LIT 3383 Fall 2019 Ward

In this course we will explore the writings of a number of writers from the Caribbean. All of the texts are concerned with the role of women in Caribbean history and culture, and all deal with the influence and legacy of Atlantic slavery. Thus, even though most of the works covered in the class were published in the 20th and 21st centuries, they are “haunted” by the region’s colonial past.

Required texts include: Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688); The History of Mary Prince (1831); Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1962); Paule Marshall’s Chosen Place, Timeless People (1969); Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984); Erna Brodber’s Myal (1988); Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies (1994); Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother (1996); Edwidge Danticat’s Farming of Bones (1998); Pauline Melville’s Migration of Ghosts (1998); Marlon James’s Book of Night Women (2009).