WRITING THE CARIBBEAN: COLONIAL EDUCATION AND RESISTANCE IN MERLE HODGES' 'CRICK CRACK, MONKEY' AND THE MIGHTY SPARROW'S 'DAN IS THE MAN (IN THE VAN)'

This paper analyses the depiction of colonial education in Caribbean literature and song. When read in dialogue, Merle Hodge’s text and the Mighty Sparrow’s calypso, communicate how indoctrinated de-valuation of the creole culture, instils feelings of shame within the colonial subject. Subjugation and adherence to institutional eurocentrism within each text, however, differs. I argue that although education becomes a means of continued colonial oppression, Sparrow avails enforced Eurocentric authority whereby he is able to exert resistance in the form of the calypso, whilst in Hodge’s text the possibility of colonial usurpation remains unachievable for the character of Tee.