African Caribbean Women Writers in the Diaspora: Reconstructing, Remapping, and ‘Reculturing’ the Dominant Discourse.

Myriam Moïse (Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle/ University of the West Indies)

African Caribbean women are characterized by their essentially hybrid background, a consequence of their diverse colonial influences, the creolization of African and Anglophone Caribbean religious practices and a history of continuous displacement and diaspora. The Caribbean is also a hybrid place through its linguistic diversity resulting from a multilingual history. Coming from a matriarchal hybrid community, African Caribbean women writers who have relocated to North America settled in a predominantly white patriarchal western society whether it be Canada or the USA. This paper aims at analysing the different impacts of this new literary culture on the dominant cultural discourse. As a matter of fact, to what extent can the diasporic female voice be considered as an instrument for redemption, innovation and reconnection? To what degree do they come to terms with race, class and gender stereotypes of their culture to set themselves free and to voice their history and cultural identity thus reconnecting their hybrid self?
Caribbean American writer Michelle Cliff’s prose and poetry work The Land of Look Behind (1985) and Caribbean Canadian poet Marlene Nourbese Philip’s poetry collection She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (1988) will be at the heart of this demonstration. Issues of transcultural identities, linguistic conflicts, re-appropriation and meta-production will be considered with regards to the diasporic female text as these two in-between writers will take us through their ‘Journey into Speech’. While a part of this enquiry will look into language through issues of multilingualism and creolization/hybridization, the main purpose is yet to demonstrate the effects of this new language attitude on the dominant discourse.

Myriam Moïse - Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle, University of the West Indies

Myriam Moïse completed her undergraduate studies and Masters Degree in English at Université Antilles Guyane in Martinique and her BA Honours in English and Caribbean Studies at London Metropolitan University. She did an MPhil at Paris III and is currently a second-year doctorate student in Postcolonial Literatures at Paris III- Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her research work is involved in an international agreement with the University of the West Indies, in Trinidad. She has done work in Postcolonial studies and in Women’s Studies, specifically on Caribbean women’s achievements in Britain and on Black British women writers. She is now engaged in her PhD research project, a comparative literary analysis on women writers of the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, Canada and the USA.