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Educator and author Ashley Hope Perez put together this great guest post for Color Online earlier in the year. I decided to rerun for Caribbean Heritage Month.

Reading Women Writers of the Caribbean

There’s more to Caribbean literature than the (wonderful) well-known works like A Simple Habana Melody and In the Time of the Butterflies.

Come with me to discover the texts I teach as part of my college class on women writers of the Caribbean. These titles are not to be missed! I’ll discuss them, not in order of publication, but in the order in which I teach them.

“A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua). This piece is the first text I introduce students to. I start here because Kincaid issues a forceful critique against tourism, and I want to challenge my students to find ways of reading that go beyond literary tourism. This is our starting place for discussions of the connections between reading and ethics. The text often makes readers feel guilty, angry, and uncomfortable. We talk about why.

Prospero’s Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez (Trinidad). This is a fascinating adaptation and retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is the first novel I teach in the course because Nunez’s critique of colonialism, valorization of the local and (re)appropriation of a master plot by a white writer are features that are pretty plain to students. This is what I call an “apprenticeship” novel that helps sensitize students to themes that they’ll encounter (more subtly) in subsequent novels.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe). Here, Condé puts Tituba, a marginal historical figure from the Salem witch trials, on center stage, tracing her travels from the Caribbean to New England and back again. In addition to her reclamation of and play with the Salem history, Condé incorporates a cameo appearance by Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, changing Hester’s fate in the retelling. Check out this blog for a subtle reading of I, Tituba

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Dominica). This classic of Caribbean literature offers yet another instance of rewriting canonical texts, for it imagines the pre-history of the Bertha character (the madwoman in the attic) fr

“One of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.” — Jamaica Kincaid, who has a novel excerpt out in Little Star

Educator and debut author Ashley Hope Perez was kind enough to agree to do a guest post on Women Writers of the Caribbean

Reading Women Writers of the Caribbean

There’s more to Caribbean literature than the (wonderful) well-known works like A Simple Habana Melody and In the Time of the Butterflies.

Come with me to discover the texts I teach as part of my college class on women writers of the Caribbean. These titles are not to be missed! I’ll discuss them, not in order of publication, but in the order in which I teach them.

“A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua). This piece is the first text I introduce students to. I start here because Kincaid issues a forceful critique against tourism, and I want to challenge my students to find ways of reading that go beyond literary tourism. This is our st arting place for discussions of the connections between reading and ethics. The text often makes readers feel guilty, angry, and uncomfortable. We talk about why.



Prospero’s Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez (Trinidad). This is a fascinating adaptation and retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. This is the first novel I teach in the course because Nunez’s critique of colonialism, valorization of the local and (re)appropriation of a master plot by a white writer are features that are pretty plain to students. This is what I call an “apprenticeship” novel that helps sensitize students to themes that they’ll encounter (more subtly) in subsequent novels.

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe). Here, Condé puts Tituba, a marginal historical figure from the Salem witch trials, on center stage, tracing her travels from the Caribbean to New England and back again. In addition to her reclamation of and play with the Salem history, Condé incorporates a cameo appearance by Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, changing Hester’s fate in the retelling. Check out this blog for a subtle reading of I, Tituba



Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Dominica). This classic of Caribbean literature offers yet another instance of rewriting canonical texts, for it imagines the pre-history