Holi or Phagwah is a religious festival. It is also a national festival in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago where it belongs to other categories as well, viz, a calendar and a traditional festival.
West Indian literature or the literature of the Caribbean provides an excellent illustration of the currently accepted understanding of what literature means.
What is literature? Definitions have gone far and wide and have included common misconceptions, and for quite a while, there has been a new understanding of what is considered literature where the academic study of it is concerned.
The imposition of dress codes has been a resurgent and irksome issue in Guyana in recent years, and on occasions there have been public complaints about the manner in which persons are denied entry to public buildings.
The Darking Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
As mentioned in a previous discussion, there is no shortage of celebrated verses to mark the United Nations designated International Year of People of African Descent (IYPAD) in 2011.
If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Marking their mock at our accursed lot.
There is a close interrelationship between historical/ anthropological documents about Amerindian culture and traditions and Guyanese Amerindian literature.