Journal Article

Pirates of the Caribbean in Frank Yerby's The Golden Hawk

Lowe, John Wharton

2018

Overview

[...]there were natural disasters during the period, such as the earthquake that destroyed Port Royal, Jamaica, on June 7, 1692, which Yerby features in his pirate tale.1 As Mark G. Hanna has demonstrated, piracy had expanded dramatically in the 1680s, and 1696 \"marked the culmination of a number of significant movements, involving trade, warfare, colonial administration, economic policies, and information exchange, that all had an impact on the colonial support of illicit sea marauding\" (223). According to Jan Radway, there are some key components of this genre: 1) the heroine's social identity is destroyed; 2) the heroine reacts antagonistically to an aristocratic male; 3) the aristocratic male responds ambiguously to the heroine; 4) the heroine responds to the hero's behavior with anger or coldness; 5) the hero retaliates by punishing the heroine; 6) the heroine and hero are physically and/or emotionally separated; 7) the hero treats the heroine tenderly; 8) the heroine responds warmly to the hero's acts of tenderness; 9) the heroine reinterprets the hero's previous behavior as the product of previous hurt; 10) the hero proposes/openly declares his love for/demonstrates his unwavering commitment to the heroine with a supreme act of tenderness; 11) the heroine responds sexually and emotionally; and 12) the heroine's identity is restored (Radway 187). Fernand Braudel's advice to pay attention to details of trade when rewriting history finds application here as Yerby lists cargoes, from tallow and hides to human beings. [...]it is on the sea itself, rather than the separate island sequences or those in Cartagena, where Yerby chooses to probe the crosscurrents of colonial history and complex identities. First published in 1837 (the first printed African American short story), it is narrated by an old black man who tells of a beautiful African girl, Laïssa, who is sold to the planter Alfred, who rapes her.

• Publisher: The University of Southern Mississippi, College of Arts and Sciences,Southern Quarterly
• Subject: 17th century / African American literature / African Americans / Alligators / American culture / American literature / Caribbean literature / Earthquakes / Economic policy / Faulkner, William (1897-1962) / Historical fiction / Melodramas / Narratives / Natural disasters / Novels / Piracy / Plantations / Plot (Narrative) / Seismic activity / Social identity / Success / Writers / Yerby, Frank (1916-1991)