Merle Hodge (born 1944) is a

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger, more populous island of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is the southernmost island in ...

ian novelist and literary critic. Her 1970 novel '' Crick Crack, Monkey'' is a classic of West Indian literature, and Hodge is acknowledged as the first black Caribbean woman to have published a major work of fiction.

Biography

Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in

Curepe Curepe is a town in the East–West Corridor of Trinidad and Tobago. It is located west of St Augustine and east of St Joseph. Curepe adjacents the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies. Many of the students attending the uni ...

, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and high-school education in Trinidad, and as a student of Bishop Anstey High School, she won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls' Island Scholarship in 1962. The scholarship allowed her to attend

University College, London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

, where she pursued studies in French. In 1965 she completed her B.A. Hons. and received a Master of Philosophy degree in 1967, the focus of which concerned the poetry of the French Guyanese writer

Léon Damas Léon-Gontran Damas (March 28, 1912 – January 22, 1978) was a French poet and politician. He was one of the founders of the Négritude movement. He also used the pseudonym Lionel Georges André Cabassou. Biography Léon Damas was born in Ca ...

. Hodge did quite a bit of travelling after obtaining her degree, working as a typist and baby-sitter to make ends meet. She spent much time in France and Denmark but visited many other countries in both Eastern and Western Europe. After returning to Trinidad in the early 1970s, she taught French for a short time at the junior secondary level. She then received a lecturing position in the French Department at the

University of the West Indies The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in t ...

(UWI),

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

. At UWI she also began the pursuit of a Ph.D. in French Caribbean Literature. In 1979

Maurice Bishop Maurice Rupert Bishop (29 May 1944 – 19 October 1983) was a Grenada, Grenadian revolutionary and the leader of the New Jewel Movement (NJM) – a Marxist–Leninist party that sought to prioritise socio-economic development, education and bla ...

became prime minister of

Grenada Grenada is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The southernmost of the Windward Islands, Grenada is directly south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and about north of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and the So ...

, and Hodge went there to work with the Bishop regime. She was appointed director of the development of curriculum, and it was her job to develop and install a socialist education programme. Hodge had to leave Grenada in 1983 because of the execution of Bishop and the resulting U.S. invasion. Hodge is currently working in Women and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. In 2022, Hodge and

Funso Aiyejina Funso Aiyejina (1 January 1949 – 1 July 2024) was a Nigerian poet, short story writer, playwright and academic. He was Dean of Humanities and Education (until his retirement in 2014) and Professor Emeritus at the University of the West Indies. ...

were joint winners of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters.

Writings and themes

Merle Hodge has written three novels: ''Crick Crack, Monkey'' (1970), ''For The Life of Laetitia'', published more than two decades later, in 1993, and ''One Day, One Day, Congotay'' (2022). Her first novel, ''Crick Crack, Monkey'', was published in London by

André Deutsch André Deutsch (15 November 1917 – 11 April 2000) was a Hungarian-born British publisher who founded an eponymous publishing company in 1951. Biography Deutsch was born on 15 November 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, the son of a Jewish dentist ...

in 1970, making Hodge the first black Caribbean woman to land an international publishing deal. concerns the conflicts and changes that a young girl, Tee, faces as she switches from a rural Trinidadian existence with her Aunt Tantie to an urban, anglicized existence with her Aunt Beatrice. With Tee as narrator, Hodge guides the reader through an intensely personal study of the effects of the colonial imposition of various social and cultural values on the Trinidadian female. Tee recounts the various dilemmas in her life in such a way that it is often difficult to separate the voice of the child, experiencing, from the voice of the woman, reminiscing; in this manner, Hodge broadens the scope of the text considerably. ''The Life of Laetitia'' (1993), the story of a young Caribbean girl's first year at school away from home, was well received, one review calling it "a touching, beautifully written coming-of-age story set in Trinidad". Hodge has also published various essays concerning life in the Caribbean and the life and works of Léon Damas, including a translation of Damas's 1937 collection of poetry, ''Pigments''.

Published works

Novels

* ''Crick Crack, Monkey''. Andre Deutsch, 1970; London: Heinemann, 1981 (extract "Her True-True Name" in ''

Daughters of Africa ''Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present'' is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora ...

'', edited by

Margaret Busby Margaret Yvonne Busby, , Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's then youngest publisher as well as the first black female book p ...

, 1992);Busby, Margaret (ed.), "Merle Hodge", in ''Daughters of Africa', London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, pp. 582–86. Paris: Karthala, 1982 (French trans. Alice Asselos-Cherdieu). * ''For the Life of Laetitia''. New York:

Farrar Straus Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...

, 1993. * ''One Day, One Day, Congotay''. Leeds:

Peepal Tree Press Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said: "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading pu ...

, 2022.

Selected criticism

* "Beyond Negritude: The Love Poems", in ''Critical Perspectives on Léon Gontran Damas'', ed. Keith Warner. Washington, DC: Three Continents, 1988. From her unpublished thesis, "The Writings of Léon Damas and Their Connection with the Négritude Movement in Literature", University of London, 1967. * "The Folktales of Bernard Dadie", in ''Black Images: A Critical Quarterly on Black Arts and Culture'' 3:3 (1974), pp. 57–63. * "The Shadow of the Whip: A Comment on Male-Female Relations in the Caribbean", in ''Is Massa Day Dead? Black Moods in the Caribbean'', ed. Orde Coombs. New York: Anchor Books, 1974, pp. 111–18. * "Social Conscience or Exoticism? Two Novels from Guadalupe", in ''Revista Review Interamericana'' 4 (1974), pp. 391–401. * "Novels on the French Caribbean Intellectual in France", in ''Revista Review Interamericana'' 6 (1976), pp. 211–31. * "Young Women and the Development of Stable Family Life in the Caribbean", in '' Savacou'' 13 (Gemini 1977), pp. 39–44. * "Challenges of the Struggle for Sovereignty: Changing the World versus Writing Stories", in ''Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference'', ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley: Calaloux, 1990, pp. 202–08. * "The Language of Earl Lovelace", in '' Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal'', Vol. 4, Issue 2, Fall 2006.

References

External links

* Robin Brooks
"Teaching Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey: A Lesson Plan"
June 2010. Digital Library of the Caribbean. * Andre Bagoo
"The Miseducation of Merle Hodge , Backstory"
''

Caribbean Beat ''Caribbean Beat'', founded in 1992, is a bimonthly magazine, published in Port of Spain, Trinidad, covering the arts, culture and society of the Caribbean, with a focus on the region's English-speaking territories. It is distributed in-flight by ...

'', Issue 163, March/April 2021. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hodge, Merle 20th-century essayists 20th-century Trinidad and Tobago novelists 20th-century Trinidad and Tobago women writers 1944 births Living people People from Tunapuna–Piarco Trinidad and Tobago educators Trinidad and Tobago women novelists