The Predicament of the Artist in the Caribbean (Reprinted from Guyana Dreaming, April 1990)

The first CAM Conference, in September 1%7, held at the University of Kent at Canterbury, was opened by Elsa Goveia, historian, born in Guyana. Aubrey Williams spoke later the same day. I was very disturbed, intellectually, by Professor Elsa Goveia's talk this morning. She made it clear that we have just done a very difficult thing in breaking out of one phase of our development and entering the new freedoms of the different islands and countries in the Caribbean. We will also at the same time have to move from colonialism into the 20th century in one jump, and we will have to do this in our creative arts first.