"the Caribbean writer who has been able to move fearlessly/innocently into this enigmatic alternative world and has therefore been able to contribute most to the literature of African expression is George Lamming. In Season of Adventure we watch a young girl dance toward the gods at a vodun ceremony. As she dances, we become involved, until we find that Lamming's language has become an image of the child's possession:"

George Lamming (1927) - Season of adventure (1960)

"language, as we saw in the discussion of names, may be conceived as having the power to affect life. And again it is Lamming who exposes us to an interior view of the process"

Below, Season of Adventure p. 91

Bruce St. John, "West Indian Litany," Savacou 3/4 (December 1970/March 1971), p. 82.

A folk-poet like the Barbadian Bruce St. John captures all this, and, significantly, the very essence of the Bajan psyche with:

"'Negus' which begins as a raindrip or drum beat and develops into
cross-rhythm" is used as an example of African expression. From Islands (1969) and later "Mother poem" (unpublished manuscript at the time) follows the theme of transformation

The theme of transformation in lamming's "The pleasure of exile" (1960)

The following excerpts illustrate quite unequivocally what I mean by the "literature of reconnection": arecognition of the African presence in our society not as a static quality, but as root-living, creative, and still part of the main. Take, for instance, this passage describing the famous Bathsheba coast. The people of Barbados know this coastline-wild, Atlantic, and rocky. But how many, looking down on that surf those reefs, from Horse Hill and Hackleton, realized that there was nothing but ocean and blue between themselves and the coast of Africa?that Barbados, the most easterly of the West Indies, is in fact the nearest to Africa. Certainly no major Barbados writer known to me had ever made the point. Marshall, whose parents are Bajan and whose childhood was divided between Barbados and Brooklyn, saw the connection immediately:

Paule Marshall (1929 - 2019) - The chosen place, the timeless people (1969)

"Finally, at the end of the book, there is a Carnival. It is not a particularly
typical Bajan happening, but Paule Marshall does not intend it to be. She links the
Afro-Caribbean experience of Bajan (Chalky Mount) maroons with Trinidad car
nival and Montserrat masquerades. Every year the people of Bournehills put on
the same mas'?the same pageant?The Legend of Cuffee Ned. They will not
change a single iota of their metaphor. There is of course an outcry against this
from other parts of the island: "Oh you poor people from the slave days, every year
you doing the same thing." But Bournehills is making a point: until there is a
change in the system, we will always be slaves, and until there is change, we must
continue to celebrate our one, if brief, moment of rebel victory"

Spiritual Baptist from Silver Sands as an example of the call/response rhythm in African Expression