Jeremy Poynting
The Second Shipwreck

This extensive study of the sources, concerns and forms of Indo-Caribbean imaginative writing sets out to show how writers have dealt with the specific experience of being Indian in the Caribbean. More importantly, it argues that the conception of Caribbean literature as a whole needs to expand to take account of the writing which has come out of the Indian experience.

The Second Shipwreck has a four part structure. Part one deals with the historical and cultural re/sources of Indo-Caribbean writing. Part two focuses on the literary responses to separation from India, looking at images of limbo both as placelessness and liminal possibility (from shipwreck to odyssey), and argues that it is possible to identify survivals and transformations of a Hindu world-view within the work of a number of writers. Part three looks at literary explorations of the increasing diversity within the Indo-Caribbean communities, using images of place as metaphors for stages in an historical journey, which now includes the settlement of diasporic communities in North America and Britain. It also examines issues of gender, and particularly the emergence of Indo-Caribbean women’s writing. The final part deals with how imaginative writing has portrayed the problematic relationships between Indians and their African-Caribbean neighbours.

The study deals extensively with the work of: Cyril and David Dabydeen, Mahadai Das, Ramabai Espinet, Arnold Itwaru, Peter Kempadoo, Ismith Khan, H.S. Ladoo, Rooplal Monar, Seepersad, V.S. and Shiva Naipaul, Lakshmi and Sasenarine Persaud, Samuel Selvon and many others. There is a detailed bibliography and the book is fully indexed.
Indo-Caribbean studies is a rapidly expanding area within the field of Caribbean studies. This title will be of interest not only to those concerned with literature but also to those concerned with more general historical and cultural approaches.

See extended notes

Jeremy Poynting has a long association with Caribbean writing. He began a thesis on it in 1970, finished it in 1985, the year in which he founded Peepal Tree Press. He has published many articles on aspects of Indo-Caribbean writing.