Literature of Suriname

Suriname, located on the north Atlantic coast of South America, is the country in which Maroon experiences have been most visible throughout history. The Maroons are descendants of former slaves who escaped from their plantations and reconstructed their African cultural heritage in the rain forest. They have also at times engaged in armed resistance against the military forces of the various governments of the nation.

This heroic history is rarely addressed in literary works by contemporary writers of Maroon descent, such as Doris Vrede, André Pakosie, and Julian With. These writers publish their work in Dutch and deal with contemporary issues of injustice, discrimination, and the dramatic changes occurring in their village communities.

The first Maroon author, Johannes King (1830–1899), wrote in Sranan, the main Creole language of Suriname. He was an autodidact and a member of the Moravian Church. The Moravian Mission always promoted the use of Sranan and was instrumental in its development as a literary language. The schoolmaster "Papa" Koenders, who published the magazine Foetoeboi in the 1940s, belonged to the Moravian Church, as did Sophie Redmond (1907–1955), a medical doctor and an author of theater texts. The country's most important poet, Trefossa (1916–1975), was also a Moravian. Jan Voorhoeve (1923–1983), a well-known linguist, was sent by the Moravians to study Sranan culture in postwar Paramaribo. Voorhoeve found a tabooed but flourishing tradition in which storytelling was considered to be a serious specialization, and the songs, dances, and musical performances were extremely rich with reminiscences of the times of slavery. Sranan was identified with strategies of resistance and survival, and it became the political language for the nationalist politicians before independence in 1975. Eddy Bruma, a lawyer and politician, has composed theater pieces and poems about the Maroon heroes.

Sranan serves as a connection to the African-American past in Suriname, and important poets such as Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout (1910–1992) and Michaël Slory (b. 1935) have helped maintain that connection. Nonetheless, the first critical approach to Surinamese history told from the slave's point of view was written in Dutch: In 1934, Anton de Kom (1898–1945) published We Slaves from Surinam, which was censored by the Dutch authorities.

In his early novels, Albert Helman (1903–1996) addressed the cruelties and injustice of slavery in plantation society in the seventeenth century. The writer Dobru (1935–1983), meanwhile, created humorous but critical narrative sketches about the everyday life of the poor in Paramaribo. Dobru also was a poet, and his poem "Wan bon" (One tree) is considered a second national anthem in Suriname.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sranan and Surinamese Dutch were explicitly forbidden in the educational system of Suriname. Edgar Cairo (1948–2000) felt this to be such a painful experience that he struggled against its humiliating effects in his critical essays, poems, and narratives. Although Cairo wrote in Dutch (he lived most of his life in Holland), his native Sranan tongue strongly influences his syntax and grammar. In fact, many Surinamese writers have published their work in the Netherlands since the 1970s. Poetry, theater, novels, radio plays, and short stories are all represented. Clark Accord was particularly successful with his 1999 novel De koningin van Paramaribo: kroniek van Maxi Linder (The queen of Paramaribo: Chronicle of Maxi Linder), a tale about a famous prostitute. His work was immediately adapted to theater. Ellen Ombre (b. 1948) describes her experience of blackness from a female perspective, intertwined with the contemporary history of Africa. Her first novel, Een negerjood in moederland (A Negro Jew in the mother country), was published in 2004. Cynthia McLeod (b. 1936) has authored several historical novels. She discovered that the richest woman of Paramaribo in the eighteenth century was black, and she published her extensive archival research on this woman, Elisabeth Samson (1715–1771), whose parents were both slaves. McLeod also wrote a novel based on her own life, De vrije negerin Elisabeth. Gevangene van kleur (The free Negro woman Elisabeth. Prisoner of color; 2000). Astrid Roemer's characters, in contrast, are pure fiction, though clearly recognizable as Surinamese. Roemer (b. 1947) has written an impressive trilogy about life in Paramaribo in the second half of the past century. The trilogy comprises Gewaagd leven (Life at risk; 1996), Lijken op liefde (Looking like love; 1997), and Was getekend (Signed; 1998). Authors such as Ombre and Roemer do not identify themselves as Dutch or European, and they do not seem to find meaning in, or draw inspiration from, European literature. However, one of the most innovative poets writing in Dutch, Hans Faverey (1933–1990), a black Surinamese, seemed to consider his work a part of Dutch literature.

Finally, Surinamese literature shares features with literature from the rest of the black diaspora. Critics have drawn connections, for example, between African-American women writers in the United States and women writers in Suriname. Furthermore, Surinamese literature has shared with Brazilian and Angolan literature an interest in analyzing the attitudes of that economically well-off sector of the population in each of these societies known as Creoles—particularly their attitudes towards slavery and the slave trade. Unlike Angolan and Brazilian writers, however, Surinamese literature also focuses on the Maroons and on their dynamic interplay with other ethnic groups in Surinam's extraordinarily rich social landscape.

See also Literature of Guyane; Literature of the Netherlands Antilles; Maroon Arts

Bibliography

Arnold, A. James, ed. History of Literature in the Caribbean, Volume 2: English- and Dutch-Speaking Regions, edited by Vera M. Kutzinski and Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 2001.

Drie, Aleks de. Wan tori fu mi eygi srefi, edited by Trudi Guda. Paramaribo, Suriname: Ministerie voor Onderwijs, Wetenschappen en Cultuur, 1984.

Neck-Yoder, Hilda van, ed. "Caribbean Literature of Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, and the Netherlands." Callaloo 21, no. 3 (1998).

Voorhoeve, Jan, and Ursy M. Lichtveld, eds. Creole Drum: An Anthology of Creole Literature in Surinam, translated by Vernie A. February. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975.

ineke phaf-rheinberger (2005)