ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: SISTERS IN THE SPIRIT: TRANSNATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF DIASPORA IN LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY BLACK WOMEN’S LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAS Deonne N. Minto, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed by: Professor Merle Collins, Comparative Literature and English This dissertation is an interdisciplinary project that draws upon literary theory, diaspora and transnational studies, black feminism, and anthropology. It argues that, in contrast to their male counterparts who produce “high theory” about the African diaspora in the Americas—a theory that tends to exclude or marginalize women and remains tethered to nationalist constructions—black women writers use their literary works to unsettle the dominant gendered racial hierarchy, to critique national discourses, and to offer a vision of a transnational Americas. This study invokes an 1891 conception of the Americas advanced by the Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti, and it explores how the vision of these women writers rearticulates Marti’s early concept of “Nuestra America” (Our America), transcending geographic, temporal, and linguistic boundaries. Organized around issues of historiography, black cultural formation, gender and sexual politics, and racial spacialization, this project cuts across the North/Central/South/Caribbean division of the Americas, topples the primacy of “America” (read as the United States of America) in diasporic discourses, and engages the writing of black women of the Americas in terms of their literary characterization of the transnational exchanges that have produced and continue to re- articulate diaspora in the region. Furthermore, this study engages and enlarges a notion of a “Dutch pot diaspora,” as presented in Maxine Bailey and Sharon Mareeka Lewis’s play Sistahs. This transnational conception of diaspora recognizes the persistence of nation and the ways in which black subjects across the Americas negotiate limiting national constructions through transnational identifications. Using poetry, drama, and novels by authors from Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America, such as Toni Morrison, Erna Brodber, Luz Argentina Chiriboga, and Tessa McWatt, this dissertation reveals a transnational, diasporic poetics of the Americas. SISTERS IN THE SPIRIT: TRANSNATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF DIASPORA IN LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY BLACK WOMEN’S LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAS By Deonne N. Minto Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee: Professor Merle Collins, Chair Assistant Professor Gene Jarrett Associate Professor Kandice Chuh Assistant Professor Randy Ontiveros Professor A. Lynn Bolles © Copyright by Deonne N. Minto 2007 In this dissertation, the author has translated excerpts from various genres of texts from French, Spanish, and Portuguese to English. ii For ME iii Acknowledgements In the spirit of transnationalism, I must acknowledge people of multiple nations for their support and encouragement. My first round of thanks goes to the diligent members of my committee, who pushed me in just the right ways to consider just the right questions: Merle Collins, who stepped in at a crucial juncture and maintained her infectious excitement about the types of border crossings that this project could enact; Gene Jarrett, who saw in an early, disorganized introduction the makings of an interesting intervention and offered useful advice on envisioning the space between the dissertation and the future book manuscript; Kandice Chuh, who kept insisting on the importance of exigence and was gracious enough to offer focused direction in the early stages of my work; Randy Ontiveros, whose enthusiasm fueled my movement toward the finish line; and Lynn Bolles, who reminded me not to take certain terms for granted and fulfilled her commitment to my defense during a difficult time. I am indebted to certain individuals who, at specific moments during this journey, inspired me to complete the race: My peers in the small writing and support groups that emanated from participation in conferences in various international locales and in courses at UMCP; Theresa Coletti, the graduate director of the English department, who provided very practical advice on the collaborative process of the dissertation; my friends and former colleagues in the Division of Letters and Sciences, particularly Dr. Javaune Adams-Gaston, John Bowman, Camille McFarlane-Lawson, Keonna Feaster, and Evelyn Sparks, who offered receptive ears to my dissertation blues and always had an encouraging word when I visited their offices; Monica Coleman, who reminded me of the true meaning of community and of why I should be the only person inside my head; Pam iv Jongbloed, who always affirmed for me that it truly is “a matter of knowing”; Tanya Shields, whose intervening advice proved invaluable; Melvin Rahming, who kept me in his memories between the Bahamas and Morehouse College; Natalie King-Pedroso, my mentor and former thesis advisor, who put a note in her bottle tree for me and then told me to go forth and shine; and Rinaldo Walcott and Lyndon Phillip, who in many conversations unwittingly reminded me of why it is important not to forget Canada and of the need for openness and compassion when confronted with the pressures of the in- between in its various forms. I extend my appreciation to the English Department at UMCP, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), and the Northeast Consortium for Faculty Diversity for their awards of dissertation fellowships. Ansley Abraham and Robbi Ouzts of SREB and JoAnn Moody of the Northeast Consortium particularly alleviated the anxiety over finances and helped to keep me on schedule by regularly checking on my progress. They lived up to the motto articulated by Ansley Abraham and his staff: “More than just a check and a hand shake.” Finally, to my family, thank you for your love, patience, and understanding, especially when I was not quite myself during this process. v Table of Contents Introduction: Re-Mapping the Spirit of America 1 Chapter One: A New Alchemy of Diaspora: From Nation 24 to Transnationalism and the ‘Every body Bring Something Soup’ of Maxine Bailey and Sharon Mareeka Lewis’s Sistahs Chapter Two: Rewriting History/Inscribing Herstory: 60 Gayl Jones’s Song for Anninho and Maryse Condé’s Moi, Tituba, SorciPre . Noire de Salem Chapter Three: Ancestral Interventions and Diasporic Revelations: 104 Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow and Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby Chapter Four: Toward a Black Liberatory Feminism: 148 Erna Brodber’s Myal and Luz Argentina Chiriboga’s Bajo la Piel de los Tambores Passing On the Color Line: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia and 192 Tessa McWatt’s Out of My Skin Conclusion: A Map and Sustenance for a Transnational Diaspora 230 Notes 235 Works Cited 256 vi Introduction Re-Mapping the Spirit of America Where is America going, and who will unite her and be her guide? —José Martí, “Mother America” Migration, diversity, and revolutionary improvisation. For me, those terms are descriptors of the spirit of the Americas. My own history in the region has reflected those very terms. Having occupied and traversed multiple national spaces within the Americas, I claim multiple nations but have never truly belonged to any. For various reasons, my multi-national subjectivity never quite fit any of the constructions of national identity that were required for belonging to the nation. The only safe space of belonging was the kitchen, where my mother would prepare and serve to relatives and friends of many different nations dishes whose ingredients came from all over the region. But, alas, I could not take up permanent residency in the kitchen, nor could I express myself solely through the provisions and company that I found there. Even as a child, I recognized that I would have to discover or make for myself a narrative of belonging that could encompass all of the places that were shaping me. In developing such a narrative, I began to refer to three “texts” in order to make sense of my cross-cultural identity: a Jamaican birth certificate, a Canadian passport, and a U. S. resident alien card. I thought that, in mentioning all three texts, I would be viewed as unique, exotic, special, somehow of and beyond the nations at the same time. I was wrong. Inevitably, subjects of those nations who truly belonged always expected me to choose one nation over the rest; and they were less than pleased when I chose not to choose. Being a stubborn sort of girl with quite the revolutionary spirit, I decided that I 1 would improvise and create a personal system of meaning for myself that would allow me to belong to all of those nations at once and not have to choose. I recognized, though, that I needed more than just texts that named the physical spaces which I have occupied; I also needed texts that could exemplify the characteristics and nuances of the system of meaning and belonging which I sought and that could characterize how to enact that system in my life. So, in my teen years, I turned to alternative texts in search of practical answers. I found those answers in the literature produced in the late twentieth-century by black women writers1 of the Americas. Many of the short stories, poetry, plays, and novels written by contemporary black women authors provided the models for the personal system of meaning that I sought. More than any other texts, the biographies of the writers and the works that they produced most closely mirrored my own biography of movement and cross-cultural identification. In between the lines of written text emanated what for me seemed to be the spirit of the Americas. During my graduate studies, I was surprised to find almost no criticism that fully engaged the epistemologies featured in the particular type of literature that so intrigued me.