He now spoke reflectively in a fearful mix of Rastafarian glossolalia, old African words and rearranged English, but she understood the message: ‘The people of the Caribbean are different. Their early life in Africa made them so, right from the beginning. Terrible years on the sugar plantations increased the difference between them and white people. We think different. We value different things. We live different. And we must make our living in different ways. The white man has nothing to teach us. We build a good life here, we find the money to buy his radios, his televisions, his Sony Betamaxes, his Toyotas.’
‘Everything you mentioned comes from Japan, not from white people.’
Ras-Negus, always displeased when reality was thrust into his dreams, ignored this...
--James Michener, Caribbean, 1989
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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