Introduction

The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy by Edward Kamau Braitwaite is a peotry

collection In three categories which includes: Rights of Passage, Masks, and
Islands, This collection was originally published independently in 1967, 1968 and
1969 respectively but was later published as a trilogy in 1973.
Each part of the trilogy is dedicated to exploring Edward's theme for the search for
identity. The Afro-caribbeans we are told, have been forcefully uprooted from their
African soil and taken through the middle passage to the New World (Caribbean)
in the name of slave trade. This, becomes the reality that informs Edward's search
for personal identity and reunion with his ancestral home, Africa. Upon arrival in
the New World, African slaves were divested of everything including language,
culture, religion and even mental capacity of reasoning. Yet, they were not given
access to acquire the new language, culture and/or the intelligence of their white
masters. The African man in the Caribbean therefore, was caught in a web of
identity confusion that warrants him to search for a recreation of himself within his
new environment and also the longing to commune with his ancestral land.
As kole Omotosho (1982) rightfully observes, African people in the
Caribbean suffer two major psychological wounds. First, they have been violently
taken away from their ancestral homes through conspiracy of their own people and
the white enslavers, and thus, have been permanently deprived of the revitalizing
effect of their home, culture, tradition ... The second damage stemmed from the
denying of the values and worthiness of African culture and consequent ongoing
denigration of continental Africa Culture.
This psychological wounds no doubt have afflicted the enslaved Africans with
Crisis of identity. And it is this very crisis of identity that informs the creative
imagination of Caribbean artists such as Braitwaite.
The reality of the lose of identity and the quest to reclaim it has onward
becomes the borden of the Caribbean writer who through his creative composition
strive to reunite the African Caribbeans with their ancestral homes and as well
gentrify them into their new environment of the Caribbean Island. Edward Kamau
Braitwaite observes that during his eight years surjourn in Africa (particularly in
Ghana). He came to awearness and understanding of community of cutural
wholeness of the place of the individual within the tribe in the society. He came to

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a sense of self identification with this people, his living diviners. He stressed that
he was able to connect his history with theirs and the bridge of his mind could link
the Atlantic and his ancestor, homeland and heartland.
In the collection , Edward began with Rights of Passage, which focuses on
the experience of the Caribbean through the middle passage down to the New
World ( Caribbean). The second section Masks is a return to Africa for proper
cultural identification and initiation with his ancestral root. While the third section
Islands explores a return to the Caribbean, a formation of self and reconciliation
and reestablishment of self in the new world with a new Caribbean identity, here
Braitwaite comes in term with the realities of the Afro-caribbeans.
In this presentation, we will attempt to prove that the major preoccupation of
Edward's trilogy is a search for his African identity and an attempt to recreate and
reestablish the African man in the Caribbean.

Author Biography

Edward Kamau Brathwaite, poet and historian, was born on 11th May 1930
and died on 4th February 2020. He was aged 89. Edward Brathwaite, also known
as Kamau Brathwaite, was a Caribbean poet and historian, praised by the
American poet Adrienne Rich for his “dazzling inventive language, his tragic yet
unquenchable vision, [which] made him one of the most compelling of late
twentieth century poets”.
Brathwaite began composing and performing his best-known work, The
Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973), while teaching and studying history in
Jamaica and Britain in the 1960s. This epic trilogy traces the migrations of African
peoples in and from the African continent, through the sufferings of the Middle
Passage and slavery, and dramatises 20th-century journeys to the UK, France and
the US in search of economic and psychical survival.
Born Lawson Edward Brathwaite in Bridgetown, Barbados, he was the son of
Hilton, a warehouse clerk, and Beryl (nee Gill), a talented pianist and one of the
first black women to be employed as a clerk in Bridgetown. Edward attended
Harrison college in the capital and was awarded a scholarship to Pembroke College,

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Cambridge, graduating in history in 1953 and gaining a diploma in education the
following year. At Cambridge, he also attended lectures by F R Leavis and became
acquainted with his fellow Pembroke student and poet Ted Hughes. His
appointment in 1955 as an education officer in what was then the Gold Coast saw
Brathwaite witness Kwame Nkrumah coming to power and Ghana becoming the
first African state to gain independence, which profoundly affected his sense of
Caribbean culture and identity. There he also studied with the musicologist J H
Nketia.
In 1960 Brathwaite married Doris Welcome, a teacher and librarian originally
from Guyana. Together they started a children’s theatre in Ghana, for which he
wrote several plays. From 1962 he took up teaching posts for the University of the
West Indies (UWI), first in St Lucia, then in Kingston, Jamaica. Here he began
writing Rights of Passage, and also published poems in the Caribbean literary
journal Bim.
He began a PhD at the University of Sussex in 1965, with his dissertation
published on The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (1971). In
London he met other Caribbean intellectuals and artists, such as John La Rose,
Andrew Salkey, Wilson Harris, Aubrey Williams and Stuart Hall, and became co-
founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement, which met regularly in London and at
the University of Kent between 1966 and 1972.
Returning to Jamaica, Brathwaite launched a journal of the movement,
Savacou, in 1971. Awarded a fellowship to the University of Nairobi that same
year, Brathwaite met the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, whose grandmother
encouraged Brathwaite to take Kamau as his first name.
From 1982 to 1991 Brathwaite was professor of social and cultural history at
the UWI. When Doris was diagnosed with cancer he began writing The Zea
Mexican Diary (1993) as a tribute to her, “the perfect wife of/for the poet”. She
died in 1986.
Made professor of comparative literature at New York University in 1992,
Brathwaite subsequently lived in New York and Barbados. He served on the board
of directors of Unesco’s History of Mankind project for more than 30 years. He
was awarded the Neustadt international prize for literature in 1994. Other awards
included the Griffin international poetry prize for his collection Born to Slow
Horses (2006), the Bussa award, the Casa de las Américas prize, and the
PEN/Voelcker award for poetry in 2018.

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 The scholar Louis James wrote of Brathwaite: “His passionate engagement
with the culture of the common people in the Caribbean has had a liberating impact
on postcolonial writers across the wider spectrum, freeing them to explore their
experience in language and forms authentically their own.

MAJOR PREOCCUPATION OF EDWARD BRAITWAITE IN THE

ARRIVANTS: A NEW WORLD TRILOGY
As stated earlier in the introduction, the poetry collection is of three sections
and each section contains a series of poems centering on a particular theme but are
unified in the theme of search for identity. The first section Rights of Passage
contains; postlude, New world a comin, Wings of a dove, The Emigrant, Calypso,
South among others. This section of the poem merely centers on the theme of
dislocation. This refers to the removal of Africans who have been uprooted from
their ancestral land and taken through the middle passage to the plantations in the
Caribbean as slaves. The Africa man in the Caribbean is presented to be in a kind
of an imaginary limbo in which he neither belongs to none - the African or the
Caribbean. This is so because the African man who has been taken as slave has not
just been disvested of their culture, language and identity but has also been
prevented access to the language and culture of their new environment. Thereby
rendering them both homeless, cultureless, helpless and almost a semi-human
being.
In the opening poem, "Postlude" the poet speaks of exile from Africa to the
Caribbean, and from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom.The poem is filled with
reoccurring images of aleination and disillusionment. Thus, the poetic persona
painfully asks rhetorically:
Where is the Nigga's home?
Paris, Brixton, Kingston
Rome?
Here?
Or In heaven
What crime is that dark skin hidden?
Will exile ever end?

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 Will this spent tears...(Right of Passage p77)
The poetic persona in the qutation above seems to be homeless and helpless and as
well hopeless and thus laments his predicament of alianation occasioned by his
presence in the New world. The poetic persona is so much truamatized that he no
longer believes in the dogmatic philosophy of the hereafter which constitute a hope
for the hopeless, home for the homeless and help for the helpless. Hence, he is not
convinced that his home is in the heavens.
Similarly, the second poem "New World A comin" takes the reader into the
contact between the white and Africans. This poem depicts the trial and
trebulations of Africans who were uprooted and rendered helpless, heroless and
leaderless. The characters involved feel quite nostalgic about their abondoned
homeland and the unwarmt reception they received from their new environment.
It will be long time before we see
this land again, these trees
Again, drifting inland with the sound
Of surf, smoke raising

It will be a long time before we see

this farm again, soft wet slow green
Again: Aburi, akwamu,
Mist raising. (Rights of Passage p11)
From the qutation above, we come to terms with how Africans were forcefully
removed from their native land and farmlands and taken to the New world. The
speaker decries the abandonment of the rich African soil and tradition and his
unfortunate coming into the new world. It is this land of innocence and abundance
that he so much wishes to see again in order to purge this vacuum and emptiness
created within him by the hostile environment.
In addition, the poem "The Emigrants" just as the title implies treat the
theme of migration. In this aspect, Braitwaite explores the experiences of the
Caribbeans whom in search of greener pastures and warmer reception migrated
massively to Britain which they considered to be their mother country but were all
disappointed. Braitwaite himself had had a firsthand experience of this hostile

5
reception in the United Kingdom when he went to live there for awhile before
moving down to Africa. Just like the Caribbean characters in Samuel selvon's The
Lonely Londoners whom massively moved to London in search of Jobs but were
all disappointed. Quoting Dabydeen and Wilson - Tagoe (1987): Dispossessed,
helpless and without any culture to identify with, they look to the white world for
survival. But even here, they are cheated, slighted and battered.
Where to?
They do not know.
Canada, The panama
Canal, The Mississippi, Pain Fields
Florida?
Or on to dock
At hissing smoke locked
Glasgow?
Where do they go?
They do not know,
Seeking a job
They settle for the very best
The agent has to offer...(Rights of passage p52)
Here, the blacks are presented to be aimlessly wandering around London in
search of Jobs but getting none. And even when they get, they only have to settle
for the best the agents can offer which in most cases is nothing more but menial
jobs.
To complicate their predicament further, these negroes on the move in America
and Britain suffers blantant recial discrimination and hostile reception that belittles
their being. Ironically, it is the resources - natural and Human resources of the
same Africans which have been utilized by the West to build both America and
Europe. But now, they are being denied access to benefit from their hard earned
labour and natural endowment.

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 This first part of the poem therefore deals adequately with the psychological
and physical condition of Africans in Caribbean and other western nations who
suffers: Alianation, discrimination, subjugation, political, social and economic and
as well cultural domination. It is this alianation that calls up the feeling of nostalgia
and longing for reunion with Africa motherland. Thus, the poet, Kamau takes us
back to Africa in the second section of the poem titled Masks in search of identity
and self realization of this African man who has been lost to the Caribbean World.

Masks

The theme of Africa finds it's utmost expression in Masks which explores the
culture of the enslaved ancestors in it's mordern living form in Africa, especially in
Ashanti region of Ghana. It is the poet's pilgrimage to find his people's cultural
origins and psychological geology in the history of black empire. This is made
manifest in the poem "The Making of the Drum". Masks particularly celebrates the
life Brathwaite found in Africa particularly, among the Akan tribe of Ghana.
Africa is depicted in this segment of the poem as a land of glorious past history, a
land of worthy music, dance, ancestors, customs and especially religion.
Dabydeen and Wilson Tagoe (1987) opines that Masks is an enactment of the
Caribbean man returning to Africa. Thus, Bratwaite's poetry in Masks is a
celebration of Africa.
In the poem, "The making of the Drum", Braitwaite uses the object drum not just
as a cultural element that unite the living and the dead but also as a symbolic
metaphor for African heritage. "The making of the Drum" is a continual spiritual
process that must be observed carefully. First, the goat is killed, and the skin is
stretched before it can be used to construct a drum. Also, the poet makes us to
understand that the goat whose skin is to be used must be appeased through
incantations to make it understand that it is being utilized for a spiritual purpose
that will help the living reach out to their dead ones in the spiritual land.

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 Bless you, four- footed animal, who eats rope...
Upon rocks, horned with our sins;
Stretch your skin,
Stretch
It tight in our hope
We have killed you to make a thin
Voice that would reach
Further than hope
Further than heaven, that will
Reach deep down to our gods the thin loop
Light cannot leak where our stretched
Heart cannot leap...
So the goat must be killed
And its skin stretched.
Similarly, in "prelude", Braitwaite explores traditional rituals of libations and
heroic deals of Africans. The general theme of quest for what it was in the history
of Africa that make slave trade possible pervades the volume:
Out
Of this
bright
sun, this
white plague
Of heaven,
this leaven -
ing heat

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 of the seven
Kingdoms:
Songhai, Mali
Chad, Ghana
Timbuctu
Volta,
and the bitter
waste
that was
Ben -
in, shout
comes
this song.(Masks p.3)
Here, the poet recounts how slaves were taken from different ancient kingdom
of Africa to the Caribbean. Such as Ghana, Chad etc. He proceeds to invoke the
Earth goddess Asase yaa, which is the Earth goddess of Akan people. Through this,
he communes not only with the living or the ancestors but with the gods and
goddesses of Africa through whom he hopes to purge this emptiness and feeling of
lack of belonging.
Asase yaa
You, mother of Earth
on whose soil
I have placed my tools
on whose soil
I will hoe
I will work
the year has come round again.(Masks p.91)

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Tano
" Tano" explores the theme of exile. The poem reveals the trumatic experiences of
the blacks in exile, especially the brutal treatment meted to them on the plantations
by colonial oppressors. Images of death, orphans, whips, darkness, blood and night
are use to capture the hostile and frustrating condition of exile. The underlying
tone in this poem is that of the dispair, empathy and hopelessness, thus, the poetic
persona laments:
Whom does death overlook?
Whom does death overlook?
I am an orphan
and when I recall the death
of my father
water from eyes
from my eyes
falls upon me. (Masks p 58)
The character Tano in this poem is an African in exile who recounts the death
of his father, and his loneliness overwhelms him. Brathwaite while still in Africa
brings up the issue of exile and loneliness to show that although he has returned
both physically and spiritually to commune with his motherland Africa, a physical
return to Africa geographical location might not be the ultimate solution to finding
his attempts of self reinscription and identification with his root, rather he
advocates for a return to the Caribbean in order to harness his newly recovered
personality and harmonize it with the new man in Diaspora in order to form a new
identity for the Africans in Caribbean. This attempt to return to the Caribbean to
begin a new life is further explored in the poem "Masks" as contained also in the
section Masks. Braitwaite's surjourn through his literally discovery to and fro
Africa back to the Caribbean is giving shape and completeness in the third section
of the poem Islands.

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 Islands
Braitwaite's third section of the poetry collection Islands was published 1969. The
poet recognizes and affirms his root, leading to the creation of a new identity
within the new world. Island is a demonstration of the black man's attempt
spiritually to come to terms with his new word, it is the rejection of the European
culture in one hand and recognition of his African roots on the other. All leading
to the creation of a new identity within his new world. This part of the collection
commomorates an eventful restoration of the black man in the new world with new
identity.
However, Braitwaite literally returns to the Island to face the reality of black
man's predicament as he experiences it in his Caribbean environment. Here, he
explores indept the dispicable condition of Afro-caribbeans as they whallow in
wants, abject poverty, discrimination and isolation. The poet having become fully
awear of how much he has been deprived of his African inheritance strives to unite
his African experience and that of the current Caribbean situation. So, through
titles of poems like Anvil, Tizzic and Island. The poet bares the suffering of Afro-
Caribbeans while leading us back to re-identify with Africa through such titles as
Ogun, Ancestors, Legba, Caliban etc.
In the poem "Tizzic", the poetic persona represents the average life of Caribbean
blacks who are mostly unemployed. And more often than usual result to all forms
of malpractices in order to survive. The poet portrays the poetic persona in the
following ways.
An' then there was Tizzic.
He prefers the booze
an' women
It shame muh heart to think
how many t'ings he had wid Chile:
Shirley, Bots, Phosphorine
Yet you know, mister man, Hick Tizzic

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was one, o'de few hard black
man got livin' down hey

you could trust (except wid yuh daughter).

All day rum soakin' up in he liver
Into he bile an' blood stream. (Islands p.103).
From this qutation, we see that the poet has began a gradual drift in creolization of
the west indies language, which he would later champion its popularization. He
uses a distorted and bastardized version of the English language instead of the
suppose "official American English."
Within the poem, the poet attempts to expose the disillusionment encountered by
Afro-Caribbeans in living in their new environment which has occasioned them to
seek solace in drunkness and womanizing. The character Tizzic is presented as an
untrustworthy fellow who could better be described as a drunk and criminal.
However, we are made to understand that the character only indulges in this acts
only as a means of escape from the harsh realities of life in the Caribbean. The next
poems "Trade winds" and " Anvil" try to depict the sufferings and physical abuse
as well as abject poverty and continuous wants as experienced by the Caribbeans
during the times of transportation to the west indies and upon arrival respectively.
At the desk
In this cell
In this womb
The slaves sweats
Cutting field to Oxford
Whip lash of political officer
Dembarara bleeds
Anguilla bleeds... (Islands 9)
Here, different countries of the African continent bleeds from the violence of
slavery and physical abuse netted out to her children on the process of transporting
then to America as chattel slaves.

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"Legba" and "Ogun"
Both in Ogun and Legba, the link with Africa comes out clearly. Here the Yoruba
Eleshni Elegba and Ogun the god of war have been transplanted into the
Caribbean island, and has become an important gods in Haiti, relevant both to
African and Caribbean. At this juncture, Braitwaite has suceeded in transplanting
the Yoruba gods Lagba and Ogun into their new environment in Caribbean where
it is expected to take a new dimension both physically and spiritually, and help in
shaping and forging out the new man.

Conclusion

From the foregoing, it is agreeable that in the search for identity in the Caribbean,
Brathwaite has made remarkable contribution to the theme of Africa in Caribbean
literature. In west indies Literature, a literature of transplantation is usually
encountered. That is, a literature that highlights the struggle for emancipation and
yearning for a reunion with the roots. Usually, in this, a transmigration into the

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African culture, norms and artifact are realized. This, Brathwaite has been able to
achieve to the fullest in his poem The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. His phisical
visit to Africa and an attempt to reintegrate with the people of Africa, no doubt
helped in shaping the profound realization of his lost personality thereby giving
him strength to live with full confidence in his new environment - the Caribbean.
He has been vindicated, and purged of the shame of crisis of identity and
unbelonginness within his present society. His triumph of victory is also the
triumph of all Afro-caribbeans for whom sakes he has taken this physical and
spiritual sojourn.

References
Akuso, E S (2015), Africa in the Imagination of Braitwaite, Guillen and Walcott.
ABU press, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.
Ayo, K (), Edward Brathwaite's The Arrivants and the Trope of cultural searching.
Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

Edward, K B (1973), The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy. Oxford University

Press, Walton Street, Oxford University, London.
John, P (1987), The search for identity in Edward Braitwaite's The Arrivants,
world Literature Written in English, 27:

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"The poetry of Braitwaite - Caribbean Traditions and Caribbean Themes" Literary
Essentials: African American Literature Ed. Tyrone Williams. eNotes. com 10 Apr.
2023. <https://www.enotes. com/topics/ poetry-

"The poetry of Braitwaite - A poetics Against Fragmentation" Literary Essentials:

African American Literature Ed. Tyrone Williams. eNotes.com 10 Apr 2023.
<https://www.enotes.com/topics/poetry - braitwaite/in- dept#in-dept-a-poetics-
against -fragmentation>
2, 275-289, Dol.
The Guardian News and Media (2023), Edward Kamau Braitwaite: Obituary.
Retrieved 10 Apr. 2023.
The journal of Pan Africa Studies , (2007) The Issue of Identity Search in Edward
Kamau Braitwaite's The Arrivants, Oxford University Press

Research in African Literature vol.27, No.4 (winter 1996), pp.15-27 (13 pages)
published By: Indiana University Press.http://www.jesror.org/stable/3819982

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