subject: Caribbean Women's Writing and History [print this page] Caribbean Women's Writing and History Caribbean Women's Writing and History
Women's writing as a form to interrogate male's writing, revealing women's engagement with issues of history, race, class, religionand gender. The voices of women in the West Indies' literature challenge male writers' preconceptions, presenting another perspective of history. This historical rewriting generally challenges patriarchal and colonial rigid structures that contribute to limit women's lives. This literature is used to rewrite history inscribing in it the experiences of those who were ignored from the official history told by the colonizers. Also, women's historical rewriting attempts to deconstruct some conceptions of women as abstract national symbols as it is presented in Mother Poem and The Star-Kingdom Apple. Those idealized representations encapsulate women in the private world of mothering and fertility while the male are the ones who are permitted to have a public voice. In this sense, history is retold by men who are in charge to bring into their narratives not only their experiences but also their female partners' perspective.
It is worth noting that while the Afro-Caribbean women's writing is closely linked to their foremothers' customs, religion, values and language, and the reconstruction of their identity, the White Creole women writing is marked by an ambivalence presented in the lives of those who are in-between two worlds, being oppressed by a patriarchal structure and also as oppressors being privileged by the racist system. These paradoxes are part of White Creole women's writing who had utilized literature to negotiate their identities, giving birth to a new kind of colonial historiography.
