The Middle Passage

After over a year since I first tried to finish Naipaul's The Middle Passage, I can confidently say this is my favorite of his travel writing. Much of the humor and social commentary in his description of the various Caribbean societies he visits is part of his satirical short stories and novels, for example. The "racial distribution" of jobs in Trinidad, for instance, is brilliantly satirized in his story about the black Grenadian baker pretending to be Chinese to have customers. Similarly, the dark themes about the Caribbean (slave past, centuries of oppression and violence) and the tragedy of the African in the New World (to be recast in so many images of the European powers). Indeed, much of Naipaul's ruminations on race and colonialism are better explored in some of his novels, particularly The Mimic Men, but it's intriguing to see where he was headed in his nonfiction writing before his later literary endeavors. Anyway, to give credit where it's due, Naipaul does understand the problem of race and the phenomenon of black skins in white masks for the West Indies, and there is less of the rampant Negrophobia than I remembered from a year ago. That said, I prefer his younger brother's travel writings on the West Indies over his, though both share a like-minded view on the matter. 

The "meat" of Naipaul's writing here, despite covering Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, Martinique, Antigua, and Jamaica, is really the actual voyage (the titular middle passage) from Europe (coincidentally, picking up emigrants for Britain along the way, completing the cycle of uprooting), his time in Trinidad, and lengthy descriptions of Guyana, the Jagans, and its particular racial and political problems. His sojourn in Suriname is actually a tad less nuanced than that of Shiva Naipaul, and lacks Shiva's nuance in his descriptions of the "Bush Negroes," too.  On describing his native Trinidad, naturally, Naipaul is on top form, hinting at several of the ideas percolating in his mind for Mimic Men and future nonfiction on Trinidad. Unfortunately, Naipaul does not visit any Spanish-speaking Caribbean destinations, unlike Shiva Naipaul, who visited Puerto Rico, so it is far from a 'complete' portrait of the Caribbean during a moment of great change. But anyone interested in the British West Indies during this pivotal moment on the path to independence should read this.