Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Traversing Trinidad's Wild West (1783–1907)
- 2 Peeping Through the Partition (1927–1936)
- 3 Dark Thresholds in the Colonial House (1934)
- 4 Challenge from the South (1935–1945)
- 5 The Sub-Urban Expansion (1940s–1950s)
- 6 From the Grass Roots to Woodford Square (1962–2010)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - From the Grass Roots to Woodford Square (1962–2010)
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Traversing Trinidad's Wild West (1783–1907)
- 2 Peeping Through the Partition (1927–1936)
- 3 Dark Thresholds in the Colonial House (1934)
- 4 Challenge from the South (1935–1945)
- 5 The Sub-Urban Expansion (1940s–1950s)
- 6 From the Grass Roots to Woodford Square (1962–2010)
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord.
(Zephaniah 3:20, King James Bible)Meh lil brodder
ah see yuh goin
wid dat gun
in your hand
Yuh trippin softly
on de bloody soil
across dis land
yuh own birthland
trippin to mournful joy.
(Brother Resistance, “Soldiers in de sky: De Hills Run Red … / for dem who dead in battle” [1986])This book has covered a large sweep of Trinidadian terra firma and literary history, ranging from the Blue Basin waterfall that Froude encountered in Diego Martin—the village north of the capital which is Zampi's home in Khan's The Obeah Man—to the southwestern city of San Fernando and satellite places in which the oil industry sprung up (Pointe-à-Pierre, Fyzabad and Point Fortin, to name a few). This final chapter covers Trinidad in the postcolonial era, taking Port of Spain and the seats and symbols of power as it mains focus: Trinidad's parliamentary building, the Red House, and Woodford Square, an historic site of political speech-making and rallies. Eric Williams features as a central figure who shepherded Trinidad and Tobago into independence, and, accordingly, occupied prime political forums of power generally concentrated—as is common in modern states—in the capital city. The chapter analyses Williams as both a writer, examining his History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago and his memoir Inward Hunger: The Education of a Prime Minister (1969), and as a figure within literary fiction, in particular in Monique Roffey's The White Woman on the Green Bicycle and Earl Lovelace's novels. In tackling Williams's legacy through his own writing and others’—and shifting from non-fiction to fiction—the discussion also incorporates figures and events often bound up with the pressure points in his career: the Black Power movement of the 1970s and prominent figures within it, such as Geddes Granger (later known as Makandal Daaga), who founded the student-led National Joint Action Committee (NJAC).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Between the BocasA Literary Geography of Western Trinidad, pp. 248 - 280Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017