SOURCE: Dash, J. Michael. “Edward Kamau Brathwaite.” In West Indian Literature, 2nd Edition, edited by Bruce King, pp. 194-208. London, UK: McMillian Education Ltd., 1995.

In the following essay, the author claims that Brathwaite views himself through the Modernist assumption of the poet as divine interpreter, an individual with the power to give one voice to multiple identities and histories. In the case of Brathwaite, this power is used to give voice to the Islands' African ancestry and colonial history.

Probably the best introduction to the poetry of Edward Kamau Brathwaite is his largely autobiographical essay entitled ‘Timehri’. In this account of his own experiences and how they combined to form an awareness of certain literary and cultural problems, the poet attempts to situate himself in terms of the evolution of West Indian writing. In tracing various tendencies among his fellow-writers, Brathwaite isolates two important phases in a gradual...