ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines the works by Neil Bissoondath and Rabindranath Maharaj, two late twentieth century writers from the Caribbean, specifically Trinidad, who migrated to Canada. In contrast, in Bissoondath's A Casual Brutality and Maharaj's Homer in Flight, the protagonists of their novels, Raj Ramsingh and Homer Santokie belong to the Indo-Trinidadian communities in Canada whose work places and social circuits contain alliances with the Indo-Guyanese and Indians from India. The three writers, Naipaul, Bissoondath and Maharaj, sketch different images of Trinidad because they portray Trinidad from different time windows. Bissoondath portrays how race and class differences make East Indian merchants easy targets for the revolutionaries. Bissoondath, in a moving analysis of Naipaul's An Area of Darkness, recounts the futility of trying to preserve, promote and share culture when everything else changes. Bissoondath views the loss of Hindi language, religious beliefs and a dependence on land in Trinidad as positive markers of change and progress.
