Angeletta K. M. Gourdine (Louisiana State University)
Tourist publications are fictions replete with images of exotic topography,corporeal bodies, and ritual practices. This essay reads select Michelle Cliff and Julia Alvarez¹s narratives for how they revise images of Jamaica¹s and Dominican Republic¹s national histories as presented by tourist lures and travel writers¹ reflections. Both islands, though different historically in terms of colonialism and occupation as well as linguistically are collapsed into the moniker, monolith, ³Caribbean,² and the result is an erasure of national identity. Both writers use the traditionally female role as storyteller to insert women into their nation¹s story and to make them more than body, national or corporeal.
