V.S. Naipaul and His All-Male 4H Club

Slavery’s bloodstained gates simultaneously, and paradoxically, birthed a heritage of white hegemonic masculinity as well as the Afro-Caribbean man’s longing for retribution for Empire’s acute psychological emasculation. A subsequent emergent counter-hegemonic masculine figure claimed a heroism that was instrumental in creating an imperative of resistance. Many urban black men of the lower socioeconomic stratum utilized a hypermasculinity of sorts to assert this resistance. Humor became his coping technique as he grappled with the tensions, contentions, and collisions of colonial and postcolonial life. This article explores the interconnectedness of heritage, hegemony, hypermasculinity, and humor in shaping identities among representations of Empire-resistant Afro-Caribbean masculinities in V.S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street. The overarching aim is to underscore Naipaul’s implied androcentric philosophy regarding bodies, sexualities, and masculinities that plagued lower strata Afro-Caribbean men then and, quite possibly, today.