Lost Daughters of the Caribbean: Constructions of Identity by Hispanic and Francophone Women in the Caribbean Diaspora

Mary Louise Babineau (University: St. Thomas University, Canada)

Throughout Caribbean literary history representations of maternal figures have been intimately tied to constructions of Caribbean identity. Female ancestors are powerfully symbolic figures in Caribbean literature because they often represent the historical and cultural groundings of the subject, the community and the Nation. For example, within the context of both the negrista and négritude movements in the Spanish and French-speaking Caribbean respectively, literary representations of Afro-Caribbean maternal figures tended to mirror and symbolize the evolving recuperation and affirmation of the African roots of Caribbean identity, as well as political and cultural attitudes towards the African Motherland. In recent years, however, traditional representations of maternal figures have been deconstructed in the literature of both Spanish and French-speaking Caribbean women writers. In these works the authority of maternal figures has been called into question, as has their ability to legitimize the historical and cultural foundations of Caribbean identity and transmit them from generation to generation. This paper explores and compares the fractured relationships between mothers and daughters in the narrative works of Spanish and French-speaking Caribbean women, as well as the ways in which these relationships influence the search for identity of daughters throughout the Caribbean diaspora. Through the eyes and experiences of migrating Caribbean women in the works of Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Maryse Condé, Olga Nolla and Esmeralda Santiago we witness complex constructions of personal and cultural identity by Caribbean women, constructions that evolve both productively and destructively as a result of the fractured relationships that female protagonists have with their mothers. As a result of their journeys towards self-discovery, these protagonists question the traditional parameters that have structured the discourse surrounding Caribbean identity and as such they open broader spaces within which to define the notion of Caribbean-ness.

Mary Louise Babineau - University: St. Thomas University, Canada

Mary Louise Babineau (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick in Canada. She teaches courses in Spanish language, Latin American literature and theory, and Latino literature and culture in the United States. Her primary field of research is contemporary Latin American women´s literature, with special emphasis on Caribbean women´s narrative and poetry. Her article on the Arizonan novel will be published in the journal Hipertexto in January, 2010, and her book chapter on Latina/Chicana mothering will appear in an edited collection in 2011. She is the recipient of a teaching award from Arizona State University and has also been nominated for a teaching award at St. Thomas University.