Reclaiming Jamaica’s Indigenous Space through Storytelling in Lorna Goodison’s Controlling the Silver

Abstract

Abstract:This essay argues that Lorna Goodison’s poetry collection Controlling the Silver (2005) is infused with African and Indigenous Caribbean modes of storytelling which honor oral traditions and reclaim the Jamaican landscape from the history of colonization. The poems “Rainstorm is Weeping: An Arawak Folk Tale Revisited,” “Traveling with Photographs of Our Generations Flanking St. Christopher on the Dashboard,” and “Creation Story: Why Our Island is Shaped Like a Turtle” re-map Jamaica and honor Arawak/Taíno landscape and seascape. Drawing on scholarship that rejects the vanishing Arawak/Taíno myths, the author uses Katherine McKittrick’s theories of geographies in relation to Indigenous communities in order to re-think the meaning of “uninhabitable” spaces. Considering complex histories of habitation of Jamaican landscape and space unravels the lasting impacts of colonization while also celebrating the resilience of Indigenous Caribbean cultures.