Blog Post # 5 Revision Little Cog-Burt - Cotton Candy
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.
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?”
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.
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