sam Selvon, 80-81). Selvon's emphasis on 'this gift of laughter' for the Caribbean people occupies a prominent place in his 1956 The Lonely Londoners. In this novel, the Caribbean people's trait of humor functions specifically as a 'means of defence against' the loneliness experienced by West Indians exiled in London.
With a focus on two elderly, female characters, I consider the place of humor and laughter in Trinidadian Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners and Guadeloupean Gisèle Pineau's L'exil selon Julia. As repositories of oral culture and memories from their homelands, Tanty Bessy and Man Ya embody humorous figures of linguistic and cultural resistance to the prevailing norms and values of 1950s London and 1960s Paris. Selvon's and Pineau's use of humor both brings to light and lightens the interracial and intercultural tensions and mishaps encountered by those in exile. Humorous glitches in communication and understanding furthermore emerge in both writers' thrusting of the Caribbean experience onto the Eurocentric worldview (Allsopp, "Humor Caribbean Style," 18). My paper will pay particular attention to the humor specific to the Caribbean context, which is often generated by the comic expressed by language itself and the oralité captured in writing.
With a focus on two elderly, female characters, I consider the place of humor and laughter in Trinidadian Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners and Guadeloupean Gisèle Pineau's L'exil selon Julia. As repositories of oral culture and memories from their homelands, Tanty Bessy and Man Ya embody humorous figures of linguistic and cultural resistance to the prevailing norms and values of 1950s London and 1960s Paris. Selvon's and Pineau's use of humor both brings to light and lightens the interracial and intercultural tensions and mishaps encountered by those in exile. Humorous glitches in communication and understanding furthermore emerge in both writers' thrusting of the Caribbean experience onto the Eurocentric worldview (Allsopp, "Humor Caribbean Style," 18). My paper will pay particular attention to the humor specific to the Caribbean context, which is often generated by the comic expressed by language itself and the oralité captured in writing.
