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Multiculturalism and Social Work | San Francisco State University

AGRICULTURAL WORKER AS ARCHETYPE IN WEST INDIAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE.

Author: Goddard, R.
Author Background:
Date 1/1/98
Type Journal
Journal Title: Agricultural History
Volume/Pages 72(2)p.509-520
Publisher
Subject Matter African American
Population
Pedagogies
Abstract The theme of educated people of color returning to their rural roots has been used by novelists in both the West Indies and the United States. The author compares two West Indian novels,Samuel Selvou s Turn Again Tiger (1958) and George Lamming s In the Castle of My Skin (1953), with two American novels, Walter White s The Fire in the Flint (1924) and George Lee sRiver George (1937). The novels reveal the comparative status of black sharecroppers in the South and landless peasant laborers in the West Indies. In the West Indian novels the protagonists,from areas with large black or South Asian populations, could view problems broadly in terms of the rich versus the poor. The American protagonists returning to the South, however, hadto confront the prejudice of lower-class whites and tended to define their situations more in racial than class terms.
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