3 October 2000   

Caribbean writer Jacob Ross
The literature of identity

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jacob Ross is a product of the cultural  movement that evolved between 1979 and 1983 in Grenada, his birthplace. In the  best tradition of such well-known Caribbean writers as Jean Rhys and Nobel  Prize winner Derek Walcott, Ross is a powerful storyteller of rare and  passionate gifts. A journalist and research consultant as well as a short  story writer, Ross invokes the island of Grenada in his tales of universal and  regional truths. He published two collections of short stories: Song for  Simone (1988) and A Way to Catch the Dust (1999). Well-known Jordanian critic  and writer Fakhri Saleh met Ross in London. Excerpts follow:

You were  born in Grenada, educated at the University of Grenoble (France), and  currently a resident of UK. How do you feel about this rich multi-faceted, yet  disturbing, cultural background?

The relationship between the Caribbean  and Europe has been highly interwoven. It is a very old relationship that goes  back 400 years. And in fact, people from the Caribbean had to learn the  European ways of being. For example: My second language is English, very much  like you in Jordan. It is the language of power, the language of education and  has always been seen by the Caribbean as a very important requirement if you  were to progress in life. It has always been a very close relationship.
It has not always been a very comfortable one though, but it has  always been there. My encounter with writing was when I was introduced to  European literature. My school never taught the stories of my people in the  language that my people spoke, which is of course different from English. What  I have done over the years as a writer was to bring the narrative traditions  of the Caribbean people, which is a spoken oral tradition, together with the  English tradition that I learned at school and created something that I hope  is new and fresh and exciting. To a large extent, that is what my writing has  been about. It is also the case with most writers from other parts of the  world who, like me, live in societies like Britain.
You have a  Jordanian author [Ali Tal], who is one of the distinguished writers here in  England and he was asked by one of your journalists about how he feels as an  Arab living in Europe and writing in English. What he said can be said for all  writers who come from different countries and live and write somewhere rather  than their homeland - eventually we begin to belong to both  places.

In a review about George Lamming's In the Castle of My  Skin, you mentioned that you have previously asked him about the issues  Caribbean writers should tackle. You are one of these writers-what are these  issues?

In the last 10 years, the Caribbean as well as Europe witnessed  a breaking of boundaries. Caribbean people have felt for a very long time  that they are citizens of the world, and Europeans began to understand that.  In Europe, there is an idea called globalization, and for me it speaks for the  willingness to participate and benefit from other cultures. As a writer, part  of my responsibility is to try to understand what that means in terms of  identity and in terms of culture, because there is an increasing concern by  many writers over how the tension that exists between values and traditions  that come from outside, and how these values and traditions make an impact on  local values and traditions. As a writer, I try to make sense of these  things.

Like Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, your first  collection of short stories, Song for Simone, is about your Caribbean  childhood. It is described by one of your critics as "the most powerful  crystallization of Caribbean childhood." Do you surrender to memory in your  writing? Are you living in your own Caribbean past?

One of my Columbian  friends asked me a similar question and I said it is a fact of life that most  Caribbean writers, as well as many African and Asian writers, will write their  first book about childhood, about growing up. Many observers have  commented on this. Childhood, as a theme or as a  feature, is central in Caribbean literature. And I can give many examples:  V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, Michael Anthony...and so forth. It is also true  with French-speaking Caribbean writers (Patrick Chamoiseau, Simone  Schwartz-Bart).

You are a poet, a playwright, a novelist, a  photographer and a short story writer. How can you make your way in this  jungle of arts and genres?

I don't feel all of these things are ids  coming from different places. They come from the same place. It is like having  one engine for many vehicles, they look different but the engine is the same.  My main problem has always been to find time for doing all these  things.

Do you align yourself among those well-known Caribbean  writers like Derek Walcott, George Lamming, V.S. Naipaul. Do you find yourself  different?

I don't align myself with them personally, but critics  who read my work align me with them. I believe that is because they write  about similar concerns. I have learnt a lot from them, but their main concerns  were about Caribbean nationhood and identity, what they call the "west-Indian  predicament". I am more concerned with Caribbeans as they face the 21st  century, and when I say Caribbean people, I am not only talking about those  living in the Caribbean, but Caribbeans living everywhere.

Your  book Behind the Masquerade explores the aesthetics of the Notting Hill  Carnival. Does that go with tracing the origins of your Caribbean  descent?

Yes, and if you read my first book of short stories, you would  find the main story is about the Carnival. It explores the relationship  between love and violence, dignity, survival and self-worth-which this  Carnival is all about.