Review: Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales

Pam Dix

This wonderfully diverse collection of essays about Wales, past, present and future is rooted in Raymond Williams’ thinking about cultural analysis and in the much talked about idea that the history of a country is not a ‘single story’, an idea well-presented by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her highly influential TED talk.

The result is a brilliant introduction to contemporary thinking about Welsh culture.

The editors’ introduction includes two challenging quotes:

‘Wales is a singular noun, but a plural experience.’ (Dai Smith, Wales! Wales?, 1984) 

and 

‘Where is it now, this Wales? Where is the real identity, the real culture?’  (Raymond Williams, Welsh Culture, 1975) 

The editors have selected essays that address these issues in thoughtful, provocative, sometimes personal, sometimes very funny, ways – all leaving the reader with a broader understanding of the contemporary Welsh environment in terms of culture, language, history and the future. Devolution, the establishment of the Welsh parliament, the resurgence of the Welsh language form the backdrop to the collection.

Charlotte Williams in her discussion of the school curriculum argues the need to give agency to communities and to incorporate all histories including those of marginal groups. She introduces the wonderful word ‘cynefin’ which underpins Welsh curriculum thinking and loosely translates as more than habitat: 

‘cynefin is not just a place in a physical or geographical sense: it is the historic, cultural and social place which has shaped and continues to shape the community which inhabits it.’ 

This concept is behind many of the essays. Migration and ethnic and cultural diversity are also strong themes. The personal reflections by Darren Chetty and Hanan Issa (currently the National Poet of Wales) analytically deal with complex issues, but with a light touch. Chetty explores pub and football culture through his memory of The Black Boy pub sign he remembers from his childhood in Swansea. Issa’s essay on Welshness and Welsh identity uses the story of of the Welsh speaking woman in a niqab on a bus assumed by the non-Welsh speaking to be talking in a ‘foreign’ language as a starting point for exploring issues of identity and racism.

As a non-Welsh speaking but staunchly Welsh person, these essays gave me pride and a new awareness of a culture and a country which I thought I knew, but clearly not well enough.