2026/03/01 by Edward Kamau Brathwaite
paper · doi:10.1632/s0030812926101709
In 1974, Edward Kamau Brathwaite published his much-cited essay “The African Presence in Caribbean Literature” in the journal Daedalus. A little-known aspect of the essay’s history is that it also heralded the end of Brathwaite’s friendship with the Panamanian-Jamaican writer Andrew Salkey. Their friendship, integral to the influential Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), never recovered from Brathwaite’s piece, which contained a strongly critical passage on Salkey’s 1959 novel, A Quality of Violence. What follows is the letter Brathwaite wrote to his aggrieved friend on 9 May 1974, shortly after the essay appeared. A poignant mix of apology and defensiveness, the letter is also a position paper that explains Brathwaite’s coinage and practice of “communal/impersonal” criticism (Brathwaite, Letter to John La Rose, 15 Mar. 1975; Brathwaite, Letter to Andrew Salkey, 9 May 1974).