Tell Me/‘I Am Listening’: Ocean Stirrings and the Creole Vocalization of Nelson’s Royal Readers
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, I explore Merle Collins’ reworking of poems from the Nelson’s Royal Readers. Focusing on Part V of Ocean Stirrings, I explore Collins’ use of poetic form to represent the mental unravelling and restitching of Louise Langdon Norton Little, the mother of Malcolm X. Louise Litte—a Grenadian migrant woman—is depicted as unmoored by the travails of racism in early twentieth century USA. Louise’s ensuing psychological cataclysm is refracted through the prism of the memories of her grandmother’s Creole voice—an oral text which discursively radicalizes the colonial agenda that was core to the Royal Readers. I argue that Collins is intentional in her use of a decolonized poetic versification to represent Louise Little’s imaginative maneuvering into self-reclamation. Transposing her grief and loss onto the poems learnt when she was a child, Louise is depicted as poetically and creatively harnessing her grandmother’s grassroot wisdom on the value of strategic resilience. This retelling allows Louise to survive the trauma of her incarceration in a U.S. mental hospital and returns her to her Caribbean self: Oseyan.
Source: Humanities
DOI: 10.3390/h14050109
Author: Antonia MacDonald
Institution: St. George's University
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,689
OpenAlex ID: W4410494754