Originary Violations
Description
Caribbean motherhood reflects a complex interplay of ancestry and diaspora shaped by both violence and resilience. Originary Violations investigates how female embodiment, sexuality and maternal power were defined by the histories of slavery and colonialism as well as by social hierarchies built on race, class, gender and nationality. It considers the ways legacies of trauma and dispossession continue to shape family life, patterns of migration, cultural expression and the Caribbean landscape itself.
The volume brings together the voices of Caribbean writers and artists such as Erna Brodber, Olive Senior, Dionne Brand, Kei Miller, Marlon James and Derek Walcott. Through their fiction, poetry and art, they reveal how violence, loss and cultural struggles continue to leave marks on Caribbean people and landscapes. At the same time, their work also opens space for healing and new beginnings. By moving beyond only women’s voices, this book adds men’s perspectives as well, offering a richer understanding of motherhood and identity in the Caribbean.
More details
Persons
Hannah Regis is an Assistant Professor of Caribbean Literature at Howard University. Her research interests include Caribbean literary and theoretical history and cultural memory. Dr Regis has published in leading Caribbean and postcolonial journals including Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Caribbean Quarterly, The American Studies Journal (AMSJ), eTropic and The Journal of West Indian Literature. She is the author of A Caribbean Poetics of Spirit (The University of the West Indies Press, 2024).
Content
1 Collisions: Ancestral Cosmologies and Global Modernities in Johnson’s Jacmelain Ruinscape and Miller’s The Last Warner Woman
2 Black Countermapping: Brodber’s and Brand’s Re-conceptualizing of Loss, Belonging and Resistance
3 Servant Mothering, Memory Work and Empathy in Senior’s “The Pain Tree” and Scott’s “The Wedding Photograph”
4 Incest, Violation and Trauma in Caribbean Narratives
5 Baby Mama Talks: Motherhood in Childhood, Caribbean Style
6 “Killing Don’t Need No Reason”: Trauma and Criminality in A Brief History of Seven Killings
7 A Chorus of Resistance: Hurricane Narratives of Loss and Resilience
8 Harrisian Narratives of Environmental Degradations and Indigenous Healing
9 Whispers from the Roots: Reclaiming Nature Through Spirit in Caribbean Poetry
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
References
Index