The South Atlantic's CHANGING PLACES / Savannah / Sat. Oct.9, 2004 |
Fred D'Aguiar |
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Writer Fred D'Aguiar was born in London of Guyanese parents, he spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Guyana. He is the author of poetry, novels, and drama. His work has received much, and growing, acclaim. His Bill of Rights, about the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, an horrific event in recent Guyanese history, was a finalist for the 1998 T.S. Eliot Prize. He has taught at Amherst College and the University of Miami and, since 2003, in the English Department at Virginia Tech. He has also held fellowships at Cambridge, Newcastle, and Durham.
Link here for a 1999 interview in which D'Aguiar reflects on his life and work, particular his poetry.
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Excerpts from some of Fred D'Aguiar's work: |
Remembering
From the novel The Longest Memory (1994)
The future is just more of the past waiting to happen. You do not want to know my past nor do you want to know my name for the simple reason that I have none and would have to make it up to please you. What my eyes say has never been true. All these years of my life are in my hands, not in these eyes or even in this head. I woke up one day before the estate stirred, tiptoed over my workmates, former playmates and bedfellows and everything else to do with robbed intimacy, unlatched the door, confronted a damp, starlit morning and decided that from this day I had no name. I was just boy, mule, nigger, slave or whatever else anyone chose to call me. I have been called many other things besides. My eyes are bloodshot and rheumy. I have not been crying: I don't do that anymore. The last time I cried was over the pointless death of a boy I loved as my own. I swore it would be the last time because it hurt more than any pain I'd felt before or since. . . . I don't want to remember. Memory hurts. Like crying. But still and deep. Memory rises to the skin then I can't be touched. I hurt all over, my bones ache, my teeth loosen in their gums, my nose bleeds. Don't make me remember. I forget as hard as I can.
From Letter from Mama Dot
From Mama Dot (1985)
II
You are a traveller to them.
A West Indian working in England;
A Friday, Tonto, or Punkawallah;
Sponging off the state. Our languages
Remain pidgin, like our dark, third,
Underdeveloped, world. I mean, their need
To see our children cow-eyed, pot-bellied,
Grouped or alone in photos and naked,
The light darkened between their thighs.
And charity's all they give: the cheque,
Once in a blue moon (when guilt's
A private monsson), posted to a remote
Part of the planet they can't pronounce.
They'd like to keep us there.
Not next door, your house propping-up
Theirs; your sunflowers craning over
The fence, towards a sun falling
On their side; begonias that belong
To them shouldering through its tight
Staves; the roots of both mingling.
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From Guyanese Days
From Mama Dot (1985)
As a child I worked this land half-naked,
Growing into patched, taken-in clothes.
It was one crop alongside another
For miles; tree-lined boundaries;
Paths wavering deep into shrubbery
Breaking onto clearings, far as the eye.
I used to sit and count the coconuts crash
Down: one this minute, two the next;
They skidded off branches, bounced trunks
To bang neat grooves in the mud, splash
Ponds or rolling, they'd come higgledy
Piggledy to nestle at my shaded spot.
. . .
Morning-school is a nursery rhyme
Sung till learned by heart, even tables,
So recall is an easy melody found whole;
This time Anancy tricks his wife and four
Children into each giving him half
Their share from a hard-won hand of bananas.
. . .
From Dear Future
From Dear Future (1996)
Dear Future,
You don't know me. We won't meet. Let me introduce myself. I wasn't christened or baptised. Someone, a mother or even a father, named me something or other, I forget what. Or else it didn't suit my new surroundings so it was quickly dropped.
My new family took a good look at me the day I arrived. In fact, they watched me for days. Watched how I crossed a room, a yard, a field. Studied which foot led when I jumped or swung my legs on a high chair and which hand was outermost when I folded my arms or clasped them behind my back.
They looked at me from head to toe like this as if they were considering an expensive purchase at the hardware store. Then one of them, the tall one I grew closest to, who nearly killed me, shouted Red Man and they laughed in recognition, then Red Head and their laughter grew and it stuck.
That's the name I wrote on my school slate on my first day at school and the only name I answer to now. . . . |
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