Caryl Phillips

Ledent, Bénédicte; Tunca, Daria

doi:10.1163/9789401207409

Cited by 66 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…In a long essay written for the New Republic some years ago, Phillips underlined the observation that our skin colour is something we are just born with, something that we just have to live with, something that is beyond us, something given which we cannot change and therefore something for which we should not be held responsible or punished. 21 Notwithstanding the late Michael Jackson's slow but certain transmogrification, even if we could change our skin colour, would we be fully integrated? I am afraid that, so long as human memory remains what it is, the honest answer to this question must be only, at best, a very small and even then tentative, yes.…”

Section: Afterwordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If this seems contradictory, since 'escapism' is never a real answer and our author would baulk at such a naive suggestion, it is necessary and important to conclude by reminding ourselves of the urgency with which Phillips addresses all the multi-layered questions we have been discussing. For Phillips, as for us, if we do not check our impulses and irrational actions, such as hurting those who are simply different from us by virtue of their skin colour (as witness the recent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne, Australia), or those who prefer to exercise a different faith in terms that some of us may find objectionable (as witness the attacks on churches in Malaysia because of 21 the use of the word 'Allah' by Christians to refer to God), then humanity will have an extremely heavy price to pay. There is still hope; but precious time is running out.…”

Section: Afterwordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…J.M. Coetzee has commented that Phillips's fiction has a single aim -"remembering what the West would like to forget"; 21 clearly, Phillips's recollecting proves challenging for many different audiences, given the complicated dynamics of race, class, and power in the diaspora as a whole.…”

Section: Renée Schatteman H E N E W York Times H a S D E S C R I B E D Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Travel to the Caribbean and Europe and later across and around the globe, Phillips says, gave him a way to "look inwards and explore a personal identity that is rooted both in and beyond Britain." 21 Towards the end of "Necessary Journeys," Phillips asks: 15 Phillips, "Necessary Journeys." 16 Caryl Phillips, "Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin," in A New World Order: Essays (2001; New York: Vintage, 2002): 30; "Native Son by Richard Wright," in A New World Order, 21. 17 Caryl Phillips, "Conclusion: The 'High Anxiety' of Belonging," in A New World Order, 305.…”

Section: Moreover Several Of Phillips's Essays Are Instances Of What Philippementioning

confidence: 99%

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A New World Tribe in Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore

Di Maio

2012

Caryl Phillips

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who has kept bringing newness to his work while remaining true to a vision of the world that combines profound emotional authenticity with sharp social awareness.One gets an idea of the remarkable consistency of Phillips's work, but also of its development, if one briefly compares his first novel, The Final Passage, published in 1985, with his latest, In the Falling Snow, released in 2009. The former addresses West Indian migration to England in the 1950s through the experience of a young woman named Leila, while the latter focuses on contemporary England and the mid-life crisis of a Briton of Caribbean descent called Keith. Even if the books are set in different periods, they are thematically close. Like most other novels by Phillips, they engage with such topics as identity, exile, or loneliness and provide insight into what divides human beings, be it class, gender, or race. The novels also display a similar high degree of linguistic craftsmanship, a similar predilection for ambiguity, and similar care in their characterization and their examination of their protagonists' development, even if they apply their very own distinctive narrative strategies. Finally, both are also deeply fascinated with the past -what Phillips has called "the back story" -and how it shapes the present. As he explains, "To understand where you are now you have to understand the back story [...]. I've been playing with the idea of what constitutes the end and the beginning, how things keep coming back round, since my very first novel." 2 Clearly, The Final Passage and In the Falling Snow are part of an ongoing and subtle exploration of what makes us who we are, and how we came to be that way. What, then, separates the two books? One way of indicating this might be to recall Phillips's literary production between 1985 and 2009, and all the subject-matter that it covered over that time-span, whether slavery, the African and Jewish diasporas, or the black presence in Europe, to mention just a few. Quite significantly, in Phillips's latest novel, Keith's cultural and existential baggage seems much heavier and bulkier, and perhaps also less clearly labelled, than Leila's in The Final Passage. The family history of the young Caribbean woman who arrives in England with her husband Michael and her baby boy Calvin remains, until the end of the novel, much of a mystery to her; her identity is basically dual, shaped mainly by the Caribbean where she was born and spent much of her life and, to a lesser extent, by England, the disappointing 'mother country', where she has chosen to settle but which she might be about to leave at the end of the novel. Keith, by contrast, seems to 2

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Section: Afterwordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Afterwordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Renée Schatteman H E N E W York Times H a S D E S C R I B E D Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Moreover Several Of Phillips's Essays Are Instances Of What Philippementioning

confidence: 99%

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A New World Tribe in Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore

Di Maio

2012

Caryl Phillips

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“… 4 Abigail Ward (2011) discusses the work of Phillips, Dabyseen and D’Aguiar in the context of Britain. Significant critical texts devoted to slavery novels by British Caribbean authors are, among others, those by Eckstein (2006), Ledent (1997, 2002, 2005), and the chapter on fiction in Kowaleski-Wallace (2006). …”

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Slavery fiction in Britain

Muñoz-Valdivieso

2020

Journal of European Studies

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This article analyses significant examples of slavery fiction published in Britain by writers who have family links to Africa and the Caribbean. As children of immigrants who had come to Britain after World War II, Caryl Phillips, David Dabydeen, Fred D’Aguiar, Andrea Levy and Bernardine Evaristo shared the uncertainties of coming of age in a society that offered no space for their identities as individuals with roots in other continents. This article reviews some of their fictions and considers them as a group in their re-creation of British involvement in the slave trade and slavery. They refocus the lens of history and present the perspectives of African enslaved and free individuals in stories of human suffering but also of agency and resistance. These fictions reconstruct the role of slavery in the British past as they write against traditional abolition-oriented narratives of the nation.

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Phillips, Caryl

Schatteman¹

2016

The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies

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Born in St. Kitts (on March 13, 1958), raised in England, and currently residing in the United States, Caryl Phillips has gained significant attention as a postcolonial writer preoccupied with themes of migration, displacement, and the black diaspora. In his proliferation of works – ten novels, four works of nonfiction, and seven plays and screenplays to date – he examines historical patterns of exploitation and oppression by creating storylines that depict a wide range of time periods (from the fifteenth to the twenty‐first century) and settings (the Caribbean, England, Africa, Europe, and the United States).

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Caryl Phillips

Cited by 66 publications

References 0 publications

A New World Tribe in Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore

A New World Tribe in Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore

Slavery fiction in Britain

Phillips, Caryl

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