Tasha Viets-VanLear English 208 Naito 29 October 2013 Transnationalism in the Poetry of Jean Binta Breeze Jean Binta Breeze is a woman made up of mixings, mash-ups, and various crsisscrossings. Although having formally studied drama, she came to establish herself not only as an actress, but as a director, choreographer, musician and ultimately writer. Even her writing style cannot be contained within one genre; it is a unique fusion of dub poetry, spoken word, and reggae rhythms, enhanced all the more by her exuberant performance style, and touched with her critical identity as a woman. Perhaps at the forefront of them all though is the junction between Jamaican Breeze, and British Breeze. This junction of home-to-home identity is what forms much of the basis of the publics analysis of Breeze and her work, as well as other wellestablished Black British writers of her time and before, such as Linton Kwesi Jonhson (who in fact was the very reason Breeze found herself in London to begin with). This acute crossing of identities is what John McLeod terms transnationalism in his essay Some Problems with British in a Black British Canon, a concept that reveals itself in the poetry of Jean Binta Breeze. What is the importance of establishing a transnational understanding in the first place? Why should we sidestep the notion of a Black British canon, and disapprove of seemingly solutionary terms such as globalization, or the Black Atlantic? As McLeod ventures to explain in his essay, the term Black British implies a certain restricted inclusion into a defined structure that is supposedly easy to draw edges around, easy to identify. The term automatically tags on an
2 assumed static, national identity of British without recognizing the many influences that weave in and out of a Black artist in Britain. To be transnational as opposed to Black British (or globalized, cosmopolitan, etc) means to show one s readers/listeners that one is an individual influenced by many nations and a member of many nations. The individual is not just Black or British or Black and British but instead, in the oft repeated and perhaps cliché words of Walt Whitman, one that contains multitudes. We can begin to explore Breeze s representation of transnationalism in her writing voice. Most of her poems are written in the authentic Jamaican vernacular of her speaking voice--her spelling and word choice read as if they had been transposed for the page. This distinct style immediately stops the reader before they even begin to interpret what the words are saying. Before they can understand, they must become acclimated to the sound, the rhythm, and the grammar of her lines, almost as if reading a new language entirely. This is a way of bringing the foreign reader immediately into an in-between position of poetry reading that, in a way, requires us to translate the words on the page into words we are used to reading and speaking. This immediate subconscious translating action exemplifies Breeze s crossing over of nation to nation. Conversely, one can look at her poems written in standard English and come to a similar conclusion (think of poems such as love amidst the war and To All Who Read the Cover and Proclaim ). By providing work after work written in her natural accented voice, and then including a piece that switches languages, she is almost challenging any act of compartmentalization. This same switching is seen in the work of Linton Kwesi Johnson, also
3 considered an artist of transnational motivation, and serves to create a back-and-forth relationship of proclaimed and assumed identity. Briefly, we can return to To All Who Read the Cover and Proclaim through this aforementioned lens of assumed identity by looking at the first few lines of the poem: she isn t what you think/though you think you know her/well (Breeze 70). These lines continue to exemplify McLeods reluctance with the canon and importance of transnational observation. By assuming one knows someone else s identity (as can happen in the formation of a canon), one might incidentally end up, in the words of McLeod, re-covering and ultimately suppressing their work (obstructing the realness or authenticity with something perceived by the public), when truthfully, creativity cannot be contained or compartmentalized (McLeod 56). It is what comes organically from an artist without restraint or restriction (as with identity). Next we ll look at Breeze s piece ordinary mawning. The most clear insight of this piece comes from the video we viewed in class of Breeze performing this piece and others, in which she preludes it by speaking of other women comrades of hers in the Caribbean, dedicating it to all those who couldn t be there. Throughout the melancholy poem, the listener now hears the poem as the voice of someone else an unnamed women, perhaps at her home in Jamaica who, despite the average, ongoing regularity of everyday life finds herself full of sorrow. Because of Breeze s prelude, this poem then becomes a link, or cross-border forging between Breeze and the woman in the poem, whom because of Breeze is able to act as a voice for. This connection from one woman to another, one nation to another, is but one more example of her transnational
4 influence, not just within the individual, but this time through a creative, poetic connection between individuals. This same idea continues to be seen in her piece, It s Good to Talk. This work is presumably from the perspective of Breeze herself, and reads as a conversation from her to another woman. Unlike the last poem, which alluded to a more metaphorical relationship or conversation (Breeze using her voice for someone who could not, speaking for someone who could not), this poem displays a direct conversation from Breeze perhaps to an old friend or family member from home ( across the distant mountains (Breeze 140)). The poem ends with the lines: anywhere you go, chile is the same creation anywhere you go, chile same way people stay (Breeze 140). This message of basic creation and human existence being the same and remaining the same no matter where you might find yourself, implies the notion that borders, edges, boundaries are all much more arbitrary than they are established to be. This message might be seen as something positive or negative; she could be saying sorrow is the same no matter where you are, to be Black in Britain or Jamaican in Jamaica or British in Britain the same hurt will find you. Or she could be speaking in reference to happiness, joy, or everyday life. It s all the same creation. Again, the continuity touches on a relationship link crossing nations, not just the individual crossings of identity.
5 Finally, Breeze s poem Third World Girl explores a new vein of transnational expression. The piece is a message of cynicism and outright disgust for the ways in which imperial white powers (but perhaps more specifically white men) take over third world countries, destroy the native economic structure, and exploit the women, using them for labor, mockery, and sexual gratification. In a way, the imperial European power is often times robbing peoples of their identity, their home and claiming it as their own. This is seen in the lines, your dollar buys my story (Breeze 142) and born to the land/where your flags unfurled/empire s over (142). This act of colonial claiming, Breeze s proclaimed identity as a product of this colonialism, and the poem itself is all evidence of a transnationalist ideology. McLeod writes that one thing transnationalism speaks to is the importance of nation and emotional attachments (McLeod 58); colonialism, imperialism, and the relationship to Breeze s personal history give her a clear emotional stimulus being an artist in a country that throughout past histories, has released atrocities on her nation of origin...again, the crossing from nation to nation both actual and imagined (McLeod 58). There is ultimately only something to be gained by a developing awareness of transnationalism in the Black British context. A conscious maintaining of a Black British Canon ends up excluding more work and authors than it includes (McLeod 56), drawing subjective borders around a body of art and expression of identities that cannot be explicitly controlled. Authors such as Jean Binta Breeze make clear that their identity is an active and continuous conglomeration of all of the places they ve come from and the places they find themselves at any moment, always recognizing the planes of various national formations but continually bearing witness to the ways in which those nations borders cross (McLeod 58). Her
6 poetry provides readers with a vivid global context and unique look at the way one shapes identity and art, all seen through McLeod s lens of transnationalism. Works Cited Breeze, Jean B. Third World Girl: Selected Poems with Live Readings DVD. Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2011. Print. Mcleod, John. " Some Problems with British ; In a Black British Canon." Wasafiri 17.36 (2002): 56-59. Web.