Reading with Black Caribbean Women Writers

This course asks what it means for us to read Black Caribbean women’s writing, not only in relation to their words, but also to the lived experiences, stories, worlds and possibilities they engender. We will survey a group of twentieth century Black Caribbean women writers who move through the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. We will cover themes from enslavement, colonialism, independence movements, feminisms, racial formation, sexuality, and migration in order to evaluate the aesthetic, cultural, and imaginative realms that Black Caribbean women create. Materials will include novels, poetry, interviews, short stories, and literary criticism. Texts not originally written in English are provided in a translation.