Edition 59
Commonwealth Now
- Published 6th February, 2018
- ISBN: 9781925603293
- Extent: 264pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook
At a time of geopolitical uncertainty, is the Commonwealth poised to play a major role as a values-based network? Or is it a remnant of the British Empire that deserves to be swept away?
The Commonwealth represents a third of the world’s population, but can such a diverse collection of nations exercise real power and influence in the world? It is clear that the old empires are long gone, but in the wake of Brexit and the rise of China and India, the shape of a new world order remains unclear.
Commonwealth Now, co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Jane Camens, features writers from around the world who explore the contemporary experience of Commonwealth citizens – confronting new challenges, reconciling the past, creating a sustainable and equitable future, settling scores and opening new exchanges.
Contributors include: Melissa Lucashenko, Salil Tripathi, Margaret Busby, Shashi Tharoor, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Mark Gevisser, Annie Zaidi, Michael Wesley, Romesh Gunesekara and many more.
Griffith Review 59: Commonwealth Now is published with the support of the State of Queensland acting through the Department of Innovation, Tourism Industry Development and the Commonwealth Games and Australia Council for the Arts.
In this Edition
Time to mention the war
The Queen? The Queen never been fuggin walk around here! Uncle Jimmy Pike, Walmajarri artist[i] IN 2002, BUNDJALUNG songman Archie Roach released ‘Move It On’, a jaunty twelve-bar blues number about his childhood in Victoria. He sang: Well I was born in Mooroopna, we lived by the...
Empire of delusion
ANYONE INTERESTED IN power must visit Persepolis. Its ruins stand defiantly in a parched valley in southern Iran, the ultimate statement of humans’ capacity to dominate vast multitudes of their fellow humans. Amid the intricately carved stairways, walls and plinths stand the two halls...
Without hindsight
THE COUNTDOWN TO leave the European Union began in the British summer of 2017, but nobody in the country seemed to know in which direction they were headed. Those who voted to leave don’t know what kind of future they would like; those who...
Imperial amnesia
THERE IS A statute of limitations on colonial wrongdoings, but none on human memory, especially living memory. There are still millions of Indians alive today who remember the iniquities of the British Empire in India. History belongs in the past; but understanding it is...
When Chifley met Nehru
IN A LONDON hotel, two prime ministers sit down to breakfast. One is tall, lean, white-haired and speaks in a raspy, unmistakably working-class Australian accent. In public and private he smokes a pipe near constantly. The other is a protégé of Mahatma Gandhi who...
Imagination as emancipation
THERE IS A condition described by Maya Angelou in the first instalment of her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Random House, 1969), in which a traumatised young girl retreats from the world in preference for the safety of a cultivated interiority....
The Empire’s new clothes
WHEN THE GUARDIAN’S international editor, Anthony Hartley, visited Amsterdam in 1958, he was immediately struck by the quiet confidence of the citizenry. It seemed such a contrast to the temper of 1950s Britain that he could not help contemplating the underlying cause. ‘They have...
Relics of colonialism
We will make better decisions on all the great issues of the day and for the century to come, if we better understand the past. Gough Whitlam[i] THE CELEBRATION OF the ‘Queen’s birthday’ in Australia is a perfect reflection of a fading, remnant, relationship. Commemorated in the...
Proud or shameful legacy
IT IS TAKEN as a universally acknowledged truth in Western democracies that a strong rule-of-law tradition fosters stability and growth. Countless economic studies back this up; paeans have been written on the indispensible virtue of the rule of law to developing countries. It is...
Cross-border conversations
SOME FIFTEEN YEARS ago, a group of Pakistani women embarked on an experimental journey that was to become a template for many others to follow. Boarding a bus with their passports and visas in hand, fifty of them set off for India – a mere...
Postcolonial talkback
SHE HAS THE most recognisable face in contemporary Western history and she’s almost within my reach. The longest-reigning British monarch and I share a few things: we are both seated in Westminster Abbey (founded in 960); we share the same birthday (on 21 April...
Tales of the sea
and the bones are begging to be let loose with their drums and handbells, with their tales of the sea at sunrise. Lauren K Alleyne, ‘Ask No Questions’ DURING THE WEEK of the Brexit vote, I flew to Thessaloniki from London on the spur of the moment. I...
Love in the time of obuntu
UBUNTU IS A word that makes me cringe. You might also know it as obuntu or unhu. It comes from the root word ntu, from Bantu languages in Africa. Ntu meaning human, bantu meaning people, and ubuntu meaning humanity. Since it became popular in...
Dangerous little things
MY GRANDFATHER WAS once in jail. As a kid, I’d pronounce this with a little flush of pride. My grandpa! Way back in 1941. As a young man, my maternal grandfather became involved with student politics and wrote rousing poems, neither of which the British government...
Chauka, where are you?
Belo pairap, skul i pinis. Mi harim solwara i bruk long nambis. Mi smelim solwara long win. Mi lap wantem ol wanskul na kalap. Solwara pulap long maus blo mi. Chauka i singaut. Mi lap na hamamas. Olsem liklik pis. Ol brata na sista...
We are the world
THERE COMES A stage in life when one sometimes forgets to celebrate the passing years; truth be told, it’s hard enough just to keep up with them, they pass so quickly. Recently, a long-time friend knocked on my front door, bearing an early birthday...
The long journey home
WHEN I LOOK online, I do not find my great-uncle Michael Kanerusine’s name on any of the websites my research brings up – not even those that claim ‘97 per cent accuracy’. I know he fought in the Second World War. That’s one fact. It...
A pale white sky
I REMEMBER A severe drought in 1964 when I was a child. First the grass became crisp and brown, as it always did in the summer. Then the soil cracked, as if there had been an earthquake. Slowly, the grass died in irregular patches,...
English-medium boy
I LOVED THE smell of the cotton cloth measured out from bolts that made a soft, slapping sound as they were unrolled: white for half-sleeved shirts, navy blue gabardine for shorts. I enjoyed being measured out for two sets of the uniform at the...
House of Rainbow
TO GET TO House of Rainbow you turn off the Apata Road from Ibadan at the Moco petrol station and then make your way down a rutted track through a cluttered market. Ibadan is Yoruba heartland, the region’s commercial hub and the home of...
Truth still denied
SOMETIME IN 1990, I was driving with Mary Maguire, a long-time British resident of Malaysia, in her bright-yellow VW Beetle along a beautiful winding road towards the town of Kuala Kubu Baru, north of Kuala Lumpur. When we passed a road sign that said...
Just the nickel, please
The plumes of our bird have a history that holds a mirror to this country and reflects onto it not our character, but the character of colonists and traders, the collectors, the naturalists, the bounty hunters – and it is their view of us, mirrored...
The unequal battle
WHEN I WAS eight years old I visited South Africa, my dad’s homeland, for the first time. I’ll never forget flying into Jo’burg, looking down over the houses in the city and seeing hundreds of turquoise squiggles and dots. ‘Wow,’ I said, excitedly, ‘everyone...
A model citizen
HE TOLD ME he’d meet me at the corner of the station where Citibank had a small office. ‘I’ll be wearing my Rocky T-shirt,’ he added. I went through the ticket barriers and found him bunched and braced like a boxer in a ring. ‘Mr Monty?’ He turned,...
Bitter Eaters
LSS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, TERMINAL 1 WE ARE SHORT and invisible men. Oriental red. Iron-rail thin. Short for men in Senegal, which is six feet, or six feet three inches or more. Adding up all the years we remembered selling ‘Chinese’ in Dakar, we calculated...
Little grasshopper
CAROLINA THEY USED HIS face on the Facebook profile. When he sent me a friend request, I accepted because he was young, like me, and very guapo. He was the bait. Who thought things like this could happen? It took six months to win me over...
How to overthrow the Monarchy in one easy trip
‘THE QUEEN’S GONNA pass over Charlie and hand over the Crown to William,’ Chickee said to Buzz. ‘Poor Old Chuck, always on the bench, never in the game.’ Buzz paused to compose himself. They were on a ‘nutrition break’ during a trauma-informed workshop at the...
A Commonwealth dictionary
If a Sovereign is a gold coin worth one pound sterling, then The Crown is something you put on your teeth when the rot has hollowed them out. If Dominion is a deck-building card game rewarding long-term strategy and forward-planning, then Territories are the worst...
Bards in white flannels
Here’s to those postcolonial Bards in white flannels wielding the willow like their consonants and vowels, spicing the English tongue with bouncing syncopation reversing the swing of adverbs into wayward verbs. Well-groomed in the ways of glorious uncertainty, see how they stride the turf of Empire’s legacy raising their bats...
Avocado
For Gordon Rohlehr i woke one morning and the Caribbean was gone. She’d definitely been there the night before, i’d heard her singing in crickets and grasshoppers to the tambourine of the oncoming rain. A childhood song. i slept down into childhood. i woke blinking in a null glare...