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 Novelist
5th Avenue Theatre,
March 1, 1999
Biography
Excerpt
Selected Works
Links
Biography
Born
in the West Indies, raised in Britain, educated at Oxford, and widely
traveled, Caryl Phillips writes challenging literature about individuals
struggling with the pain of both physical and psychological displacement.
Growing up as part of a minority, Phillips grappled with his own feelings
of alienation. In 1958, when Phillips was six months old, his parents
moved from the tiny Caribbean island of Saint Kitts to Leeds, England.
At sixteen, Phillips had a teacher who said he should leave school and
get a job. Instead, he applied to Oxford. At his interview, his confidence
wavered; he thought: "This isn't going to work. A working-class black
boy with a Yorkshire accent."
At Oxford, Phillips became involved in student theatrical productions,
and upon graduation he began writing his first play, Strange Fruit
(1980). Produced at the accredited Sheffield Crucible Theatre, the play
deals with the differing points of view of two black brothers: one subscribes
to racial separatism while the other rejects it. His success as a playwright
led to work for British television and radio. Phillips then began work
on his first novel, The Final Passage (1985), which he dedicated
to his parents. Based on his family's experiences, the novel tells the
story of a young couple who come from the West Indies to England in the
1950s. As Phillips traveled throughout Europe and the United States, he
further probed the impact of being a minority in European culture. In
his resulting nonfiction book, The European Tribe (1987), Phillips
describes being questioned by police in Detroit and Chicago: "All
their questions centered on the simple fact that I was black and in the
wrong street at the wrong time."
Phillips' novels give voice to a state of mind. He writes from historical
perspectives, crossing gender and racial boundaries, resulting in intense
explorations of race relations and broken histories. Crossing the River
(1993), shortlisted for a Booker Prize, yokes together four different
narratives, spanning two centuries, to tell a disturbing and moving tale
of slavery and its aftermath. The Nature of Blood (1997), is written
in the voice of a young Jewish woman interned during the Holocaust. Phillips
asserts: "Any label, any category which reduces people to one thing,
what they look like—Jew, black, woman—is patronizing and is
racist." Phillips shrugs off critics who assume writers cannot write
from perspectives outside their own race: "I've always thought that
you can do anything with fiction as long as you do it boldly, as long
as you're not tentative about it." This impudent approach has earned
him much recognition in the literary world; he has received a Guggenheim
Fellowship, the Lannan Literary Award, the Martin Luther King Memorial
Prize, and the Malcom X Prize, among others. He has also been invited
to lecture in several countries, including Sweden, India, Germany, Ghana,
and currently, the United States (at Barnard College).
Excerpt
taken from The Nature of Blood (1997)
During the night, the elder of the two men hanged himself by attaching
his white scarf to an iron hook on the boxcar wall. Some of the men tried
to stop him, but he began to punch and kick with such force that eventually
they let him be. Eva turned her face away and blocked her ears. His friend,
the other man with a beard, removed him from the hook. And then again,
silence. Eva looked at a woman who slept with her mouth open and wondered
how she managed not to choke, for the smell was unbearable. Was she truly
resting? Dreaming, perhaps? And then again, the train stopped. The boxcar
was near the locomotive, so Eva was able to listen to the engine die.
Silence. The world remained silent. And then, some hours later, a roar
and a shudder, and once again the locomotive tugged against the weight
of the train. Eva wondered if she would be strong enough to survive the
rigour of what she feared was to come. She looked at her parents, who
now clung to each other in a way that she had never before seen. Their
faces had taken on a clenched weariness that she imagined could not be
shed with sleep. And then she noticed a girl of her own age, perhaps a
little older. It was her time of the month, but she could no longer hide
the blood. More than any of the others, Eva felt for this girl in her
moment of humiliation. Lying in straw sodden with faeces and vomit, all
classes and social distinctions had disappeared. She watched as a young
boy, like the rest of them crazy with thirst, licked the sweat from his
mother's fevered arm. As fast as the wheels turned over, they all searched
for clues that would help them to explain their present condition. And
then, undernourished and tired, their minds eventually slowed to a pounding
numbness, while the wheels of the train beat on.
A long-drawn-out whistle. Then a loud crash and a judder. The darkness
begins to echo with barked orders. Then the doors to the boxcars roll
open. Plumes of smoke spin into the night air. Somewhere in the distance,
fires are burning. Most cannot stand without support. There is no time
for questions. Men clamber in, odd-looking characters in striped shirts
and black trousers, and they begin to kick people out and onto the platform.
How is it possible to be so angry with people who have done you no wrong?
And now, a sweet aroma slamming into their defeated faces. They stand
and look around. Bright lights flood the dark night sky. They shuffle,
unburdened by belongings which they have been encouraged to leave behind.
No, I must take this with me. Have you no compassion? A single bullet
answers the question.
Selected
Works
Strange Fruit (1980)
Where There Is Darkness (1982)
The Final Passage (1985)
The European Tribe (1987)
Crossing the River (1993)
The Nature of Blood (1997)
Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging, editor (1999)
The Atlantic Sound (2000)
Web
Site Links
Phillips's official web site
Interview
with Phillips
Seattle Times article
on Phillips's lecture
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