‘What is the Earthly Paradise?’: Ecocritical Responses to the Caribbean, Chris Campbell and Erin Somerville (eds), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007
It may be that there is no other region in the world more dramatically affected by imperialism, migration, tourism, natural disasters or environmental degradation than the Caribbean Archipelago. Antonio Benítez-Rojo fittingly describes the birth of ‘the Atlantic’ as the result of ‘the copulation of Europe ―that insatiable solar bull― with the Caribbean archipelago […] all Europe pulling on the forceps to help at the birth of the Atlantic: Columbus, Cabral, Cortés, de Soto, Hawkins, Drake’ (The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, Durham: Duke University Press, 1996: 5). Given this background, it is not surprising that there should be a growing number of publications dealing with the Caribbean environment, as well as increasing ecocritical discussions of the region. Chris Campbell and Erin Somerville’s volume aims to contribute to this flourishing debate by providing a double, interdisciplinary, focus.
Prefaced by David Dabydeen, writer and professor in The Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick, What is the Earthly Paradise? comprises two sections. “Development: Environment in Practice” examines several environmental issues and developments such as conservation biology, ecotourism or ghettoisation. “Responses: Literature and Environment” discusses cultural responses to the Caribbean environment in the work of such well-known writers as V.S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Samuel Selvon, Patrick Chamoiseau, N.D. Williams, Shani Mootoo or Ramabai Espinet. This double focus distinguishes the volume’s uniqueness, as well as its riskiness. The strong literary nature of Part II contrasts sharply with the more interdisciplinary character of the essays in Part I. These diverse materials fail to forge a cogent narrative of the place of the Caribbean in ecocriticism and environmental studies, though maybe this is too precocious a demand given the newness of this field of inquiry. Perhaps the most effective essays are those which are interdisciplinary within themselves, namely journalist Polly Pattullo’s ‘Beach, Bush, and Beautification: Tourism and the Environment in Dominica’ and geographer David Howard’s ‘A “Welcoming Planet”? Urban Literary Environments and the “Ghetto” in Kingston, Jamaica’, which combine discussions of literary and non-literary texts with ease. Thus, Pattullo compares tourists’ responses to Dominica’s wildness with those of Jean Rhys’s characters in Wide Sargasso Sea, Phyllis Shand Allfrey’s in The Orchid House, and with Rhys’s own reflections in her unfinished autobiography Smile Please. Howard highlights the importance of literary representations in people’s understanding of space, examining a wide range of literary depictions of the Kingston ghetto. The literary section of the volume favours first-generation male canonical authors of the Anglophone Caribbean. A more representative sample would include the work of younger authors from the Caribbean diaspora, since contemporary Caribbean writing also thrives in places like Toronto.
In its analysis of the relationship between the environment, culture, and literature, this collection of essays will appeal to a wide audience. It is a welcome contribution to the ecocritical study of the Caribbean and should stimulate further research in this field.
Lourdes López Ropero, University of Alicante, Spain
