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Caribbean Women Writers:
Continuities in Postcolonial Poetics

April 16, 2004
by Ayanna Gillian
Self Empowerment Learning Fraternity, Trinidad and Tobago


Psychiatrist, historian, and freedom-fighter Frantz Fanon stated in his The Wretched of the Earth, "Colonization is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of oppressed people and distorts, disfigures and destroys it." In a region doubly constructed and defined through its 'colonized' and 'Third World' status, the relationship with the past has been indeed complex. Colonization brought with it all the inherent prejudices and attitudes that shaped a people to look outwards, and direct its gaze to the white, European metroples for definition. Third World status conferred upon the region the construct of racial inferiority, economic deprivation and arrested development. Caribbean artists have always attempted to negotiate their way through these constructs and redefine the Caribbean psyche through its own newly emerging standards. However for the Caribbean woman in art and literature, the challenge has been to present these ideas through the uniquely female perspective and to present through gendered eyes the "mindscape"of the region. While the concerns of women in art are indeed myriad and complex, the commonality of the struggles of the region - of race, class, identity, cultural redemption and postcolonial redefinition - provide overarching themes that present far more continuities then discontinuities in their collective body of work.

The poems, "Guinea Woman" by Lorna Goodison; "Nanny" by Grace Nichols and "Caribbean Woman Birth Song" by Marine Omowale Maxwell are expressions of African Caribbean women from Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago respectively: three nations of differing landscapes, psyches and historical idiosyncrasies. While this essay will focus on the continuiities in the works of these particular women, there are also important ways in which they are representative of the art of Caribbean female writers as a whole. While the works of many female poets, novelists and essayists have been concerned with issues of love, relationships, childbirth and the hardship of raising children in poverty, these themes are displayed through the lens of women working out the primary issuesof race, identity, postcolonial consciousness and cultural resurgence. This situates their work firmly within the wider context of West Indian, postcolonial writing.

It has often been said that the narratives of women seek to describe the interiors of things, while their male counterparts may be more concerned with the external, chronological, events of experience. Women often tend toward the internal, personal narration of events. Further, they can be said to absorb the collective psyche of the people into their own. The female artistic voice thus emerges as an individualized yet collective 'we', in an immediate, visceral way, probing into the heart of things,much in the way that only a mother can know the heart of her child.

The female body and the sexualized politics that have been associated with its form are evident in all three works. Joyce Stewart's essay discusses Wilson's Harris' Companion of the Day and Night, where he deals with ideas of the female body and sexuality. "She is an idol… mistress of magnetic forces whose efficacy increases as their source of transmission becomes more passive and secretive...Woman is an idol, a goddess, a mother, a witch, a muse… but she can never be herself… she can only conceive of herself as an object… never her own mistress" In thesestatements we see the ultimate contradiction where the female is idealized and seen with almost mythologized, sexualized reverence, but yet is still object and is defined by the male gaze and not from within. This is yet another external notion placed upon the existing constructs of 'colonized' and 'Third World'. Women have had to deal with this other layer of exploitation and stereotyping, especially in a Caribbean context where there is the additional stereotype of the hyper-sexualized, promiscuous island woman Women writers have sought to bring some synthesis to this contradiction by redefining their own sexualities in empowering ways and recognizing the efficacy of our ancestral mythological reverence for the sexual female form.

In Grace Nichols poem, "Nanny", the body and physical appearance of this historical figure becomes the manifestation of the landscape of Jamaica. She is seen as "Standing over valleys / dressed in purple robes"the purple of the robes blending and indeed becoming the blue-purple cast of the Jamaican Blue Mountains. She is said to inhabit the mountainside "Like a strong pursuing eagle"and her voice is the "death cry chilling/ the mountainside". Throughout the description of the character we get the impression of her very body as the 'Cockpit Country' of Jamaica and her spirit therefore informing the essence of the people who live there. Her form is sensual in its very strength and fearsomeness "with bracelets of the enemy's teeth / curled round your ankles", almost in direct defiance of the stereotype of the passive receptacle of female sexuality.

Goodison's Great Grandmother, the "Guinea Woman", also becomes symbolic of the African dark-skinned symbolic female ancestor of us all, whose colour and Africanness were scorned and perverted on the plantation through intermixing with white planters, "The evidence my blue eyed grandmother/The first Mulatta"and later scorned in the 'colourism' that was a direct consequence of plantation miscegenation and racism, "they forbade great grandmother's / guinea woman presence…/ and called her uprisings rebellions". It is her very body that symbolically becomes the scene for this stifling of the African legacy in the inheritors of the plantation culture and it is the return of this most telling physical manifestation, skin colour, which signals her, and through her, a larger African, renaissance.

In Marina Omowale Maxwell's poem "Caribbean Woman Birth Song"we see this theme most clearly manifested. In what is clearly the most ritualized and symbolic poem of the three, the very islands of the Caribbean are birthing themselves in the proverbial vaginal passage of a woman, being born from within themselves:

"I am stuck in THE PASSAGE
I was different you see, about to be a breach
… this archipelago of stones
still pebbles"

The symbol of the female as the giver of all life through the process of birth is perhaps the most enduring symbol of womanhood. While early Euro-American feminists have often seemed to reject this construct of woman as child-bearer and 'earth mother', women writers in the Third World have often embraced this element of their power as part of ancestral traditions where women were valued for this powerful magic. Evidence of ancient Goddess and Vagina worship testifies to the enduring strength of the symbol of the birth passage as the locus of all creation. Here this birth passage becomes the Middle Passage, the dark route of the slave ships to the Americas; it is a place of trauma with the promise of joyous birth becoming clouded by despair. However, it is here that the body of the female, the location of the torture, becomes also the hope for the redemption as the ritualized birth struggles on in hope. By their symbolic and ritualized uses of the female body the artists not only explore the stereotypes of the female body but also make a profound statement on the female as the keeper of history. Her role as mother, as warrior, invests her very body with the struggles and pains of her people.

The questions of race and identity are arguably the most explored themes in all of Caribbean poetry. Women of colour in the Caribbean experience what can be called a 'double negative', being both black and ,female and these three poems not only explore this double negative experience but also seek to bring about a sense of affirmation in spite of the history. Stuart Hall surmised: "Identities are the names we give to the ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within the narratives of the past" These women have sought to navigate the place in which they were 'positioned' and 're- position' themselves, like the Sankofa bird who looks to the past while flying bravely on to the future.

Issues of race and identity in the Caribbean have always been fraught with the need to seek identity in whiteness, in Europeanness. These writers however, particularly Goodison and Nichols, firmly situate themselves in blackness first, in their Africanness first, and then seek to decipher what this identity means in the Caribbean landscape. This is a slight deviation from Hall's statement. We have a strong sense that one's identity as informed by one's ethnicity is anchored in history and is waitingto be discovered and explored. As much as many have tried to run from their ancestry, it is always waiting for them. Identity is not merely where we position ourselves: it is where we have been all along. While in the Caribbean this notion of identity has tended to take on more fluid notions, as explored more fully in Maxwell's piece, all three poets have begun with the source and then worked forward to examine its outcome.

It is interesting to note that all three authors are light-skinned, mixed- race African women. The position of the 'Mulatto' in the Caribbean context has always been a double-edged sword; on one hand a position of privilege, viewed as better than or superior to their darker skinned counterparts and on the other, occupying a strange ambivalent space between white and black, viewed with fawning obsequiousness, suspicion or hatred in the black community, and tolerance, amusement or scorn in the white. As a 'mixed' woman, Lorna Goodison seems to seek the darkness, the source, the root of herself. She invests her great grandmother with a mysterious exotic quality:

"Wide eyes turning / The corners of her face /Could see behind her"and
"Great Grandmother's waistline
the span of a headman's hand
slender and tall like a cane stalk
with a guinea woman's antelope-quick walk"

Vivid physical descriptions and the almost mythologized impression of this woman have the double effect of not only elevating womanhood to the realm of 'Goddesshood' but giving voice and expression to the embodiment of that which was stunted and made voiceless – the dark- skinned black African woman. Given Jamaican society where class and colour boundaries are apparent, this is a bold statement Goodison makes. In spite of the fact that they "They forbade great grandmother's / guinea woman presence", the poet revels in the resurgence of pride in the presence of bold African ancestry:

"The high yellow brown
is darkening down
Listen, children/
Its great grandmother's turn"

"Great grandmother's turn"represents a new time in cultural and racial pride, but especially for women it also represents freedom from foreign, racist constructs that define beauty, acceptability and sensuality.

Grace Nichols "Nanny"is presented quite clearly as culturally African. She is "Ashanti Priestess / and giver of charms". Just as her body is clearly one with the Jamaican landscape, she is distinctly African, which forges an undeniable link in the poem between the continent and the island of its transplanted sons and daughters. Nanny becomes the racial and spiritual link. In attempting to know Nanny and determine her true elusive nature, we also are inviteda to delve into our own African history and know our own source. It is interesting to look at these two poems together, both by Jamaican women dealing with a society in the throes of the effects of 'colourism'. It underscores the complexity of the colonial situation wherein there can exist the Ashanti Priestess Maroon warrior, the heroine of Jamaican resistance, and the banished Guinea woman great grandmother, whose uprisings were called rebellions.

"Caribbean Birth Song"uses the ritualized trauma, uncertainty and struggle of birth to explore the Middle Passage experience undergone by African slaves being transported to the Americas. However the historical Middle Passage becomes, for her, not just an experience of African slaves but a symbol of the trauma of arrival and the making sense of identity in a 'new world' setting. "I am breathing/ but it is difficult-/ There is no obstetrician present at the moment"seems to suggest that this becoming must take place unaided. Indeed there is no precedent for the unique experience of the Caribbean, and the muddling through of forming one's identity is a solitary process. She describes her people as "stuck/sticking /in the PASSAGE, the passage, the MIDDLE passage..."unable to properly emerge whole after the experiences of slavery and colonialism. Even when, "a friend …cleared the clots away", an important statement is made about the connection to one's history that must be addressed and reconciled:

"But my navel (still unfree)
tugs
at an afterbirth
still to be
expelled."

This 'afterbirth' can have several connotations. In the Caribbean the idea of one's 'navel string' or umbilical chord suggests an unbreakable link to home and kin. This can be seen as a link to an African past that will not be ignored or perhaps a link to the trauma of the middle passage experience that must also be psychologically reconciled before any movement forward can take place. Inevitably Maxwell's concept of identity is still in flux and not firmly rooted to one tradition or culture:

"I remember
both shac shac and shekkere
drum
and violin
and later the melting moments
of fusion
drummed in my gut"

For Maxwell, the challenge lies in the translation of this fusion to a firm identity that welcomes healing of past traumas. The cornerstone of the desire is to be free, to choose between reconciliation and triumphant flight or remaining stuck in the "terrible orchestration"of a despairing past.

Omolare Ogundipe-Leslie, in looking at the politicization of art, has stated "That the female writer be committed to her Third World reality and status may lead to disagreements. Being aware of oneself as a third world person implies being politically conscious, offering readers perspectives of and perceptions of colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism as they affect and shape our lives and historical destinies." The area of politics has always been a sketchy one to navigate when looking at the poetry of female writers. It has been perceived that the poetry of women did not deal with political concerns. Our most popular political, 'revolutionary' poets have been male. As mentioned above, the poetry of women has often been an exploration of the interior of existence or has focused on the everyday lives and struggles of women, and not necessarily on outward shows and historical events. However, we cannot then say that the poetry of women in the Caribbean has not been political. Indeed, the very nature of the region almost forces one to have political opinions and express them, and the poetic navigation of ideas of race, culture, history, and gender all have intense political implications. While Ogundipe-Leslie sees Third World political awareness as requiring overt political proclamations, women have often chosen to display the more subtle politics of the own lives: sexual politics in their relationships with men and toward their own bodies, and the establishment of identity in dealing with the ravages of post colonialism and the continuing effects of neo-colonialism and imperialism.

All three poets make intensely political statements on the nature of race, ethnicity, and history and do so through the unique female perspective. Goodison's "Guinea Woman"makes a striking statement about 'colourism' in the Caribbean and the resurgence of the reverence for the black African woman; Maxwell uses the woman's birth passage as a trope for the Middle Passage and shows that a true identity can only be forged from the reconciliation with history; and Nichols inscribes the very essence and history of Jamaica upon the form of one of its most known warrior heroes, Maroon Queen Nanny. For her, the quest for knowledge of self and by extension knowledge of the Jamaican psyche is dependent upon the 'knowing' of this woman, past the lens of historical events. Trinidadian writer and academic, Merle Hodge, has stated that she began writing as an adult as a protest against her education that held up foreign standards and that assumed the inferiority of her world. Indeed for many Caribbean writers, and for women in particular,their work was born out of reaction to established codes of femininity that did not fit, to a need to express their own unique perspective as women, and a need to rewrite their own stories and histories as part of the collective Third World. Writing that simply declares the right of Caribbean people to know themselves, to name themselves and to reconcile with their ancestral histories, from the most glorious to the most horrific, is perhaps the most potent political expression of all. And perhaps it is the best means of healing and progress.

The continuities that we find across the writings of women in the Caribbean can be said to reflect many of the concerns of the region as a whole. What however has distinguished women's writing in the Caribbean has been the perspective that they bring to the issues of race, ethnic identity and post colonialism. A genuine sense of empathy, an individualized collective consciousness and a fervent desire to distinguish the roles of women and the female experience in the shaping of the region are elements that inform their works. Through the very act of writing, these women have firmly established themselves as the legitimate heirs and even the arbiters of our collective history. While it is evident that the concerns of women poets vary, they are linked by this fundamental and tangible continuity. In their Mother/Goddess/Healer role, women writers of the Caribbean have sought to create a sense of place and peace and to re-link the region with an understanding of its history in the wake of the dispossession of colonial existence.


Works Cited

Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, London, 1963

Lorna Goodison, "Guinea Woman". I Am Becoming My Mother, New Beacon Books, 1986

Espinet, Ramabai, ed. Creation Fire: An Anthology of Caribbean Women Poets, Sister Vision Press, Toronto, 1990

Kellman, Anthony, ed., Crossing Water: Contemporary Poetry of the English Speaking Caribbean, Greenfield Review Press, Greenfield Center, New York

Boyce Davies, Carole, Savory Fido Elaine, ed., Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature, African World Press, Inc. 1990

Rutherford, J. ed., Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990

Cudjoe, S.R, ed., Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference, Wellesley Massachusetts

Nasta, Susheila, ed., Reading the New Literatures in a Post Colonial Era, The English Association, 2000

Schipper, Mineke, ed., Unheard Words, Women and Literature in Africa, the Arab World, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, Allison & Busy, London, New York

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