cultural situation, of our reality . . . [W]hat is our history, what is our culture, if not
the history and culture of Caliban? (Retamar qtd. in Garber 27)
The same cultural shifts that gave rise to the postcolonial interpretation of Caliban in Latin
America also brought about productions of The Tempest in the United States that cast African
Americans to play the part of Caliban. In fact, casting Caliban as an African American in
productions of The Tempest had become so ubiquitous by 2008 that, when discussing a prison
production’s casting of a white man as Caliban, Marjorie Garber comments on “how different
this version of the play is from those one might see in a modern theater” (3).
The shift in popular culture that had led to the success of the miniseries Roots had also
led to a shift in the understanding of Caliban from treacherous and ungrateful monster to
sympathetic and oppressed enslaved African American. Roots and these portrayals of Caliban
are some of many ways that African Americans of the 1970s had begun to call attention to
their cultural history and shared experiences. A 1976 article says about interpretations of The
Tempest at the time, “Caliban, like many Afro-Americans today, finds roots in Africa and claims
heirship to a kingdom. He has fragmentary memories of ancestral beliefs. He is fortified by his
ancestral gods” (Bruner 251). This description of Caliban sounds strikingly similar to Kunta
Kinte, main character of Haley’s novel Roots. Certainly, both characters have in common their
utility to African Americans who gave voice to their cultural traditions. James W. Coleman goes
a step further and states that “Calibanic discourse influences a tradition of modernist and
postmodernist African American male novels” (Coleman 1). The influence of this discourse in
African American creative works arose from new readings of Caliban as a sympathetic
character.
In the mid-1970s, American postcolonial scholars also began to think of Caliban as an
oppressed and sympathetic figure mistreated by Prospero much the same as how AfricanAmerican slaves had been mistreated. While the traditional reading of The Tempest sees
Caliban’s language as evidence that Prospero has attempted to bestow a benefit on him,
postcolonial scholars instead view Caliban’s speech as subversive and an attempt to
undermine P rospero’s imperial power over him. In his book Shakespeare and Race, Imtiaz
Habib outlines three main ways Caliban’s use of language subversively undermines
Prospero’s authority over him. First, Caliban’s speech allows him to communicate with
Stephano and Trinculo. In Act 2, Scene 2, Stephano states that he will give Caliban “some
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