Monday, 25 November 2019

The Key Concepts of Maturation


The construction of ‘the child’, ‘childhood’, ‘adolescence’, ‘adulthood’ and ‘growing up’
in The Children of the King and Throne of Glass

The concepts of childhood and adolescence represented through the structural development of characters in the two novels Throne of Glass (2012) by Sarah J. Maas and The Children of the King (2012) by Sonya Hartnett. This comparative essay highlights the differences and similarities of these two novels in relation to the ideas of childhood and adolescence. Both novels affirm that childhood and adolescence are intrinsically social constructions and thus subject to history and culture. This essay posits that the novels represent childhood and adolescence as utterly complex ideas. Nevertheless, The Children of the King shows that children are vulnerable and that they need adults to be concerned about them and provide protection. Including the representation of childhood as a subordinate to adults, the novel also explores childhood within the direct experience of the child in his or her confrontation with war and being exposed to the broader narrative of history. In contrast, Throne of Glass constructs the idea of adolescence in relation to the fantastic potential of the teenage heroine, who in spite of being extraordinary and having full command over her destiny, suffers the anxiety of loneliness.
The Children of the King narrates the story of two siblings, Cecily Lockwood, and Jeremy Lockwood, who are sent from London to a safe English countryside during the bombings of World War II. A third teenager called May joins Cecily and Jeremy. They are resettled in Uncle Peregrine’s house, Heron Hall. The story seems to be developing on a linear plot until May discovers a pair of mysterious teenage boys taking asylum in the nearby ruins of Snow Castle. Although later Uncle Peregrine recounts the story of that historical stronghold, it is May who first discovers the boys in the castle. Through Peregrine’s narration about the castle, which he describes “as hard as winter” (Hartnett, 2012, p. 60), the children listen to a five-century-old story of power and brutality. As Miller mentions, the “double temporal frame provides a context for enabling [children] to mature and to take up strengthened subject positions” (2015, p. 40). Therefore, the direct exploration of children from historical conflicts becomes relevant to their current lives, their experience of childhood. In his attempt to define the purpose of the historical novel, Cannadine argues that “they are novels which find it easiest to address present-day concerns by putting them in a past context” (Cannadine quoted in Watkins, 2005, p. 52). Likewise, the novel represents childhood within a reflection upon the history that blends their contemporary concerns with the past. The children who are running away from a particular war are about to understand the overall concept of conflicts to a larger extent of history.
The Children of the King reflects the traditional and conventional attitudes about childhood in which a child is seen to be vulnerable. This is a primary demonstration of childhood at the outset of the story; nevertheless, the novel constructs the concept of childhood that has various qualities such as curiosity and naivety. Hartnett begins to emphasise the influence of adults as children’s guardians in the process of growing up. When Cecily asks her father, “will we die?” (Hartnett, 2012, p. 8), Humphrey replies: “No, […]. You’re going on a holiday” (p. 8). Through depicting the parent’s attention towards the safety of the children, the novel implies the conventional and traditional attitudes, whereby, “the child was perceived as a delicate creature who must be protected” (Shavit, 1999, p. 321). The delicacy of children requires them to be guarded by the adult, but in The Children of the King, Jeremy takes a risk and runs away back to London by himself, which is a rejection of protection. Although Jeremy thinks naively about the war, the novel represents the child having curiosity alongside vulnerability. Hartnett underpins The Children of the King on the natural requirement of protection and the contradictory features of the child to pave the way for further construction of the idea of childhood throughout the novel.
Unlike the initial representation of the child as the one to be protected by the adult in The Children of the King, the novel Throne of Glass represents the adolescent as the character who does not merely need adult protection but possesses the finest potential to be the King's champion. The principal female character, Celaena Sardothien, is a tough heroine and the most feared assassin at the time. Celaena is imprisoned in Endovier, but she has surprisingly survived the harsh prison for a year where the life expectancy is only a month. Celaena has been hardened frequently: she has lost her love as well as her parents in a brutal way. Her lived experience has turned Celaena into a tough person. Furthermore, “she’d been trained to be an assassin since the age of eight” (Maas, 2012, p. 8). These conditions have provided her the opportunity to take the biggest risk in her life; the Crown Prince Dorian offers her a deal that can lead to her freedom: that is Celaena must win a competition that King holds. Throne of Glass represents adolescence in the way that the teenager has sufficient potential to possess self-determination and thus fundamentally resists to what David Buckingham (2000) also contends against as the doomed idea of ‘childhood as exclusion’, which defines children based on what they are not to do and what they are not competent enough to do. Celaena writes a letter on her will to the prince. She dares to thunder against the prince, “I’m going to rip out your eyes and replace them with these billiard balls” (Maas, 2012, p. 213). Through depicting the abilities and intentions of Celaena, the novel suggests that she does not merely require adult protection, but rather the opposite. Celaena is the one that can provide protection for adults- in particular for the King.
The novel Throne of Glass is labelled as children’s literature but complicated. This is partly because the story is set in children’s literature, which consists of two problematic terms: ‘children’ and ‘literature’. Nonetheless, its complexity is laid in the stories as well. For instance, in spite of having strength, beauty, and advantages Celaena is still, confused, vulnerable, and alone.  By the end of the competition when her position as the King’s Champion is certain she has no idea what to do: “she didn’t know whether to smile, or to laugh, or to nod, or to cry and dance about” (Maas, 2012, p. 402). When a dog approaches her with a wagging tail and lays on her feet, the novel reflects about Celaena that “[a]t least someone was glad for her company” (Maas, 2012, p. 28). Above all, Celaena suffers from loneliness, “no one has called me friend in a long time” (Maas, 2012, p. 242). Celeana does not seem happy and as an assassin, the issue of feeling guilty is also ruled out because she has never committed a murder. In fact, nothing is wrong with her except that she is exceptional. The novel may involve different categorisation in Celaena’s personality such as gender and social hierarchy but what leads her to solitude, confusion, and dejection is her extraordinariness. Celaena has lost her feelings as an ordinary female adolescent and distanced herself from conventional femininity. Katherine Cruger goes so far as to argue that the “heroines often reject conventional expressions of femininity (2017, p. 117).  In the novel, a rather multilayered personality emerges beneath the fantasy heroine. Although she is a role model, she lacks the common feelings of a usual young girl and that is the complex representation of adolescence. 
Celaena is a complex character not because of having the mentioned contradictory qualities in the story, but also as a fictional female character, her personality is subject to a cumulative effect of readers’ understanding and inspiration. The concept of adolescence in the novel and its understanding is a mutual task between the text and the reader. The text is written and is fixed, whereas its reading may differ based on the level of conceptual understanding and the way that a reader perceives and interacts with the novel in a time. For instance, based on the early feminist text which led to the theory of feminism “women are […] degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence” (Wollstonecraft, 2010, p. 87), that is the beauty.  In this reading, Celaena’s beauty can be considered as her Achilles heel, while in others it may not. This means that reading of the young adult novel has a dynamic fluidity nature throughout the time. As Peter Hunt admits in his book Understanding Children’s Literature (2005) that because the theory of children’s literature continually blends readers with the book, “we have to accept that children’s books are complex, and the study of them infinitely varied” (p. 2). This is one of the reasons that the literary label of young adult fiction has not yet been completely defined. Likewise, the novel demonstrates adolescence as a complex concept rather than providing a straightforward representation. 
In both stories, the main child characters are demonstrated to have only some features of an individual character and are not represented to possess a complete identity. In Throne of Glass, either the novel or some other characters in the novel avoid admitting Celaena’s proper personality. Cain, who is a hulking brute and is about to contest Celaena in the competition, says to her, “[p]retending to be a lady doesn’t mean you are one” (Maas, 2012, p. 202).  The novel itself frequently mentions Celaena as ‘the assassin’, and additionally, Celaena is named differently: Prince Dorian tells her that “[t]o everyone in this castle, […] your name is Lillian Gordaina” (Maas, 2012, p. 71), Nehemia says to her that “I name you Elentiya” (Maas, 2012, p. 321), and even Celaena herself does not care what her name really is, because she is an assassin anyway, “I’d still beat you, no matter what you call me” (Maas, 2012, p. 352). Likewise, in The Children of the King, May is represented with a vague identity. Instead of being called upon her real name, May is often mentioned as ‘evacuee’ in the novel, “‘I don’t break things,’ said the evacuee” (Hartnett, 2012, p. 28), or “the evacuee deserved at least a reprimand” (Hartnett, 2012, p. 50). As David Rudd argues, the main subject matter of adolescent fiction is that the “notions of identity are formed within specific contexts and shaped by larger social structures and processes” (2010, p. 140). In both novels, children are demonstrated to have a fraction of identity and that implicitly refers to their identity as a concomitant result of the formation process within the larger structures of society including institutions, families, and peers. The idea that children are lacking a complete identity implies the concept of childhood as an incomplete stage in which, inevitably, the growing up toward a full identity is predicted.
However, unlike showing that the child does not have a complete identity, the novels, in the meantime, demonstrate that the child is able to have the same attributes as mature people. There are some features demonstrated in the attitudes and behaviours of May and Celaena suggesting that they possess some adult qualities that are yet to be developed. In this way, the novels affirm that adolescence and childhood are not merely steps of growing up oriented to adulthood but rather complicated states of individual beings. Despite the fact that May is just a ten-year-old girl, she possesses a high degree of daring and a strong sense of dignity.  In the very first encounter of the Lockwood family, Cecily thinks that May will get excited upon hearing her offer to live with them in Heron Hall; although May accepts, she is not impressed by Cecily’s offer at all. The novel describes, “the glint in her eyes suggested she could live off scraps and sleep soundly in hay” (Hartnett, 2012, p. 27). Furthermore, May is depicted to have the feature that adults often have and not children; she says to Jeremy that “I’m not scared of anything” (Hartnett, 2012, p. 30). Likewise, the entire story of Throne of Glass narrates how a teenage girl fights within the brutal system of the monarchy to achieve her freedom. The novels show that adolescence and childhood are not entirely incomplete stages, but children have some qualities and possibilities to affect others. This idea that dismisses the notion of adults as the only complete stage of personality can be validated by the scholarly argument that says, “If childhood is thus defined as a process of becoming, adulthood is implicitly seen as a finished state, in which development has effectively ceased.” (Buckingham, 2000, p. 14).  In fact, the human being is yet to develop, and that is a constant trend. Therefore, the idea of completeness should be blurred at least in the novel tradition. That is to say, that adulthood or childhood neither of them are complete.
The unique condition of Celaena is a problematic matter to her. Celaena is a tough heroine; furthermore, she is also depicted to possess extreme stunning beauty and at the same time she has a high level of strength. Her beauty causes other jealousy, while her strength drives the intense rivalry of the rest of the competitors. The novel repeatedly expresses her elegance and beauty, “[s]he looked spectacular. Utterly and completely spectacular” (Maas, 2012, p. 45). Due to her superb beauty, Celaena has attracted the Crown Prince Dorian. It awakens the sense of grudge and jealousy in Kaltain, a young lady from a pseudo-aristocratic family. Kaltain is intended to get the attention of the Prince.  Her jealousy goes so far as to give the poisoned drink to Celaena right before her competition against Cain, saying, “Drink, and let Her bless you, and replenish your strength” (Maas, 2012, p. 353). The novel also describes Celaena as the most nimble, extraordinarily fast-footed to escape three hundred sixty-three feet from her shaft, while any other escapee could hardly run three feet before they were shot down by the prison sentries (Maas, 2012). The sum of these perfections in the presence of Celeana has turned her into the centre of attention, and consequently, she has been affected by others while Celaena herself affects others. Celaena effectively influences the relationships around her. This rejects the idea that childhood is mostly subjective to the will of the adult and thus the novel represents adolescence in the way that validates David Rudd’s argument that children “also have subject positions available to them that resist [being merely adult discourse]” (2005, p. 17).  Throne of Glass represents the child to have a role in constructing adolescence, and therefore, effectively shape his or her identity.
From illustrating the concerns of the adult to protect the child in The Children of the King to demonstrating child with the extraordinary potential of power and elegance in Throne of Glass, the construction of childhood and adolescence in these two novels varied from representing the conventional concept of childhood to fantasising of a teenager girl as a superheroine. While Throne of Glass explores the concept of adolescence in relation to the anxiety of being extraordinary and under the influence of power, The Children of the King represents childhood within direct observation of war and displacement by children, which then led them to understand history in close relevance to their current life. Nevertheless, both novels affirm the concepts of childhood and adolescence as utterly complex ideas and reflect upon these ideas in different ways.

References
Buckingham, D. (2000). After the death of childhood: Growing up in the age of electronic media (pp.10-16). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Cruger, K. (2017). Men are stronger; women endure: A critical analysis of the throne of glass and the mortal instruments YA fantasy series. Journal of Media Critiques3(10), 115-132. doi: 10.17349/jmc117208
Hartnett, S. (2012). The children of the king. Camberwell, Vic: Penguin Random House (Australia).
Hunt, P. (Ed.). (2005). Understanding children's literature, 2nd Edition, (pp. 1-14). New York: Routledge.
Maas, S. (2012). Throne of glass (Maas, Sarah J. Throne of glass novel; bk. 1). New York: Bloomsbury.
Miller, R. (2015). Storytelling and affect in Sonya Hartnett's the children of the king (2012). Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature,23(2), 38-52.
Rudd, D. (2005). ‘Theorising and theories: How does children’s literature exist?’ In P. Hunt (Ed.), Understanding children's literature, 2nd Edition, (pp. 15-29). New York, NY: Routledge.
Rudd, D. (Ed.). (2010). The Routledge companion to children's literature, (pp. 139-258). Routledge. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Shavit, Z. (1999). The concept of childhood and children's folktales: Test case - "Little Red Riding Hood". In M. M. Tatar (Ed.), The classic fairy tales: Texts, criticism (pp. 317-332). New York, NY: Norton.
Watkins, T. (2005). ‘Space, history and culture: the setting of children’s literature’ In P. Hunt (Ed.), Understanding children's literature, 2nd Edition, (pp. 50-72). New York, NY: Routledge.
Wollstonecraft, M., & Rowbotham, S. (2010). A vindication of the rights of woman (new ed./introduced by Sheila Rowbotham. (Ed.), Revolutions (London, England)). New York: Verso.

Aimé Césaire and R K Narayan


From African Negritude to Indian Satire, the Ways they Contend with the Desire to Restore the Pre-Colonial States 
In respect to the generic form and style of Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to My Native Land and R. K. Narayan's short story ‘Lawley Road’; this essay compares these two creative texts in which surrealism and satire have been used respectively to contend with the desire to restore the pre-colonial condition. The two imaginative and creative works show rather different tendencies in relation to the decolonisation. Generally speaking, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land emphasises a fundamental change, while ‘Lawley Road’ remains dubious about any kind of change.  In the historical context of the Caribbean, the employment of surrealism by Césaire, and the way he uses the language to evoke the African world signify the importance of transcending the conventional genre. This essay argues that in relation to decolonisation, Césaire ignites a revolt within literature, while in the instance of ‘Lawley Road’ the historical background of Indian subcontinent complements the genre short story precedent to embed scepticism.  
Narayan utilises the rhetorical device of satire in the short story of ‘Lawley Road’ to criticise the desire of restoring pre-colonial conditions. The narrative is set in the imaginary town of ‘Malgudi’, where the plot consists of the removal of Sir Frederick Lawley's statue from the town centre following an attempt to restore national symbols and rename areas and streets, “it seemed impossible to keep Lawley’s statue there any longer”.[1] Although the story happens in the post-colonial era, it remains highly sceptical about the desire of restoring pre-colonialism by revealing the fact that Lawley had sacrificed his entire life for Indian people; “he died in the great Sarayu floods while attempting to save the lives of villagers”[2]. The satire has improved within the descriptive narration consisting of a linear plot which does not in any way involve unconventional innovation in technique, language, and the form of the literary genre.
The story of ‘Lawley Road’ does not look for the historical origin of Indian identity, and neither it shows a manifestation of some particular honours or collective value. The story represents some real relationships of Indian society in the post-colonial era, and in this way, it differs from Césaire’s literary work which underpins the idea of Negritude in order to redefine the identity of Black Africans, as he explains in his essay “to plant our negritude like a beautiful tree until it bears its most authentic fruits”[3]. On the contrary, to avoid the confirmation of the Indian historical process following the colonisation, Narayan criticises the anti-colonial combats as he depicts the corrupt historical relationship between supporting the war against colonialism and the post-colonial sovereignty. The story ‘Lawley Road’ provides with the flashback which clarifies that the previous “supplier of blankets to the army”[4]  has been successful in “securing the chairmanship”[5] of the municipality during the post-colonial rule of India. Through revealing the corruption and deception in the war against colonial power, the story indirectly criticises the emphatic historical collective value of combating against colonialism in India and subsequently, discredits the desire to restore the pre-colonial state.
Unlike Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, which strives for the realisation of Negritude through poetic transformation, Narayan’s story observes the independence of India as a newer landscape for further captivity in the local sovereignty. The Municipality which is the symbolic representation of national authority in the story of ‘Lawley Road’ begins its active presence in the public domain right at the start of Indian Independence Day, “our Municipal Council caught the inspiration”[6]. The story does not comment on the oppression of colonialism in India such as tax law, though it warns against the corrupt and non-democratic domination of national authority in post-colonialism. The story broadly contends with the desire to restore the pre-colonial state through depicting the independence celebration as a field of political hypocrisy. The narrator offers to sell back the statue to the Chairman, suggesting him to use his previous gains of selling blankets to the army, “I’m sure you have enough funds of your own”[7]. The Chairman pays for the statue to gain again, this time the election. This way, the story shows that the Municipal Chairman’s efforts to buy votes, destroy the Indian democracy from within, undermines independence, and subsequently contends with the desire to restore the pre-colonial condition in India.
In the “Lawley Road”, Narayan shows a realistic approach to historical facts in relation to colonialism and does not strive for a fundamental change in any way. This inference can easily be achieved by a comparison of the initial purpose of removing the statue in the story with the actual result of re-erecting that statue in the other place of the town, as they finally “install it in a newly acquired property”[8]. The story emphasises that the colonialism has left irremovable marks in the contemporary history of India; more surprisingly, the story suggests, any attempt to escape from these historical facts would further broaden the legacy of colonialism as the unsuccessful attempt to remove the statue led another area to lose its local name, “Kabir Lane shall be changed to Lawley Road”[9]. Despite the widespread desire to restore the pre-colonial condition and the attempts to decolonize,“Lawley Road” states that colonialism has rooted deep into the contemporary history of India and the story's satire ridicules those who are unable to perceive and admit the historical fact left by colonialism.
The realistic approach of Narayan is more evident in the choice of form and title of his work. Regardless of the topic of the story, the term, Lawley road, may refer to a place without any particular literary implication, and thus, it differs to the sophisticated literary work of Césaire which its title, revolutionarily, consists the word ‘notebook’. Furthermore, Narayan chooses the form of a short story to reach a larger proportion of readers. At the time in India, as it has been quoted from Premchand the form of the short story had some more readerships because of its affordable price compared to the novel[10]. This realistic attitude of Narayan extends beyond his literary performance as his recognition of reflecting upon the desire to restore the pre-colonial state provides rather objective interpretation. 
Unlike the satire in Lawley Road, Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to My Native Land is a literary exploration for an invasive and unconscious ignition of Negritude. It consists of prose and a variety of poetic modes, and therefore, it emphasises on the language play, to create gesture and image in language rather than developing a plot in the narrative. Césaire strives to go beyond the genre, and for that purpose he takes some initiatives such as merging prose with the poem, utilising surrealism, coining the neologism, and examining poetic qualities of different modes and parallelism. This invites us to think that the extensive cultural continuity in India and its prolonged civilisation have provided sufficient historical experiences from the past, while the discontinuity of Caribbean from their original world of Africa inevitably required Césaire to have a fundamental look. Therefore, in comparison with Narayan’s “Lawley Road” where a particular genre has been taking into account to satire the post-colonial era, Césaire shows zero tolerance approach to the history of colonialism and instead of criticising its consequences at the superficial level, he essentially opposes the hegemony of Western civilisation and in his tendencies towards Negritude he fundamentally revolutionises the black literature.
The rejection of the conventional genre starts even with the title of Césaire's work consisting of the word 'notebook'. A notebook encompasses everything that has come to his mind, including any idea of rebellion, inspirational, vision, anger, shout, ecstasy, grief, and revolt. There is nothing that cannot be recorded in a notebook. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land includes all of these among many other things at the same time and yet it is about none of them. Césaire brings those ideas to create unusual juxtapositions, “and the pian / the guard dog / the suicide / the promiscuity / the boot / the stocks / the wooden horse / the cippus / the headband”[11].  Bringing the opposite ideas and different objects one after another, Césaire takes a radical experiment in which things that otherwise had no relevant connection align together and create a unique literary image. Césaire encourages fearless innovation in relation to cultural issue as he sees that any sign of future success “can only bloom in a bouquet of actions”[12]. Césaire expands the characteristics of the titling word of ‘notebook’ throughout the text, and by transcending the conventional genre he rejects the dominant view of mainstream White and thus, contends with the desire to restore the pre-colonial condition. 
Césaire combines the history, geography, and aspiration of the Caribbean to create a native African context for his literary work through which he provokes the subconscious in order to examine the intense inertia as the legacy of colonialism. This has achieved by emphasising the irrational significance of the imagery effects. In other words, the historical experiences of Caribbean are brought along with their collective ideals in a surreal context to pave a profound landscape on which Negritude would be well understood. The geographical aspects of the Caribbean are the most important sources of imagery in his poem. These imageries in the understanding of Césaire’s poetry, which is profoundly influenced by surrealism, are essential elements.  He prepares the background of an image by repeating a keyword in the previous lines. The image, which is relevant to the collective memory of Caribbean, suddenly opens up in the next paragraph and affects an everlasting literary effect. For instance, some nine times of repetition of the word ‘morne’ in less than a page, has been followed by “a hunger buried so deep in the Hunger of this famished morne”[13].  The implication of this parallelism may refer to Morne Rouge, which was a city in the north of Martinique surrounded by farms of sugar cane. In 1902, the complete destruction of the city by the volcano of Mount Pelée happened at the same time of running an election.  According to Mazisi Kunene, the authorities avoided to warning residents of about the volcano because that could terrify people and lead the voters to run away from polling[14]. Césaire's surrealistic approach of narration raises on the historical and geographical basis to create a powerful literary image.
Césaire praises the human civilisation in which the Negritude is not excluded but complimented. For that, he complains about the oppressive Western civilisation and its superiority. Although not anti-technology, he praises the humanity free from the horrors of civilisation, “Eia for those who have never invented anything”[15]. The overall atmosphere of his literary work is full of anger from the past, which seeks an outlet to erupt, “I give you the Intourist triangular circuit”[16]. Each proposition depicts a vivid image with reference to the history of Black people from the slavery to colonialism.  Every idea corresponds to another either by harmony or some contradictory stands in the oxymoronic phrases. Césaire utilises language with all its quality to enact decolonisation in his writing.
“Lawley Road” criticises the post-colonial sovereignty in independent India, while Notebook of a Return to My Native Land rejects the legacy of Western colonial civilisation entirely.  In relation to the desire to restore the pre-colonial condition, Narayan suggests enhancing the Indian national consciousness through satire, but Césaire emphasises on the ideal African self, that is Negritude.  

Bibliography
Césaire, Aimé. “Nègeries: Racial Consciousness and Social Revolution.” In Negritude Agonistes, Assimilation Against Nationalism in the French-Speaking Caribbean and Guyane, Translated by Alys Moody. Cherry Hill, NJ: African Homestead Legacy Publishers, 2008.
Césaire, Aimé. Notebook of a Return to My Native Land = Cahier D'un Retour Au Pays Natal. Translated by Mireille Rosello with Annie Pritchard. Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 1995.
Kunene, Mazisi. Introduction to Return to Native Land. Translated by Mahmud Kianush, Tehran: Agah Publication. 1975.
Narayan, R. K. “Lawley Road.” In Malgudi Days. London: Penguin Books. 2015.
Pravinchandra, Shital. “Short Story and Peripheral Production.” In The Cambridge Companion to World Literature, edited by Ben Etherington and Jarad Zimbler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 
Footnotes
[1] Narayan, Lawley Road, 113.
[2] Ibid., 115.
[3] Césaire, Nègeries: Racial Consciousness and Social Revolution, 1.
[4] Narayan, Lawley Road, 111.
[5] Ibid., 111.
[6] Narayan, Lawley Road, 111.
[7] Ibid., 116.
[8] Ibid., 116.
[9] Ibid., 116.
[10] Pravinchandra, Short Story and Peripheral Production, 2.
[11] Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, 121.
[12] Césaire, Nègeries: Racial Consciousness and Social Revolution, 3.
[13] Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, 77.
[14] Kunene, Introduction Return to Native Land, 14.
[15] Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, 115.

[16] Ibid., 113.