This document provides information about several Caribbean countries and authors from the region: - It discusses the history of Jamaica, including its use as a base for privateers, the destruction of Port Royal, the growth of Kingston as the capital, and its dependence on slave labor for sugar plantations. It also mentions uprisings by enslaved Africans. - For Cuba, it outlines the indigenous peoples, Spanish colonization, British occupation, independence struggles, and formal independence in 1902. - It profiles several Jamaican and Cuban authors including Roger Mais, Nicolás Guillén, Paule Marshall, Anthony Kellman, Nancy Morejón, and Carlton Lindsay Barrett, noting their themes around African and Afro

1. JAMAICA
Jamaica became a base of operations for privateers, including Captain Henry Morgan,
operating from the main English settlement Port Royal. In return these privateers kept the
other colonial powers from attacking the island. Following the destruction of Port Royal in
the great earthquake of 1692, refugees settled across the bay in Kingston. By 1716 it had
become the biggest town in Jamaica and was designated the capital city in 1872. Until slavery
was abolished by Parliament in 1833, the island sugar plantations were highly dependent on
slaver labour, based on Africans who initially were captured, kidnapped, and sold into slavery
from peoples of West and Central Africa. By the eighteenth century, sugarcane became the
most important export of the island.
Adam Taylor's slaves had arrived in Jamaica via the Atlantic slave trade during the
early seventeenth century, the same period when the first enslaved Africans arrived in North
America. By the early nineteenth century, people of African descent greatly outnumbered
ethnic Europeans Due to the harshness of the conditions, there were many racial tensions.
Jamaica had one of the highest number of slave uprisings of any Caribbean island.[1]
After the British Crown abolished slavery in 1834, the Jamaicans began working
toward independence. As the island still had a strong agricultural economy, planters imported
East Asians as indentured labourers for many years. Since independence in 1962, there have
been political and economic disturbances, as well as a number of strong political leaders.
Carlton Lindsay Barrett
Carlton Lindsay Barrett, also known as Eseoghene (born 15 September 1941), is a
Jamaican poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer who lives in
Nigeria. Particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, Barrett was well known as an experimental
and progressive essayist, his work being concerned with issues of black identity and
dispossession, the African Diaspora, and the survival of descendants of black Africans, now
dispersed around the world.
In 1972 his theatrical collage of drama, dance and music, Sighs of a Slave Dream, was
the first major production to be staged at the Keskidee Centre, in north London, performed by
a Nigerian troupe under the direction of Pat Amadu Maddy. It portrays the capture and
enslavement of Africans, their transport across the Atlantic, and their suffering on American

2. plantations. Barrett is in addition a poet, whose early militant poems dealt with racial and
emotional conflict and exile, as evidenced in his collection, The Conflicting Eye, published
under the pseudonym "Eseoghene" in 1973.
Roger Mais
Roger Mais (11 August 1905−21 June 1955) was a Jamaican journalist, novelist, poet,
and playwright. He was born to a middle-class family in Kingston, Jamaica. By 1951, he had
won ten first prizes in West Indian literary competitions. His integral role in the development
of political and cultural nationalism is evidenced in his being awarded the high honour of the
Order of Jamaica in 1978. The Hills Were Joyful Together (1953) is written in the style of a
narrative. It takes place in a "yard" consisting of individuals and families living in a
confinement of shacks shaped squarely, leaving a yard in the center. In this yard, daily and
public life of the tenement unfolds. Mais claimed that he was "concerned with setting down
objectively the hopes, fears, [and] frustrations of these people".[8]
He wanted the novel to be
"essentially realistic, even to the point of seeming violent, rude, expletive, functional,
primitive, raw".
During the 1930s, the first endeavors were made to write and introduce plays related
to Caribbean life. George William Gordon acts as a representation for the lower class,
alluding to the oppressions they were forced to endure throughout the play. The play not only
represents the people, but also functions as a voice for the people so that their cries can be
heard. The unfair court system, the low wages and their repercussions are stated clearly in the
work by anonymous persons acting as a uniting voice for the people. It forms an identity for
the Black underclass majority, which was Mais's ultimate goal in his work.
CUBA
Before Columbus' arrival, the indigenous Guanajatabey, who had inhabited the island
for centuries, were driven to the west of Cuba by the arrival of two subsequent waves of
migrants, the Taíno and Ciboney. The Taíno and Ciboney were part of a cultural group
commonly called the Arawak. After Columbus' arrival, Cuba became a Spanish colony,
ruled by a Spanish governor in Havana. In 1762, Havana was briefly occupied by Great
Britain, before being returned to Spain in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions during
the 19th century failed to end Spanish rule. However, increased tensions between Spain and

3. the United States, which culminated in the Spanish-American War, finally led to a Spanish
withdrawal in 1898, and in 1902 Cuba gained formal independence.
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón (Havana, 1944- ) is a Cuban author and poet. She has gained
recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.
The themes of her work span a wide scope. She discusses the mythology of the Cuban nation,
and the relation of the blacks of Cuba within that nation. In this she often expresses an
integrationist, unifying stance, in which Spanish and African cultures fuse to make a new,
Cuban identity. Much of her work—and the fact that she has been successful within the
Cuban regime—locates her as a supporter of Cuban nationalism and the Cuban Revolution.
In addition, she also voices the situation of women in her within her society, expressing the
feminism (as well as the racial integration) of the Cuban revolution by making black women
central protagonists in her poems, most notably in the widely anthologized Mujer Negra
(Black Woman). Finally, her work also treats the history of slavery and mistreatment in the
relationship of Cuba and the United States, with a view towards arousing outrage toward
abuse.
However, although her work pays attention to political themes, is not exclusively
dominated by them. Critics have noted her playful observations about her own people, her
effective use of particularly Cuban forms of humor, and her regular "indulgence" in highly
lyrical, intimate, and spiritual poetry.
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 16 July 1989) was a Cuban poet,
journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.
Guillén is probably the best-known representative of the "poesía negra" ("black poetry") that
tried to create a synthesis between black and white cultural elements, a "poetic mestizaje".
Guillén later became acknowledge by many critics as the most influential of those Latin
American poets who dealt with African themes and re-created African song and dance
rhythms in literary form.[5]
Guillen made an international mark for himself with the
publication of Motivos de son. The work was inspired by the living conditions of Afro-
Cubans. The publication consisted of eight short poems that were composed using the

4. everyday language of the Afro Cubans. The collection stood out in the literary world because
it emphasized and established the importance of Afro-Cuban culture as a valid genre in
Cuban literature.
BARBADOS
It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometers east of
the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea. Barbados was initially visited by the Spanish
around the late 1400s to early 1500s. The Spanish explorers may have plundered the island
of whatever native people resided therein to become slaves. The Portuguese visited in 1536,
but they too left it unclaimed, with their only remnants being an introduction of wild hogs for
a good supply of meat whenever the island was visited. The first English ship, the Olive
Blossom, arrived in Barbados in 1624. In 1627 the first permanent settlers arrived from
England and it became an English and later British colony.
Anthony Kellman
Anthony Kellman (born in 1955) is a Barbados-born writer and musician. In 1990 the
British publishing house Peepal Tree Press published his first full-length book of poetry,
Watercourse. Since 1990, he has published two novels such as The coral room in 1994 and
The houses of Alphonso in 2004
In the novel The coral room Percival veer the protagonist of that novel has acquired
the large house and young wife but the guilt over past wrong begins to trouble him. A
recurrent dream of caves disturb his sleep but his journey through caves is not only the
journey to truth that lies with in him, but the journey to vision of Creole magic, World of
possibilities and revision of races and juxtapositions.
Watercourse is more than a collection of poems. It is the continual amazement evoked
by Caribbean landscape and the dialogue between the sea and lad…a song whose dazzling
waves foam among the islands... Anthony Kellman's poetry has the strength and sweetness of
vegetation with the power of progressively revealing to us the nature of the earth in which it
grows.

5. Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall (born April 9, 1929) is an American author. She was born Valenza
Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School. Early in
her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose.
Praise song for the Widow is a novel by Paule Marshall which takes place in the mid-
seventies, chronicling the life of Avey Johnson, a sixty-four-year-old African American
widow on a physical and emotional journey in the Caribbean island of Carriacou. Throughout
the novel, there are many flashbacks to Avey's earlier life experiences with her late husband,
Jerome Johnson, as well as childhood events that reconnect her with her lost cultural root
Brown girl; Brown stones is a novel by Paule Marshall autobiographical story describes the
life of Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn during the Great Depression and then in World
War II. The primary characters include Salina and Ina Boyce and their parents, who suffer
from racism and extreme poverty.
MARTINIQUE
Columbus sighted Martinique in 1493, but did not go ashore until another voyage in 1502. At
that time, the island was inhabited by the Carib Indians who had already exterminated the
Arawaks. Columbus named the island Martinica in honor of St. Martin. The French arrived to
claim the island and begin permanent settlement there in 1635. They began to cultivate sugar
cane and import slaves from Africa. As forests were cleared to make room for sugar
plantations, fierce battles with the Carib Indians ensued. With the treaty of 1660, the Caribs
agreed to occupy only the Atlantic side of Martinique. This peace was short-lived, however,
and they were exterminated or forced off the island shortly thereafter.
In 1762, the English occupied the island, but returned it the following year in exchange for
Canada. They invaded and held the island once again from 1794 to 1815, when it was
returned to the French. In 1848, Victor Schoelcher, a French minister for overseas
possessions, convinced the government to sign an Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery
in the French West Indies. On March 8, 1902, came the most devastating natural disaster in
Caribbean history; the Mont Pelée volcano erupted, destroying the city of St. Pierre and
claiming the lives of all but one of its 30,000 inhabitants. As a result, the capital was

6. permanently moved to Fort-de-France.Famous writers of martinique are Patrick Chamoiseau
and Frantz Fanon.
Patrick Chamoiseau
Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he
currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard
Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. In an interview with Mr. James Ferguson,
an English writing critic, Patrick Chamoiseau, the Martiniquan novelist, complained that
"Martinique is cut off from the rest of the Caribbean". It is a statement which recognises the
extent to which various forms of colonialism has fragmented the region into self-contained
linguistic pockets, giving rise to cultural and other forms of isolation. As a result, different
parts of the Caribbean find it difficult to communicate or be in touch with other parts. To the
English speaking Caribbean, their French counterparts, especially the writers and other
exemplars of culture, are mostly unknown. Chamoiseau’s famous works are Texaco and
School Days.
''Texaco'' is a novel made of stories unrecorded in any history book, for they are
stories ''beneath history,'' telling of love, sex, work, murder and political action among the
black slaves of Martinique and their descendants. Both true and fabulous, the stories
constitute a personal and communal record of black experience on the island from the early
days of slavery through its abolition and beyond -- a record more real than ''history,'' which is
a formal, impersonal narrative. The novel returns obsessively to the power, beauty,
frustrations and extreme political importance of language -- specifically the French language,
and its relation not only to racial identity but to what the translators refer to as ''Mulatto
French'' and ''Creole French.''
School Days (Chemin-d’Ecole) is a captivating narrative based on Patrick
Chamoiseau’s childhood in Fort-de-France, Martinique. It is a revelatory account of the
colonial world that shaped one of the liveliest and most creative voices in French and
Caribbean literature today. Through the eyes of the boy Chamoiseau, we meet his severe,
Francophile teacher, a man intent upon banishing all remnants of Creole from his students’
speech. This domineering man is succeeded by an equally autocratic teacher, an Africanist
and proponent of “Negritude.” Along the way we are also introduced to Big Bellybutton, the
class scapegoat, whose tales of Creole heroes and heroines, magic, zombies, and fantastic

7. animals provide a fertile contrast to the imported French fairy tales told in school. In prose
punctuated by Creolisms and ribald humor, Chamoiseau infuses the universal terrors, joys,
and disappointments of a child’s early school days with the unique experiences of a Creole
boy forced to confront the dominant culture in a colonial school. School Days mix
understanding with laughter, knowledge with entertainment—in ways that will fascinate and
delight readers of all ages.
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon (Frantz Omar Fanon) was a Martinique-born, French–Algerian
psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose works are influential in the fields
of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As an intellectual, Fanon was a
political radical, and an existential humanist concerning the psychopathology of colonization,
and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization. His famous works are
Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.
Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white
world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952,
the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of
revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Black Skin White Masks
as his first treatise on the effects of Racism and colonialization. Both a memory and a
political treatise, Black Skins White Masks is a work illustrating the marginalization and
servitude of the Black experience in the Western world. By speaking the language of the
colonizers, the colonized continue to allow for their own enslavement through a kind of
cultural imprisonment. Fanon greatly influenced the later workings of Michel Foucault and
his discussion of hegemonic power in language and culture. Fanon speaks of how the
‘Antilles Negro’ should reject the language and cultural traditions of their aggressor (France)
and find their own culture which is separate from that of the colonial bourgeosie.
Fanon's next novel, "The Wretched of the Earth" views the colonized world from the
perspective of the colonized. Like Foucault's questioning of a disciplinary society Fanon
questions the basic assumptions of colonialism. He questions whether violence is a tactic that
should be employed to eliminate colonialism. He questions whether native intellectuals who
have adopted western methods of thought and urge slow decolonization are in fact part of the
same technology of control that the white world employs to exploit the colonized. He

8. questions whether the colonized world should copy the west or develop a whole new set of
values and ideas.
ST. LUCIA
Saint Lucia is a sovereign island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the
boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Saint Lucia was named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse by
the French, the island's first European colonizers. They signed a treaty with the
native Carib people in 1660. England took control of the island from 1663 to 1667; in
ensuing years, it was at war with France 14 times and rule of the island changed frequently it
was seven times each ruled by the French and British. In 1814, the British took definitive
control of the island. Because it switched so often between British and French control, Saint
Lucia was also known as the "Helen of the West Indies".
Representative government in St Lucia came about in 1924 with
universal suffrage from 1953. From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the Federation
of the West Indies. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state of
the Commonwealth of Nations associated with the United Kingdom.
Robert Devaux
Rober Devaux, is one of the author of history of St. Lucia. He is a field engineer by
profession, he spent his lifetime writing about the history, ecology, landscape and culture of
St Lucia. He served as director of the St. Lucia National Trust and wrote and published
several books and articles, including the monumental St Lucia Historic Sites (1975).
He also penned “A century of coaling in St Lucia (1975), History and analysis of coastal
processes at Pigeon Island (1993) and They called us Brigands: the sage of St Lucia's
freedom fighters (1997).In 1961, Devaux founded the St Lucia Research Centre that
produced several research papers on a widerange of topics. Last year, together with Jolien
Harmsen and veteran local journalist, Guy Ellis, they published ‘A History of St Lucia'.
Devaux was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1991. In
1993, he received a Paul Harris Fellowship Award, followed a year later by the Pigeon Island
Museum Dedication. He was inducted into the Tourism Hall of Fame in 1996 and won the
M&C Fine Arts Award for Literature in 1998.

9. Kendel Hippolyte
Kendel Hippolyte born in St. Lucia in 1952 is a poet, playwright and director. As a
poet, his writing ranges across the continuum of language from Standard English to the
varieties of Caribbean English and he has also written poems in Kweyol, his national
language. He works in traditional forms like the sonnet and villanelle as well as in so-called
free verse and in forms influenced by rap and reggae. He has published five books of poetry,
the latest being Night Vision (Tri Quarterly Books, Northwestern University Press, 2005) and
his poetry has appeared in various journals such as The Greenfield Review, The
Massachusetts Review and in anthologies like Caribbean Poetry Now, Voiceprint, West
Indian Poetry and others. He has also edited Confluence: Nine St. Lucian Poets, So Much
Poetry in We People, an anthology of performance poetry from the Eastern Caribbean, This
Poem-Worthy Place, an anthology of poems from Bermuda, as well as student anthologies
from creative writing students at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College where he was a
lecturer in literature and drama until 2007. In 2000, Kendel was awarded the St. Lucia Medal
of Merit (Gold) for Contribution to the Arts. Recently retired from the Sir Arthur Lewis
Community College, his present focus is to use his skills as a writer and dramatist to raise
public awareness and contribute to active solutions of critical social issues.
DOMINICA
The island's indigenous Arawak people were expelled or exterminated by Caribs in
the 14th century. Columbus landed there in November 1493. Spanish ships frequently landed
on Dominica during the 16th century, but fierce resistance by the Caribs discouraged Spain's
efforts at settlement.
In 1635, France claimed Dominica. Shortly thereafter, French missionaries became
the first European inhabitants of the island. Carib incursions continued, though, and in 1660,
the French and British agreed that both Dominica and St. Vincent should be abandoned.
Dominica was officially neutral for the next century, but the attraction of its resources
remained; rival expeditions of British and French foresters were harvesting timber by the start
of the 18th century.

10. Largely due to Dominica's position between Martinique and Guadeloupe, France
eventually became predominant, and a French settlement was established and grew. As part
of the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the seven years' war, the island became a British
possession. In 1778, during the American Revolutionary War, the French mounted a
successful invasion with the active cooperation of the population, which was largely French.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, returned the island to Britain. Following the
abolition of slavery, in 1838 Dominica became the first and only British Caribbean colony to
have a Black-controlled legislature in the 19th century. Most Black legislators were
smallholders or merchants who held economic and social views diametrically opposed to the
interests of the small, wealthy English planter class. Reacting to a perceived threat, the
planters lobbied for more direct British rule.
Following World War I, an upsurge of political consciousness throughout the
Caribbean led to the formation of the representative government association. Shortly
thereafter, Dominica was transferred from the Leeward Island Administration and was
governed as part of the Windwards until 1958, when it joined the short-lived West Indies
Federation. After the federation dissolved, Dominica became an associated state of the United
Kingdom in 1967 and formally took responsibility for its internal affairs. On November 3,
1978, the Commonwealth of Dominica was granted independence by the United Kingdom.
Phyllis Shand Allfrey
A descendant of Empress Josephine, Phyllis Shand Allfrey was born in Dominica in
1908 and died in 1986. By the time of her birth, her illustrious family was in financial
decline. Allfrey is best known for her work The Orchid House (1953), but her life too offered
much to be admired. Allfrey enjoyed her greatest success during the 1950s. In that decade,
she wrote and published The Orchid House, founded the Dominica Labour Party, ran two
political campaigns, and became a minister in the West Indies Federation.
First published in 1954, The Orchid House, Phyllis Shand Allfrey's only published novel, is a
classic of Caribbean literature. In this markedly autobiographical story of the three daughters
of a once-powerful but now impoverished white family, Allfrey interweaves her family's
history with the history of her home island of Dominica in the twentieth century. The novel is
written in a sensuous style and the story remarkably told through the eyes of Lally, the black
nurse of the three sisters. Often praised for the clearsightedness of its analysis of the

11. Dominican historical process, The Orchid House stands at a crucial intersection of West
Indian politics. It was during this period that the colonized took over from the colonizer the
direction of local governments. Allfrey, a Fabian socialist and founder of Dominica's first
political party, articulates in this novel the central tenet of a political philosophy that guided a
lifetime of grassroots activism: that profound changes had to take place in the power
structures of Caribbean societies to bring social justice to its peoples, and that those who
persevered in seeking to revive the past were doomed.
Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez (born March 27, 1950) is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and
essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first ten years of her
childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion
forced her family to flee the country.
Alvarez rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their
Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and Yo! (1997). Her publications as a
poet include Homecoming (1984) and The Woman I Kept to Myself (2004), and as an essayist
the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare (1998). Many literary critics regard
her to be one of the most significant Latina writers and she has achieved critical and
commercial success on an international scale.
Many of Alvarez's works are influenced by her experiences as a Dominican in the
United States, and focus heavily on issues of assimilation and identity. Her cultural
upbringing as both a Dominican and an American is evident in the combination of personal
and political tone in her writing. She is known for works that examine cultural expectations
of women both in the Dominican Republic and the United States, and for rigorous
investigations of cultural stereotypes. In recent years, Alvarez has expanded her subject
matter with works such as In the Name of Salomé (2000), a novel with Cuban rather than
solely Dominican characters and fictionalized versions of historical figures.
TRINIDAD
Trinidad was a Spanish colony until 1797. It was never a French colony—yet France
has greatly influenced its history and culture. This happened, of course, because of the influx
of French immigrants in the late 1700s, as a result of the Cedula of Population (1783) inviting
foreign Catholics to settle in Trinidad. Together they ensured that a fused African-French

12. culture would be dominant in Trinidad for many years to come—in language (French, and
Créole or Patois), religion (French forms of Roman Catholicism), the expressive arts (dance,
music, song), folklore, festivals and so on. Spanish influences were largely—though not
entirely—eclipsed.. The landowners, the holders of the enslaved laborers, continued to be
British. They and their slaves, mostly people kidnapped in Africa and brought on the
infamous Middle Passage, and their descendants, ensured that Tobago’s culture would
continue to be an African-British fusion. After 1803, Tobago remained a separate British
colony until unification with Trinidad in the new (British) Colony of Trinidad & Tobago,
which came into being in 1889. The formal end of British colonialism, of course, came on 31
August 1962.
Lakshmi Persaud
Lakshmi Persaud was born in Tunapuna, Trinidad. She did her BA (Hons) and her
Ph.D. at Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland and her Post graduate Diploma in
Education at Reading University, UK. Dr Persaud taught at the finest grammar schools in the
West Indies --- Queen's College in Guyana, Harrison college in Barbados and St. Augustine
Girl's High School in Trinidad. She read and simultaneously recorded text books in
philosophy, economics and literature for post graduate and undergraduate students of the
Royal National Institute for the Blind in London.
Lakshmi Persaud's first novel Buterfly in the Wind (Peepal Tree 1990) is a portrayal
of a passage from Childhood to young womanhood in colonial Trinidad. It is beautifully
written with an entrancing story and understated political insight into what it is to be a child.
Her second novel Sastra (Peepal Tree 1993) is a moving and inspiring mature piece of fiction
about cultural change in colonial Trinidad.
In her third novel For the Love of my Name (Peepal Tree 2000), President for Life,
Robert Augustus Devonish, torn between confession and self justification, writes his memoirs
as his country falls apart after its Independence from the colonial power. It weaves a striking
tapestry of hatreds and loves of duty and degradation of consciousness, despairs and hopes.
And all the while, the bright threads of human resilience glint in the weave.

13. Shani Mootoo
Shani Mootoo was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1958 and raised in Trinidad. She moved
to Canada at the age of 19 and earned a fine arts degree from the University of Western
Ontario in 1980. There, she began a career as a painter and video producer. Mootoo began
her literary career with a collection of short fiction, entitled Out on Main Street, published in
1993 to enthusiastic reviews, further exploring the theme common in everything she does,
triumphing over childhood abuse. Her second book, published in 1996 in Canada, Cereus
Blooms at Night, is her first novel. Cereus Blooms at Night was a finalist for the 1997 Giller
Prize, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Mootoo focuses on issues of authenticity and identity in both of her written works. She
"exposes the uncertainty of the hybrid individual" and "she explores a variety of situations in
which her characters are pressed to display a prescribed cultural authenticity both by
individuals putatively from within the same culture and from those who are clearly outsiders"
The setting of Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night on the imaginary island of
Lantanacamara is assumedly a fictional one. Mootoo presents Lantanacamara in an almost
mystical light, its realities often seeming so far removed from any real geographical place
that one cannot doubt the novel is thoroughly fiction. Despite this veneer of fiction, however,
many aspects of the events and setting of the novel are autobiographical, as Mootoo infuses
characters and places with her own history.
In Out on Main Street, Mootoo exposes the complexity and shifting borders of a
hybrid identity. She explores a variety of situations in which her characters are pressed to
display a prescribed cultural authenticity by individuals from within the same culture and by
those who are clearly outsiders. The culturally “inauthentic” person is made to feel guilty for
not being exotic or different enough.