Blog Post # 4 Cotton Candy vs. Little Cog-Burt

 

Little Cog-Burt

 Little Cog-burt was written by a female author from Dominica.  “Phyllis Shand Allrey”, who is most often perceived as a politician who subordinated her promising career as a novelist to her trailblazing efforts to open Dominica’s path to political democracy, rarely—if ever— does her audience think of her as a poet. Yet her favoring of her poetry as “the best part of me” prompts echoes about poetry’s role in her trajectory as a writer and politician that yet invites us to read her commonly read poems in search of her reproductions on that “best part” of her tragically daring image.

 

 

Allfrey’s poetic legacy offers both a rich disposition of consideration of Allfrey’s political principles and Fabian Socialist ideals as well as a window into the poet’s personal life, revealing, poem after poem, that “best part” of herself she claimed. Poetry was her earliest literary pursuit, and given the difficulties she encountered in her later years, when she lived among poverty and neglect, it was to poetry she would return when fiction became too challenging a task amongst her struggle for survival.

Politically, the poet that emerges out of this collection is a confirmed anti-colonialist, who speaks in ‘Colonial Committee’ of continued British rule as an “adolescence too prolonged” and of the colonized as “the deeply wronged”. It is someone who, deeply involved in the effort of helping West Indian migrants settle in England during the World War II years. She displayed several reflections of this while writing Little Cog-burt. Little Cog-burt was an illustration of her heartfelt weights that she wore on the cuffs of her sleeve in being a spokeswoman for those who were subjected to discrimination, slavery & social injustice. She spoke for the disadvantages and underprivileged naturally due to the pigmentation of skin, hierarchy of status or grading of class in societal climates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cotton Candy

Cotton Candy was also written by a Caribbean female poet.

Dora Alonso, who was born in Cuba.

Dora Alonso  was born Doralina de la Caridad Alonso-Perez on December 22, 1910 in Maximo Gomez, Matanzas, Cuba. Dora was a Cuban journalist and writer who worked in both print and radio. She wrote novels, short stories, poetry, theater and children's literature. She was also a radio and television script writer and a war correspondent.

 

Dora joined the anti-imperialist organization Joven Cuba in 1934 and met her mate Constantino Barredo Guerra. During this time she also wrote her first radio scripts. In 1936, one of her first short stories on social issues was awarded first place in a literary contest by the literary magazine. In 1942, Alonso started writing for the magazine, she also received an award from Alianza Cubana por un Mundo Libre (Cuban Alliance for World Freedom).

In the 1950s she wrote theatrical scripts for the Cuban puppet show Pelusín del Monte, which was a Cuban television show. Alonso then became a well-known children's writer and her works have been interpreted and circulated in other countries. She is the most translated and published Cuban author for children. During this period, comes “Cotton Candy”, a depiction of the life of a woman living in Cuba. Dora pictured a marginalized character who struggled against the reality of a corrupt society. Facing the exploited issues wherein Cuban peasantry meet face to face.  Her narrative style is based on simplicity and handling of emotions. An important subject of her works is the Cuban woman showing the her various ways to seek love in a world of promoting desires that she cannot achieve. Both share, the sense of the oppressed being lifted by the illustration of words that describe their lives in nature, love, animals, growth, disability or plain ole’ “Am I not good enough?”

References: 

https://themissingslate.com/tag/issue-12/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Alonso