The poetics of multiculturalism in Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s poetry : a study of selected poems

الملخص EN

All of mankind has a history that dwells within the space of their consciousness and within the blood of their veins.

Such a history is cherished within the aspects of the culture he is raised up to behold and pass on to the upcoming generations by performing certain rituals and traditions.

However, some external cultural interferences may take place, causing a gradual loss of some or all aspects of the interfered culture.

The most destructive among such interferences, is perhaps that of a systemized colonization.

It may cause for changes in cultural habits and traditions like style, religious performances and even language.

Such issues are read within the context of multiculturalism.1 The ancient African world and its many cultures have been home to such cultural interferences.

Slave trades organized by colonial countries have taken away millions of African people.

They were shipped to different cultural worlds and have suffered the loss of many of their own cultural aspects.

The 'New World' has been subject to where Africans have witnessed such cultural problems.

2 Poets like the Caribbean Edward Kamau Brathwaite (1930-) have signed it their duty to retrieve lost cultural aspects, such as the loss of their ancestral history and their cultural identity and seeks therefore for an overall recognition of the ancient African culture within the means of the Caribbean identity.

It is his attempt to deculturalize the aspects of the superior culture, in this case the British culture, in the Caribbean nation in order for the African culture to rise.

These shall be conducted in Brathwaite's trilogy Ancestors (2001).