Women of Power: Mapping the Spiritual Journeys of Caribbean Women Across Regional Fiction as Portrayed in The Book of Night Women, Texaco, and Erzulie\u27s Skirt

Contemporary Caribbean fiction serves as an active agent for refining and expanding definitions of Caribbeanness. This study aims at demonstrating how Caribbean writers use representations of Caribbean women to contribute to an opaquer regional vision that argues against homogenizing ideas of Caribbeanness. The Book of Night Women, Texaco, and Erzulie’s Skirt, respectively written by Marlon James (Jamaica), Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique), and Anna-Maurine Lara (Dominican Republic), work by making space for more historically accurate and locally representative images of Caribbeanness through the Caribbean women they portray. Though characters live on different islands (at different times), they still manage to represent Caribbeanness by overcoming poverty, oppression, and marginalization. I take a metaphysical approach to textual analysis as I argue that James, Chamoiseau, and Lara employ creative techniques that have precedents in traditional and oral processes of knowledge transmission adapted and formatted to the written word. Caribbean novels recognize a regional spiritual awareness, and act as contemporary sites of knowing and identity, by creating fictional spaces where the reader can access diverse examples of Caribbean Women and witness their Caribbeanness