Last week we considered what constitutes Guyanese Literature in the Pre-Independence era, focusing on the Colonial period. Within the two broad historical divisions of the writing – before and after Independence – there are important functional sub-divisions which do not only relate historical periods/chronology/dates. They take into consideration the essential qualities and preoccupations of the writing that justify the finer compartments.
Although everything before 1966 is Colonial, for example, there are differences in the types of work produced which prompts the use of different labels. It begins, of course, with the period of Indigenous Oral Literature, otherwise known as the Pre-Columbian or Pre-Colonial era. Then follows the Colonial period dominated by expatriate authors, some of whom were resident, writing about the colony. Added to the imitative quality of the creative literature and what was written by natives of the country, it was truly a literature of colonials. Yet, paradoxically and ironically, it was in that Colonial period that most of the country’s indigenous oral literature was documented and published.
This week, we turn to the period of Modern Guyanese literature when writing by native Guyanese in the