TAMING THE TEMPEST 23

 Bermudians would even consider naming themselves as part of a larger
 Caribbean diaspora. Lastly, these two foundational texts The Tempest
 and The History of Mary Prince, one written in the seventeenth century
 and the other written in the nineteenth century, one about Bermudians
 and the other by a Bermudian seem almost to exist as literary
 aberrations, since little else has ever floated to the outside world
 regarding this "isle so long unknown."
 Some of the problems which plague Bermudian literary production
 are the same ones that exist for any small island. However, Bermudian
 writers have not joined any of the permanently exiled literary
 communities in England or the States that George Lamming writes about
 in The Pleasures of Exile.5 This is partly because Bermuda's economy
 is strong enough where if you settle on a more "practical" profession
 like law or business, you have the potential to earn an excellent living.
 Because of Bermuda's dual financial pillars of tourism and international
 business, writers specifically and artists in general have not typically
 been encouraged to develop their talents, which are seen as being
 neither materially useful nor particularly meaningful. And unbelievably,
 Bermudians are still debating amongst ourselves about whether or not
 Bermuda even has a culture, a conversation that has long been put to
 rest elsewhere in the Caribbean.
 By positing The History of Mary Prince and The Tempest as Bermuda's
two literary parents, it situates Bermuda within a Caribbean literary
tradition. But even more importantly, the juxtaposition of these two
texts in a Bermudian context raises the "still vex'd" issue of literary
representation which traditionally has plagued New World
communities. Although fictional, The Tempest has been read by many
Caribbean scholars as the colonising literary representation which
needs to be escaped. Despite problems inherent with slave narratives,
Mary Prince's historical "telling" is a challenge to distorted images of
Caribbean people broadly and Bermudian women specifically, images
which have been used as acts of violence against West Indian
communities.
 These two texts, stemming from radically different literary impulses,
are linked to contemporary texts by and about Bermudians. An early
text, entitled The Painted Lily, is not written by a Bermudian at all but
rather by an English woman named Amy J. Baker, also listed as Mrs.


 5 Lamming, George. The Pleasures of Exile. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1992.