Retention of Cultural Identity in Claude McKay’s Banana Bottom

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Dr. B. Bairavi, Dr. S. Bhuvaneswari

Abstract

Claude McKay is one of the significant writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He is an African-American short story writer, poet, novelist, journalist, autobiographer, and essayist. He is well known for treating themes like identity crisis, color, culture, race, education, love, social injustice, colonial domination, sexuality, politics, gender, music, history, and class discrimination in his literary compositions. Banana Bottom is a bildungsroman novel. The novel gives an exact picture of the Jamaican folk culture through the young Jamaican peasant girl named Tabitha Bita Plant. In Banana Bottom, McKay focuses on the cultural consciousness of the transnational proletarian Bita Plant.  Moreover, the novelist aptly explains the social life of the village girl in England and Jubilee in Jamaica, and portrays her as a rebellious person who is proud of her folk culture. Bita is adopted by a white missionary couple who wish to establish their ability by transforming a rebellious black girl into a cultured Christian. She is given an opportunity to study in England. However, her black folk cultural pride rejects the hypocritical nature of the white Church Mission. Through the novel, McKay strongly rejects the famous theory of white supremacy and dark inferiority.  This paper mainly focuses on how Bita Plant rediscovers her identity through the retention of her Jamaican folk culture wherever she migrates, as depicted in Banana Bottom. Moreover, the novel highlights the differences between the white culture and the black culture, and also skillfully depicts Bita’s assertion of her cultural identity.

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