The Tribune

By IAN BETHEL BENNETT

The world of letters lost another of its important figures recently. British writer Doris Lessing died at a great age on November 17, 2013. A woman who saw the world for the bigoted, racists, sexist, homophobic, unequal place it was and brought life to it in her writing, left a legacy of speaking truth to power through her fiction. Lessing brought to the world a clarity of voice and presence that was fresh and rewarding. She spoke to feminist issues as well as to colour and racial matters, among others.

I thought to use Lessing’s passing as a point of focus today because of her massive impact on English literature, or what has become known as literatures written in English, to remove it from its colonial prison. In a post-colonial, post-feminist world, Lessing’s voice is hard to hear as so few of my students understand the importance of the written word or have ever really been exposed to writing of such weight. This is surprising to me given that most of them would have had to take BJC and/or BGCSE English. The impoverishment of reading material is not only alarming, but it is unacceptable.

However, Lessing like Achebe, Said, Naipaul as well as Mandela, among others, tackles these themes with such blunt clarity that nothing could be left to chance or misunderstanding. For me, part of Lessing’s legacy is her precision but also her matter-of-fact nature in life and art that brought important issues unabashedly to the fore.

Lessing may have been seen as a feminist writer, but her importance transcends even that important label. Indeed, Lessing tackled women’s issues like menstruation head on, but she also hit out at racial segregation and discrimination that all speak to inequalities in the world. Her work should not only be read but celebrated. However, getting this to happen in the 2013 post-feminist classroom or a world where we no longer read is difficult. As most of my students, especially the young women, contend there is no longer need for words like feminism.

How do we discuss the huge impact that works like Lessing’s “The Grass was Singing” would have had on a bigoted reading public in the second half of the 20th Century? Her voice is not only crucial to understanding racial barriers and their fictional nature, but also to understanding the importance of speaking out in order to create positive change. Without such visionary women and men, where would we be today? While many women, ironically, think that there is no longer a need to fight oppression and discrimination because they have achieved complete equality, racism, gender-based discrimination and class inequalities continue to plague us. Bell Hooks talks about these in her recent works, especially about the falsity of the term post-racial in a society that is quietly but deeply divided by inequalities.

Lessing and others of her generation risked great harm by writing about the issues they tackled. She saw the need to speak about a white woman fancying a black man in a society that would or could have imprisoned or killed them both. She, like Billie Holiday in singing ‘Strange Fruit’ hit out at a murderously hate-filled, racist world. Her oeuvre spans decades and much like the former, will have an impact on the future of art.

Yet where do we see this taking us in the Bahamas? How do we even begin to talk about the matters that are fundamental to the day to day life of a country that is imploding because of inequalities and crime and violence? There seem to be too few people and especially artists or public personas who are willing to do what Lessing and others like her dared to do in countries like Rhodesia, South Africa and Kenya. How quickly we forget about the tragedy of history. How astonishing it is to listen to my students who know nothing about the existence of Apartheid that only ended officially in the 1990s. We have failed somewhere.

Notwithstanding this, if people like Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, Marion Bethel and other local public intellectuals can ‘Speak Out’ as Edwidge Danticat does in her work and declares in her book of essays “I Speak Out” (2010), can push the discussion, then perhaps there is hope. Sadly, there seems to be far too few voices that are willing to sound the horn of dissonance. Lessing like Achebe did this. She worked at a time when women were thought to be less than men. Has this changed? Women were considered less worthy of rights and freedoms. Has that thinking ended? She spoke out against the silence that allowed the removal of women’s bodies from their control, empowering the men in their lives to commit them to lives of interminable suffering if they so chose. Has male power and control over women’s bodies ended? If, as one of my female students so expertly wrote in an outstanding research paper this term, women’s bodies are the property of men and are sexualised and subjected to domination by popular music such as Rap, R&B and Hip Hop, how much have we progressed? She showed clearly, and I hope she develops further and can join the ranks of the Lessings, Achebes, Bethels, Glintons, the need to push back against racist misogynistic patriarchy. Tragically, and this is where the lesson is important, more people are willing to leave the country now than ever before. We are losing the productive sector of our population. If this is a post-feminist, post-racist, post-colonial paradise then why are the inequalities and inequities so pronounced that young people leave and never return except per chance for a visit?

Lessing’s death marks the end to a long and quietly lived but exemplary life where she spoke out vehemently against oppression, injustice and inequality. Sadly, it was mostly hidden between the covers of a book. However, music and popular culture can be vehicles for positive cultural transformation. Lorde’s song, ‘Royals’, that critiques our voyeuristic society that bases its values around hugely flawed pop-culture icons, is an example of this trend. While I am saddened by Lessing’s passing and the apparent lack of impact her literary and political oeuvre have had on a non-reading post-feminist, post-colonial post-racial generation that suffers massive inequalities and discrimination is more alarming, but there seem to be some rays of light.

• Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, Associate Professor in the School of English Studies at the College of the Bahamas, has written extensively on race and migration in the Bahamas, cultural creolisation and gender issues. Direct questions and comments to iabethellbennett@yahoo.co.uk.