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Transcription: [00:04:25]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
of what I really had experienced in my homeland was authentic. And as I went on living in Ghana, I lived there for 6 years, 7 years. By the end of that time, I got a very strong desire to return back to the Caribbean and to really recognize for myself what Ghana had taught me that we really had. And those are the poems that really begin my major work Rights of Passage, published in 1967, Masks in 1968, and Islands.

[00:04:58]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now, and they, they deal mainly with the theme of African culture.

[00:05:03]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
Not only African culture, but really the business of what African culture did to me.

[00:05:09]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Yes

[00:05:10]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
In recognizing my Caribbeanness.

[00:05:11]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
So you express you're, what you perceive through your writings.

[00:05:15]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
Right. Right. Good.

[00:05:17]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
You think most writers do that.

[00:05:18]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
I think so. Um, we have said there are two main kinds of writers those who respond to external experience or social experience and those that respond to internal psychic or spiritual experiences. I, in general, tend to respond to the communal external ones, okay.

[00:05:35]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
What about one, this one point, we'll get to more later.

[00:05:39]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
Right, okay.

[00:05:40]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
What are you going to read now?

[00:05:42]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
I'm going to, I have in my hand here the book called The Arrivance, which is really umm those 3 books I mentioned, Rights of Passage, Masks, and Islands all brought into one. Because it really is a trilogy.

[00:05:55]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Yes

[00:05:55]
{SPEAKER name="Edward Brathwaite"}
3 poems in one. I really want to give you an idea, my sense of the connection between Africa and the new world, because I think that was one of our problems that we felt that Africa was very separate from the new world, and that we were not really part of the historical experience, okay. This is called The Journies and it's from Rights of Passage.

[00:06:22]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
mhm

[00:06:23]
{music}

[00:06:35]
{SPEAKER name="Vernon February"}
Egypt and...