Primitivist tensions in Caribbean-American literature: Claude McKay’s and Paule Marshall’s return to the island

Abstract

Following Immanuel Wallerstein’s and Giovanni Arrighi’s world-systems perspective, this article undertakes a materialist analysis of the novels Banana Bottom (1933) by Claude McKay and The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) by Paule Marshall as examples of Caribbean American writing that reflect what Aníbal Quijano and Wallerstein have termed “Americanity”. Rather than perpetuate colonial discourse, the novels’ engagements with primitivism in the description of their two female heroines replace the lush vegetation of the Caribbean often described in colonialists’ texts with a landscape dominated by agriculture. In this way, labour is at the centre of these two novels that capture the twentieth-century world-systemic change of cycle through their characters’ attempts to cling on to outdated agricultural structures. The novels thus portray the peripheral role of the Caribbean not only in the world-system but also in the American hemisphere, as derived from the authors’ diasporic conditions. American influence on the Caribbean, which was a crucial aspect in the ascendancy of the United States in the world-system, also resulted in the migration of many Caribbeans towards this country. McKay’s and Marshall’s return to their islands not only brings the focus to their archipelago’s peripherality; it also analyses the logics behind the diaspora.