checking out me history
john agard
Published: 2005
Birth – Death: 1949 - ?
Monarch: Elizabeth II
Prime Minister: Tony Blair (Labour)
Nationality: British
Checking Out Me History has the voice of a black man who is frustrated by a Eurocentric historic syllabus. White history is irrelevant to the speaker’s cultural identity and feels that his culture is mocked by not being taught to everyone.
Who is John Agard?
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John Agard is a poet and playwright.
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Agard grew up in British Guiana and loved to listen to cricket commentary on the radio and began to make his own.
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His mother was Portuguese and his father was Black.
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He went to study English, French and Latin at A-Level, writing his first poetry when he was in sixth-form and left school in 1967.
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He taught the languages he learnt and worked in a local library. He also was a featured writer for the Guyana Sunday Chronicle and published two books while he was still in Guyana.
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His father moved to London and Agard moved too, with his partner Grace Nichols in 1977. He found a home in Ironbridge, Shropshire and worked for the Commonwealth Institute and BBC in London.
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His awards included the 1997 Paul Hamlyn Award for Poetry, the Cholmondeley Award in 2004 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012.
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He now lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with his partner, the Guyanese poet Grace Nichols.
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His poetry often focuses on ethnicity and identity, mixing imagination with humour.
What is Checking Out Me History?
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John Agard was in school found the phrase, “West Indian history begins in 1492 with the arrival of Columbus,” This made him realise that the education system had a Eurocentric view on history.
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Since the early 17th century the country of Guyana, has been colonised by the Dutch, French and British.
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Guiana or now called Guyana was a British colony up until 1966. It was originally owned by the Dutch, but the British took over. Guyana was used mainly to produce sugar cane and many African slaves were brought over to complete most of the workforce.
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Therefore, while Agard was in school, Guyana was a British colony.
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This poem is to resemble the segregation between white and Black people.
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Most of the population of Guyana spoke Arawak but the British introduced English as the language of the government, courts and the education system.
What is Checking Out Me History?
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Half-Caste was a collection of poems, published in 2005 and covered topics such as ethnicity, race and cultural identity.
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Agard had been living in Britain for 30 years when he published this.
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Half-Caste is a mixture of old and new poems and is targeted towards teenagers or young adults.
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In Checking Out Me History The speaker suggests that his experience and Black history has been forgotten and ignored. He had to find out himself about the historical and social achievements of Black people, then he could grow a personal identity and cultural roots.
Who Does He Talk About in Checking Out Me History?
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Toussaint Louverture led a revolution that freed Black slaves in Haiti from oppression and slavery. He was a slave himself, that had a lack of education but became a hero and leader of the Haitian Revolution.
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Nanny of the Maroons was a leader of a group of ex-slaves who fled from slavery to build their own communities.
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Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-British business woman and nurse who set up the British Hotel behind the lines of the Crimean War. She provided care and service to sick and wounded men on the battlefield, potentially more helpful in the Crimean War than Florence Nightingale. She was refused when asked to help in the war but funded her own trip to go by herself, she even went to the battlefield to help the wounded.