Caribbean autobiography : cultural identity and self-representation / Sandra Pouchet Paquet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Paquet, Sandra Pouchet.

Series:

Wisconsin studies in autobiography

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Autobiography.

Biography.

Caribbean Area--Biography--History and criticism.

Caribbean Area.

Authors, Caribbean--Biography--History and criticism.

Authors, Caribbean.

Physical Description:

xii, 345 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, [2002]

Summary:

Despite the range and abundance of autobiographical writing from the Anglophone Caribbean, this book is the first to explore this literature fully. It covers works from the colonial era up to present-day AIDS memoirs and assesses the links between more familiar works by George Lamming, C. L. R. James, Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, and Jamaica Kincaid and less frequently cited works by the Hart sisters, Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Claude McKay, Yseult Bridges, Jean Rhys, Anna Mahase, and Kamau Brathwaite. Sandra Pouchet Paquet charts the intersection of multiple, contradictory viewpoints of the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean, differing concepts of community and levels of social integration, and a persistent pattern of both resistance and accommodation within island states that were largely shaped by British colonial practice from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. The texts examined here reflect the entire range of autobiographical practice, including the slave narrative and testimonial, written and oral narratives, spiritual autobiographies, fiction, serial autobiography, verse, diaries and journals, elegy, and parody.

Contents:

Part 1 Gender, Voice, and Self-Representation 11

1 Testing and Testifying: The Hart Sisters 21

2 The Heartbeat of a West Indian Slave: The History of Mary Prince 28

3 The Enigma of Arrival: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole 51

Part 2 The Estranging Sea 73

4 "The Traveling Ulysses Scene": Claude McKay's A Long Way from Home and My Green Hills of Jamaica 87

5 Blurred Genres, Blended Voices: George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin 111

6 Autobiographical Frameworks and Linked Discourses: George Lamming's The Pleasures of Exile and C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary 132

7 Poetic Autobiography: Derek Walcott's Another Life 154

Part 3 Birthrights and Legacies 175

8 Fragments of Epic Memory: V. S. Naipaul's Finding the Center and A Way in the World 183

9 Maternal Bonds: My Mother's Daughter: The Autobiography of Anna Mahase., Snr., 1899-1978 205

10 Colonist and Creole: Yseult Bridges's Child of the Tropics and Jean Rhys's Smile Please 214

Part 4 Autobiography, Elegy, and Gender Identification 227

11 Beyond Consolation: Kamau Brathwaite's The Zea Mexican Diary 233

12 Death and Sexuality: Jamaica Kincaid's My Brother 243.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 304-320) and index.

ISBN:

0299176908

0299176940

OCLC:

48003113