Caribbean Women Writers


Book Description

Caribbean Women Writers is a collection of scholarly articles on the fiction of selected Caribbean women writers from Antigua, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad. It includes not only close critical analysis of texts by Erna Brodber, Dionne Brand, Zee Edgell, Jamaica Kincaid, Paule Marshall, Pauline Melville, Jean Rhys and Olive Senior, but also personal statements from the writers Merle Collins, Beryl Gilroy, Vernella Fuller and Velma Pollard.




Caribbean Women Writers and Globalization


Book Description

Caribbean Women Writers and Globalization offers a fresh reading of contemporary literature by Caribbean women in the context of global and local economic forces, providing a valuable corrective to much Caribbean feminist literary criticism. Departing from the trend towards thematic diasporic studies, Helen Scott considers each text in light of its national historical and cultural origins while also acknowledging regional and international patterns. Though the work of Caribbean women writers is apparently less political than the male-dominated literature of national liberation, Scott argues that these women nonetheless express the sociopolitical realities of the postindependent Caribbean, providing insight into the dynamics of imperialism that survive the demise of formal colonialism. In addition, she identifies the specific aesthetic qualities that reach beyond the confines of geography and history in the work of such writers as Oonya Kempadoo, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, Pauline Melville, and Janice Shinebourne. Throughout, Scott's persuasive and accessible study sustains the dialectical principle that art is inseparable from social forces and yet always strains against the limits they impose. Her book will be an indispensable resource for literature and women's studies scholars, as well as for those interested in postcolonial, cultural, and globalization studies.




Caribbean Women Writers


Book Description

In 1831, three years before England abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, the narrative of Mary Prince was published in London. It was the first account written by a Caribbean slave to be published. Although narratives and stories of Caribbean women have appeared sporadically in subsequent years, it is only since 1970 that a wave of women's writing has innudated the field, thereby changing the horizons of Caribbean literature.




Searching for Safe Spaces


Book Description

Home. Exile. Return. Words heavy with meaning and passion. For Myriam Chancy, these three themes animate the lives and writings of dispossessed Afro-Caribbean women. Understanding exile as flight from political persecution or types of oppression that single out women, Chancy concentrates on diasporic writers and filmmakers who depict the vulnerability of women to poverty and exploitation in their homelands and their search for safe refuge. These Afro-Caribbean feminists probe the complex issues of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class that limit women's lives. They portray the harsh conditions that all too commonly drive women into exile, depriving them of security and a sense of belonging in their adopted countries -- the United States, Canada, or England. As they rework traditional literary forms, artists such as Joan Riley, Beryl Gilroy, M. Noubese Philip, Dionne Brand, Makeda Silvera, Audre Lorde, Rosa Guy, Michelle Cliff, and Mari Chauvet give voice to Åfro-Caribbean women's alienation and longing to return home. Whether their return is realized geographically or metaphorically, the poems, fiction, and film considered in this book speak boldly of self-definition and transformation.




Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women


Book Description

"Focusing on specific texts by Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Conde, and Paule Marshall, this study explores the intricate trichotomous relationship between the mother (biological or surrogate), the motherlands Africa and the Caribbean, and the mothercountry represented by England, France, and/or North America. The mother-daughter relationships in the works discussed address the complex, conflicting notions of motherhood that exist within this trichotomy. Although mothering is usually socialized as a welcoming, nurturing notion, Alexander argues that alongside this nurturing notion there exists much conflict. Specifically, she argues that the mother-daughter relationship, plagued with ambivalence, is often further conflicted by colonialism or colonial intervention from the "other," the colonial mothercountry." "Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women offers an overview of Caribbean women's writings from the 1990s, focusing on the personal relationships these three authors have had with their mothers and/or motherlands to highlight links, despite social, cultural, geographical, and political differences, among Afro-Caribbean women and their writings. Alexander traces acts of resistance, which facilitate the (re)writing/righting of the literary canon and the conception of a "newly created genre" and a "womanist" tradition through fictional narratives with autobiographical components." --Book Jacket.




Stories from Blue Latitudes


Book Description

An anthology of stories by Caribbean women writers explores such themes as residency in a tourist environment that invites visitors to make the area their own, the sexual exploitation of Caribbean women, and the region's tragic colonial history, in a volume that includes contributions by such authors as Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, and Dionne Brand. Reprint.




Sucking Salt


Book Description

"Examines the literature of black Caribbean emigrant and island women including Dorothea Smartt, Edwidge Danticat, Paule Marshall, and others, who use the terminology and imagery of "sucking salt" as an articulation of a New World voice connoting adaptation, improvisation, and creativity, offering a new understanding of diaspora, literature, and feminism"--Provided by publisher.




Beyond the Canebrakes


Book Description

15 essays and two interviews that examine the work of West Indian writers living in Canada. The authors of these essays and interviews dissect issues of history, gender, power, identity and levels of discourse in moving scholars, researchers and students into arenas of study and critique of the West Indian Woman writer residing in Canada.




Women Writing Resistance


Book Description

Eighteen women, including Jamaica Kincaid, Rigoberta Menchú, Cherríe Moraga, Marjorie Agosin, Margaret Randall, Gloria Anzaldúa, Michelle Cliff, Edwidge Danticat, and Julia Alvarez, are featured in this powerful anthology on art, feminism, and activism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Women Writing Resistance highlights Latin American and Caribbean women writers who, with increasing urgency, are writing in the service of social justice and against the entrenched patriarchal, racist, and exploitative regimes that have ruled their countries. Many of the women in this collection have been thrust out into the Latino-Caribbean diaspora by violent forces that make differences in language and culture seem less significant than connections based on resistance to inequality and oppression. It is these connections that Women Writing Resistance highlights, presenting "conversations" on the potential of writing to confront injustice. This mixed-genre anthology, a resource for activists and readers of Latin American and Caribbean women's literature, demonstrates and enacts how women can collaborate across class, race and nationality, and illustrates the value of this solidarity in the ongoing struggles for human rights and social justice in the Americas. Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University, specializing in contemporary Caribbean, Latin American, and ethnic North American autobiographies by women. She teaches literature and gender studies courses at Simon's Rock College of Bard, and is also a faculty member at the University at Albany, SUNY.




Honey and Lime


Book Description

The themes are universal - love, loss, resistance, hope. The voice is distinctly Caribbean. The result is a soulful collection laced with power. These poems reflect the writer's deep engagement with her society and her skill in peeling away its layers to expose the core. This is a distillation of everyday human experience, related in language that ranges from stark simplicity to intricate imagery. Throughout the entire book, the poet's touch is delicate but sure. "These poems are indeed sweet as honey and tart as lime, whether Carr is speaking about family - reminiscing about the son who is now a man, or reflecting on how she can no longer fit in her mother's lap both literally and symbolically - the poems reveal a poet's deft hand, gloved in care and love, that shimmers in the last section of the collection when the persona speaks uncensored in island tongue." Opal Palmer Adisa, author of Eros Muse and It Begins with Tears.