An Island is a World - Sam Selvon

Some quotes taken from the book:

'My friend, become famous, and you can talk bull and the people will listen avidly'.

'You could feel a tensity and a crazy anxiety for movement in the people, as if they felt that to stop and take stock would be to court disaster'. (118).

'Wear this, don't wear that. Eat this, dont eat that. Make love this way, not that way. What kind of toilet paper do you use? And this is a mentality which is supposed  to be better than mine, for I am only a poor coloured colonial from a backward island far across the world, come to learn about life in the great city of London, where the cream of the white people live' (120).

'...there were times when I was hungered and I saw my landlady go out and buy rabbit for her cat (she doesn't like fish, the little dear, isn't that strange?) and meat for the dog. And for all the fuss and attention paid to them, one could find time to wish one were a dog instead of a suffering human being'.

'It is truly amazing how very little a man can concern himself with and get by, or get to the top of his little sphere and reign there serenely. Life doesnt make many demands, it is we who have ball-sed up the works and we blame everything and everyone but ourselves (112).

'It struck him that the Americans and the English never thought of themselves as foreigners, it was as if they expected the local people [Trinidadians] to conform with their ideas and not the other way around. In the first place, they didnt know anything about the West Indies. They came expecting savages and dusky girls in grass skirts (49).

'If a white man doesnt want to accept me as a human being, I pity his ignorance and reach, that's all. It doesn't get me angry or make me see red. In any case a man must be colour blind to call me black as we are to call pink white' (55).

'People are the same all over the world', Father Hope said. 'It does not matter where you are, you encounter sadness, happiness, love, hate. An island is a world, and everywhere that people live, they create their own worlds'.

'But sometimes that world is small', Foster said. 'sometimes you feel as if you are at the top of it, and you want more. Your mind is cramped, your vision limited' (73).

'And Foster thought to himself about the greatness of the thing they were talking about, how to make people happy. He thought how people talked great things in funny places, like rumshops. And he saw the smallness of Trinidad, and the people moving about on the shape of the island, from Port of Spain to Toco, down to Mayaro and Icacos, the two bottom points. The island was so small, he could step from it to the continent of South America' (p. 82)

Two brothers Rufus and Foster go to the US and England respectively. Their first impressions and their contacts and experiences there are beautifully outlined:

Rufus found he didnt have to take on an acccent: he was a foreigner and they expected him to speak differently and have customs and a culture of his own....but he was shocked at the ignorance of a lot of Americans who knew absolutely nothing of geography. (92).

And then comes another letter from London destined to Andrews, an artist friend of Foster's who has now moved into politics. Again, in the letter, Foster talks about his existential nullification in London, the Mother Country and the complete arrogant ignorance of the natives. But he also longs to belong somewhere, feel attached and loyal to something, for a nation to call his own and bemoans that his uprootedness - which he once thought was an advantage and could make him fit in anywhere without difficulties - is now cause for further anguish:

'...important as we Trinidadians think we are (in the sense that we are human beings too) there are people in this country who have never heard of our existence, nor know in what hemisphere the West Indies lay. One evening I went to a club and they asked me to tell them about the West Indies. I said all right, you ask me questions and i'll try to answer.

Do the people live in houses? Do they wear clothes? Are there lions and tigers in the jungles? What language do they speak? Have you ever eaten human flesh?

Over here you don't say you come from Trinidad, because no one knows where or what Trinidad is. You have to say the West Indies and then they take it that you are from Jamaica.

...Hitherto I have always been a little proud that in Trinidad we never felt very strongly about belonging to the island. (Or so it appeared to me)....this is a place to eat and sleep and work and get some fun out of life, and thats all. We never sort of visualised Trinidad as part of the world, a place to build history, a young country which could reap the benefit of the bitter experiences of older countries.

But sometimes a man feels as if he hasnt got a country, and its a lonely feeling, as if you dont really belong nowhere. I used to think that this had merit, that we'd be able to fit in anywhere, with anybody, that we wouldnt have prejudices or narrow feelings of loyalty to contract our minds. I used to think we belong to the world...

But when you leave the country of your birth, it isnt like that at all. Other people belong. they are not human beings, they are Englishmen and Frenchmen and Americans, and you've got to have something to fall back on too...And so I dont know that there's any pride in being a Trinidadian, or even a West Indian. I feel that if I had come to this country and said I was from Gagazendoom, it wouldn't have made any difference....you can't belong to the world, because the world wont have you. The world is made up of different nations, and you've got to belong to one of them' (106-8).

And his friend Andrews reproaches Foster: 'you are acting as  if your life in Trinidad never was; at least as if you dont want to have anything to do with it....we need men like you here, but you just cant ride roughshod over other people or behave as if they don't exist...'