A Far Cry from Africa

Listen to the YouTube clip of Derek Walcott reading the opening of his epic poem, Omeros. Note the Caribbean cadences of the speech, the grammatical idiosyncrasies of the patois (French Creole) that mark this everyday diction, and the descriptions of specific objects, animals, and activities that teem with life in Walcott’s Caribbean. Compare and contrast his work in Omeros with the struggle that he describes in “A Far Cry from Africa.” The “English tongue” he loves is often informed by the confluence of cultures—English, African, Indian, and indigenous—that amalgamate in the Caribbean. Discuss the importance of language, its flexibility and its power—to name, to alienate, to survey—and how it reverberates in Walcott’s works. He has called himself a “mulatto of style.” This can also be linked to literary legacies: Walcott’s characters, whether the poet-narrator of “A Far Cry from Africa” or Achille and Philoctete in Omeros or Shabine in “The Schooner ‘Flight’,” claim a hybrid heritage, while Walcott’s influences are rooted in the Western canon, from Homer to Yeats and Eliot. He liked to cite Yeats’s comment that “out of our quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” 

With a group, create a T-chart, using the left side to list 4 to 5 foreign words that have entered the standard American English vocabulary (Latin words can be used, too, but choose words from a few languages). Examples include tête-à-tête, bongo, paparazzi, and rickshaw. On the right side of the chart, based on prior knowledge plus dictionary and Internet research, define each word, describe its origins, and note any information you find on how it came to be used by English speakers. Underneath the T-chart, list 4 additional foreign words (not used by English speakers) from four different languages that you encountered during this research. Be sure to include their definitions. After completing your list, consider the general origins of most English-adopted words, and compose two paragraphs reflecting on why English borrows most heavily from the languages that it does, as well as any shift in respect or power you might have felt for foreign languages while learning the new words.