INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 MAKING HERSELF AT HOME IN THE WEST/INDIES: THE GENDERED CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY IN THE WRITINGS OF MICHELLE CLIFF AND JAMAICA KINCAID DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Antonia MacDonald-Smythe, B. A., M.A. The Ohio State University 1996 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Valerie Lee, Adviser Professor Ruth Lindeborg Professor Abiola Irele Adviser Department of English Graduate Program Professor Jacqueline Jones Royster UMI Number: 9630927 UMI Microform 9630927 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT At the theoretical center of "Making herself at Home in the West/ Indies" is an exploration of Michelle Cliffs and Jamaica Kincaid's formulations of self as subject within a variety of cross-cultural contexts and their constitution of migratory, comfortable, and convergent subjectivities. This pattern of migratory subjectivities which originate in a West Indian location is different both in scope and influence from that of other diasporic women, for it is contoured by particular intersections of race, class and sexuality in newly independent societies. While these two writers reiterate many of the concerns raised by male West Indian writers a generation before, my emphasis is on the ways gendered locations affect the shape of their thematics. These two women writers encode their experiences of exile in ways which affirm their connections to the oral culture and traditions of the place left. Framing their self- narratives within a West Indian tradition of storytelling, Cliff and Kincaid, as raconteurs, assume the authority to take liberty with other traditions of writing the self. Chapter One explores the ways in which autobiography and the Bildungsroman are creolized in Abeng and Annie John, connecting this talking-back to various coming-of-age stories. The relationship between coming-of-age and exile is explored in Chapter Two where I argue ii that in Lucy and No Telephone To Heaven. Kincaid and Cliff theorize migration and exile as performances of identity. Chapter Three focuses on the validation of maternal antecedents in bringing the writers to creative voice and examines the ways in which the orality of the mother's world is deployed by these two writers as a tactic of intervention. The final chapter argues that in A Small Place and Free Enterprise the two writers recover West Indian historiography so as speak more specifically to the heterogeneity of their experiences, and that in these two works, travel becomes as occasion to witness from a variety of vantage points. The study concludes with an assessment of the participation of these exilic voices in West Indian poetics. iii Dedicated to Nyika and Kara, my daughters who mothered me. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS All good things come from God. I wish to thank my adviser, Valerie Lee, for her guidance and her encouragement, for her generosity with her time and with her books, and for her mentoring and friendship. I also wish to extend my sincere appreciation to the other members of my committee, Drs. Ruth Lindeborg, Jacqueline Jones Royster and Abiola Irele for their guidance, intellectual support and encouragement. I am grateful to Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) and the Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities (LASPAU) for supporting my doctoral studies. I wish to thank my family and friends for their prayers, unbounded support and love. Finally, I acknowledge the patience and understanding of my daughters to whom this dissertation is dedicated. v VITA May 10,1957 Born - Castries, St.Lucia 1979 B.A. English, University of The West Indies. 1987 M.A. English, University of The West Indies 1989 - present Lecturer Sir Arthur Lewis Community College Castries, St. Lucia 1993 - present Research Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Studies in Caribbean Literature. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Vita vi Chapters: Introduction Kwik Kwak!: Narrations of the Self 1 1. Talking back to the Bildungsroman 46 2. Negotiating Exile 112 3. Slippery Tongues: Re/Claiming Orality as a Tactic of Intervention 174 4. W/Righting History 225 Conclusion Infinite Chronicles of the World and The Word 275 Bibliography 285 vii INTRODUCTION Kwik! Kwak! l: Narrations of the Self Oh but it should be laid out and chronicled, crazy for all my life with a place for all my several lives daughter, sister, mistress, friend, warrior wife. Lorna Goodison, "The Last Poem" Clearing Spaces At the theoretical center of this project "Making Herself at Home" is the idea of the West Indian2 woman's formation as subject within a variety of cross-cultural contexts and the constitution of a comfortable, convergent subjectivity. Home accrues a range of meanings in these various contextualizations. It relates to geographies: home is an island, a community, a house. It becomes a political term: home describes Africa, the New World and the nation-state. It is an ideology: home is the imagination, a safe, nurturing space, a place where one can speak freely. But home can be a prison, a cell, a grave. It can be a place where one is silenced. Home can be both center and margin. Multiple and shifting, home is nevertheless a site for the construction of identity. My project focuses on the ways in which two West Indian women writers, Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid are 'making' themselves in these various 'homes'. 1 Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid both reside in the United States. That is in itself not unusual; a large number of Caribbean novelists write outside the region. What is remarkable about these two West Indian writers is not only the volume of their literary production ~ over the last fifteen years each woman has averaged one book every three years~but also the ways in which their writing epitomizes the changes occurring in the West Indian literary tradition at the end of the twentieth century. Cliff and Kincaid personalize the political and politicize the personal. Narrative functions as both the source and example of an enabling cultural theory as each writer wrestles with the peculiarity of her migration and its relation to exile-a condition already overdetermined by colonialism. The eclectic, fragmented form favored by Cliff and Kincaid as a way of encoding the female experience is a rejection of the linear polemic of some male-authored West Indian text. Furthermore these women privilege kwik ! kwak! narratives, that is stories which reveal their folk origins and which confirm their appreciation of the ways in which the West Indian storytelling process has supported their artistic creativity. Autobiography asserts a female "I" as the subject who will not be silenced as each writer becomes the raconteur of her own life story. The category of "woman," long under-theorized in West Indian literature, has with the proliferation of fiction by women, opened up to reveal the complexities of the hitherto unarticulated female experience within the domestic and public sphere. The literary activities of Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid, the circumstances under which they come to selfhood, their consistent troubling of their relationship with home, the ambivalence of their location within the American metropolis all connect to the 2 thematics of West Indian women writing in the region. Each writer insists on a gendered selfhood which is easily transgressive and constantly disruptive. Both writers attempt to free themselves from conventions of gender, race, and sexuality. Neither presumes to speak on behalf of the group or as the representative of a community. Nonetheless both participate in community. As raconteurs, Cliff and Kincaid repeat versions of their life stories. Each calls out a "Kwik! Kwak! ", welcoming her community of readers; neither offers a "Kwik! kwak!" closure because each continues to tell never-ending stories. While it is necessary to narrate the journeys which these women writers make to arrive at this position, my story mapping is tentative and partial, for these writers are elusive and slippery. In undertaking a comparative analysis of the writings of Michelle Cliff and Jamaica Kincaid, I am mindful that while these two women arrive at somewhat similar ideological positions on the formation of female subjectivity, they do so through very different routes.