Bidi's Analysis

My motivation for my adaptation of the Persephone and Demeter myth was personal and practical. The elements or ‘make-up’ of the tale, the backdrop of the plantation, the choice of patois, the characters and their roles and locating the tale at a specific time was deliberate. What I wished to do was deconstruct and convey a reality by using the patois of the region.
What follows is not an exhaustive exploration and I offer an open invitation to any who wish to explore my motivations further. I ask only to wait till after the exam period!
Briefly then, the tale was told as a reaction to European academia, and I also aimed it as a challenge for others who may be surrounded by that blissful state of not thinking ‘native’. Added to this was the paucity of materials on offer of ethnically diverse narratives on myth and mythmaking. Secondly I offered the tale in patois as a challenge to any to attempt to read and understand this form of communication.
During the slave trade methods of constructing units that would function and operate at maximum capacity was the prime motivator for plantation owners to maintain their economic wealth and status. Women were used as breeding stock without slave owners having to consider any form of disguise in order to carry out the practice for it to be acknowledged. In attempting to convey a legacy of myth from the bottom up so to speak, I used this language and setting which for me demonstrate how ideology, practices and narratives of myth are acted upon without the illusion of any type of filter to disguise its application. I really did not want the retelling to be another scholarly undertaking but an experience of the reality of the consequences of myth in practice not only in the past but how its legacy continues in the hear and now. The retelling invites the reader to consider through a different lens the multi layered social and lived experience of slaves.
Finally some layers: Language, politics, economics, race, religion, identity….etc. etc.etc.