Continental Girl

In the late 1950s, Hildegard Ostermaier was a young Bavarian girl, still in her teens, studying at the University of London. The only surviving child of considerably older parents, she had lived a sheltered existence in postwar Germany. She remembers as a small child watching victorious U.S. soldiers distribute candy bars among the German children. Such excitement was rare, however, for Hilde' s father was a somber man who did not welcome deviation from his routine. That all changed one day for Hilde when, standing in the London Underground, she was introduced by her roommate to Ronald Dathorne. Ronald was like no one she had met before. Though still in his twenties, he seemed older, and already he had the appearance and mannerisms of a scholar. After a brief courtship Ronald announced to Hilde, am going to marry you.This was the beginning of Hilde' s fascinating, sometimes frightening, and often frustrating life as the wife of O. R. (Oscar Ronald) Dathorne (1934-2007): scholar, novelist, poet, and founder of the Association of Caribbean Studies and the Journal of Caribbean Studies.Having grown up in the culturally diverse society of colonial Guyana, Ronald Dathorne earned an international reputation for his groundbreaking work on social conflicts of race, class, and status in colonized cultures. As a social critic and an academician, he often came into conflict with those in authority. He changed jobs often and sometimes found himself at the heart of controversies. Nonetheless, he remained a creative thinker and a respected expert on the effects of colonization and the literature of colonized peoples.Ronald Dathorne taught in England, Africa, and the United States. He founded and directed the Black Studies program at Ohio State University and the program of Caribbean, African, and African- American Studies (C. A. A. S.) at the University of Miami. For thirty years he remained the founder/director of the Association of Caribbean Studies, and editor of the Journal of Caribbean Studies. A creative as well as an academic writer, he produced a body of published work that included numerous essays, a book of poetry, three novels, and eight books of cultural criticism notable for the scope of their vision. More than any of the universities where Professor Dathorne taught, the Association of Caribbean Studies was his refuge, his outlet, his home. For thirty years he and his wife Hilde devoted much of their time, effort, and personal resources to organizing the annual conferences and publishing the Journal of Caribbean Studies and the conference Abstracts.When Ronald Dathorne died, his wife Hilde attempted to keep the Association and the journal in operation. More than anyone else, she knew the value of Ronald's work and understood its importance to him. In a series of interviews conducted at her home in Kentucky this past July (2010), I asked Hilde to talk about her life with her late husband. Anyone who had attended the ACS conferences over the years with any regularity was aware of Hilde' s importance to the continued success of these ambitious ventures. Yet despite decades of non-stop work for the Association, Hilde' s name appears nowhere in the journal or in the Association correspondence. Many others (myself included) were given credit for assisting Ronald with the production of the journal: visiting editors, editorial consultants, advisory editors, reviews editors and so on. But the name of the woman who actually produced the journals and organized the conferences is not to be found. And that is exactly how she liked it. This self-effacing woman is a challenge to the interviewer because she is so reluctant to talk about herself. But what a story she has to tell. When the nineteen-year-old Hildegard Ostermaier decided to marry the Guyanan scholar, she married away (the German expression for children who leave home and country when they marry) in nearly every capacity implied by that term: geographic, cultural, linguistic, and racial

Developmental psychology · Genealogy · Girl · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Psychology