This course introduces students to the literary works of 20th and 21st-century women fiction writers and poets of the Anglophone Caribbean, focusing on the literature of Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados, Antigua, and diasporic Caribbean communities in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Novels, short stories, and poems are accompanied by essays and other works that examine feminism and intersectional theories of gender, race, class, and sexuality in the contemporary Caribbean.

Course themes include gender roles in plantation slavery; parent-child relationships; poverty and economic dependency on tourism; women in folklore and myth; racialized perceptions of beauty; and sexuality and the state. We read works by canonical postcolonial Caribbean writers like Jamaica Kincaid and the poet Lorna Goodison, as well as writing by newer voices like Nalo Hopkinson, Shani Mootoo, and Roxane Gay. The major goal of the course is to think through how race, gender, sexuality, religion, and class intersect in the context of Caribbean multiple migrations, cultural creolization, and globalization.

Required Texts:

Ayiti by Roxane Gay

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

Small Island by Andrea Levy

Valmiki’s Daughter by Shani Mootoo

Supplying Salt and Light by Lorna Goodison

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

Course Requirements:

Requirements include three response papers, a final paper, and a group presentation.