Alien-nation and Repatriation

Book excerpt: Alien-Nation and Repatriation examines the emergence and transformations in representations of national identity in Anglophone Caribbean literary traditions. Beginning with the short fiction of C. L. R. James, Alfred Mendes, and Albert Gomes, this study examines the extent to which gender, migration, and female sexuality frame the earliest representations of Caribbean identity in literature by West Indian authors. The study develops chronologically to examine the works of George Lamming, Paule Marshall, Erna Brodber, M. Nourbese Philip, and Elizabeth Nunez. Alien-Nation and Repatriation emphasizes the processes of alienation that marginalize women from discourses of citizenship and belonging, both of which are integral aspects of nationalist literature. This text also argues that for Caribbean women writers engaged in discourses on citizenship, 'return' is not focused on reclaiming the nation-state. Instead Saunders argues that closer examinations of discourses on Caribbean identity reveal the ways in which the female body has been disciplined, through form and content, into silence in colonial and post-colonial Caribbean literary traditions.