Dear Editor,
I have been asked, “Harold, why haven’t you been formally invited to contribute one of your plays, or to make your input in Carifesta X as a novelist or something? I think that respect is owed to you. You, after all, have single-handedly, achieved a quite a lot as a Guyanese writer, playwright, and artist—won the Guyana Prize for Literature consecutively…” and I replied with a shrug: “I don’t know—maybe you should ask the Carifesta X organizers.”
Okay, I wasn’t invited, but is it a big deal? There are many other Guyanese writers/playwrights that have not been invited.
There is something, however, that is very worrisome—I daresay ominous—about what seems to be coming through here, and I know I’m not being a conspiracy theorist. I know for a fact there is a clique of Guyanese in the U.S.A. that operates like a cultural Mafia. It promotes itself and looks out only for itself. In this clique, nepotism is endemic. This clique craves to be seen as Guyana’s cultural elite in exile, though many in it are of questionable creative talent and achievement…a clique of individuals who seem threatened when the names of specific Guyanese writers/artists like myself are mentioned.
Seat this group as a panel, and say to it, “Can you name ten Guyanese writers/playwrights of note?” and they, collectively, will dust off a time machine and take a journey back into the Colonial fifties when Guyana was spelt G-u-i-a-n-a. This panel would probably name, Edgar Mittelholzer, Jan Carew, Roy Heath, E.R. Braithwaithe, and Wilson Harris for starters. Press the panel to return to the present; ask it to name contemporary Guyanese writers/playwrights/artists that have been actively writing and producing between the seventies and currently,this clique will act stumped, (the operative word here is ‘act’) and then it may probably name David Dabydeen, Janice Shinebourne, Fred D’Aguiar, and Paloma Mohammed—in short it may well name ‘the usual Guyana-Prize-winning suspects.’ My name, or the name Harrischandra Khemraj, or the name Rooplal Monar, or the name Churamanie Bissundial is not likely to be mentioned.
What is this? More importantly, why is this? Why is there obvious blinkered vision when it comes to the acceptance of one group of creative artistes from Guyana that, collectively, has made an indelible impression on the lives of Guyanese while actually living ‘in’ Guyana? Why do these people who see themselves as the custodians of Guyanese art and culture continue to regard writers and artists who have made it ‘in’ Guyana as unacceptable?
Indulge me with a story about the very first time I met Mr. Frank Pilgrim: It was in an office that had been set up for him in Brickdam, Georgetown. We were talking, congenially, as two equal men in the aftermath of me having shown him my new novel, “Apata: The Story of A Reluctant Criminal,” that had been published by Heinemann, London. At one point in the discussion he says to me, “So Harold, How long were you in London?” (Having browsed the copy of “Apata,” he was of the presumption that I ‘had’ to have been in the United Kingdom in order to be published by a reputable British Publisher; in his mind I was of his ilk.) I answered, “I was never in London, Frank,” and Mr. Pilgrim retorted, “Oh! —I’m disappointed!” Think about that for a while, and ask yourself: Why was this icon of Guyanese culture disappointed?
Indulge me with another story, please: Back about the mid eighties, the Korean Embassy in Georgetown announced an international literary symposium in Pyongyang, North Korea. They wanted Guyana’s participation and so approached the Ministry of Culture, and asked it to recommend a Guyanese novelist whom they, the Koreans, might be able to send to Pyongyang. “We have no writers that we can send,” the Koreans were told. Mr. Dennis Williams (God rest the dead) overheard this and responded in his quick, testy way: “How can you say that?” he challenged the cultural officer. “How can you say we have no writers to represent Guyana? We have Harold Bascom, don’t we? —He just had a novel published by Heinemann.” And grudgingly, I was given the chance to represent my country in North Korea. But wasn’t it for the principled intervention of Mr. Dennis Williams, however, I would not have gotten that opportunity.
What happened back then when it comes to my work and me as an individual, continues to this day.
Is it possible that the present custodians of culture are steadfastly continuing the old tradition of the Colonial Cultural Elite that have kept dark skinned Blacks and Indians on the periphery of the inner circle reserved for the light-skinned and the well-to-do? Is it that this old cultural elite has regenerated and is actively pursuing that old agenda of denying accolades to Guyanese artistes who are unpretentious and harbour grassroots links? Is it a class thing? Is the perception that writers like myself are just too ‘ordinary’ to be credited by the Guyanese cultural Mafia? Too ‘ordinary’ to be granted their ‘deserved’ places in the history of Guyanese creative culture? Are we to believe that when the history of Guyanese art and culture is written such writers like myself will be coldly excluded because we had the gall to achieve what was not expected of us, and as pay-back for our impudence we have to accept obscurity?
What I say now is for the records: I am not a bitter Guyanese writer. I might have been bitter had I regarded myself as a Guyanese writer per se. Instead I see myself as a writer—period, bent on documenting the stories of people from the Caribbean and South America back in their native countries and here in the Caribbean/South American Diaspora.
“Then again, Harold… maybe, the Carifesta X organizers couldn’t get in touch with you…”
I have not hidden myself here in Hackensack, New Jersey. The people who made themselves custodians of Guyanese culture between Guyana and North America know how to get in contact with me.
If the amount of work I have done as a book illustrator, graphic artist, playwright, stage producer, stage director, and fine artist is destined to be ignored by my own people at home and here in North America for whatever pathetic reasons, let it be. If these people feel very strongly that ‘their’ recognition of me and my accomplishments will eclipse them in the eyes of their fellow Guyanese at home and abroad, what can I do but shake my head with deep-felt sympathy for them and go tsk, tsk.
Yours faithfully,
Harold A. Bascom