Trinidad Yoruba
From Mother-Tongue to Memory
University of Alabama Press
A deeply informed Afrocentric view of language and cultural retention under slavery.
Maureen Warner-Lewis offers a comprehensive description of the West African language of Yoruba as it has been used on the island of Trinidad in the southern Caribbean. The study breaks new ground in addressing the experience of Africans in one locale of the Africa Diaspora and examines the nature of their social and linguistic heritage as it was successively retained, modified, and discarded in a European-dominated island community.
Maureen Warner-Lewis offers a comprehensive description of the West African language of Yoruba as it has been used on the island of Trinidad in the southern Caribbean. The study breaks new ground in addressing the experience of Africans in one locale of the Africa Diaspora and examines the nature of their social and linguistic heritage as it was successively retained, modified, and discarded in a European-dominated island community.
Maureen Warner-Lewis is professor of African-Caribbean languages and orature at the University of the West Indies, Mona. She is the author of four books, including Guinea's Other Suns: The African Dynamic in Trinidad Culture.
