Black experience, bajan, and musico-literary intermediality in Austin Clarke’s They Never Told Me

Bibliographic Data

ID22429705
AuthorsYanrong Wang (0000-0001-5136-9455, Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Janine Hauthal (0000-0002-3917-859X, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Text Construction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1874-8767 • E-ISSN: 1874-8775
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/etc.25009.pir
OpenAlexW7167619936
LanguageEN
References cited15

This paper explores the use of Bajan, a spoken language of Barbados, and musico-literary intermediality in the depiction of black diasporic experiences in Austin Clarke’s short story collection They Never Told Me: And Other Stories , arguing that these strategies infuse English with localised, embodied and affective dimensions. Relying on Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s work on West Indian aesthetics and on Werner Wolf’s theorisation of musical intermediality, the paper demonstrates how Clarke uses Bajan to resist colonial ideas of a bounded Standard language. In addition, it shows how Clarke questions the privileged position of English and the English canon through intertextual appropriation. It further investigates how references to African diasporic music genres such as calypso, folk song and tap music in the stories gesture towards black characters’ shared cultural memory as well as intergenerational and cross-ethnic understanding. Together, these strategies point to the emergence of de-centred and layered forms of expression through which Anglophone black Canadian literature contributes to configuring English as a plural, relational language of encounter.

Colonialism · Cultural memory · Depiction · Embodied cognition · Musical · Musical expression · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Short Stories in Global Literature

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