Sucking salt : Caribbean women writers, migration, and survival

Resource Information

The work Sucking salt : Caribbean women writers, migration, and survival represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Sucking salt : Caribbean women writers, migration, and survival

Title remainder

Caribbean women writers, migration, and survival

Statement of responsibility

Meredith M. Gadsby

Creator

• Gadsby, Meredith

Contributor

• University of Missouri Press

Subject

• American literature -- Women authors | History and criticism
• Canadian literature -- Women authors | History and criticism
• Caribbean Area -- Social life and customs
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Culture in literature
• Electronic government information -- Missouri
• English literature -- Women authors | History and criticism
• American literature -- Caribbean American authors | History and criticism
• Minority women in literature
• National characteristics, Caribbean
• Women authors, Caribbean -- English-speaking countries
• Ethnicity in literature

Genre

• Electronic government information
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

• "Examines the literature of black Caribbean emigrant and island women including Dorothea Smartt, Edwidge Danticat, Paule Marshall, and others, who use the terminology and imagery of "sucking salt" as an articulation of a New World voice connoting adaptation, improvisation, and creativity, offering a new understanding of diaspora, literature, and feminism"--Provided by publisher
• "It is a persistent image in Caribbean literature. But for Caribbean women especially, salt{u2014}particularly the image of sucking salt{u2014}has long signified how they have endured hardship and found ways to transcend it. In this study of Caribbean women writers, Meredith Gadsby examines the fiction and poetry of both emigrant and island women to explore strategies they have developed for overcoming the oppression of racism, sexism, and economic deprivation in their lives and work. She first reviews the cultural and historical significance of salt in the Caribbean, then delineates creative resistance to oppression as expressed in the literature of Caribbean women writing about their migration to the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. From British poet Dorothea Smartt to Edwidge Danticat of New York{u2019}s Haitian community{u2014}and with a special emphasis on the creative artistry of Paule Marshall{u2014}Gadsby shows how, through migration, these writers{u2019} protagonists move into and through metropolitan spaces to create new realities for themselves, their families, and their communities. Her work draws on critical and ethnographic studies as well as creative works to take in a range of topics, not only considering the salty sexuality of calypso songs and offering new insights into Jamaican slackness culture but also plumbing her own family history to weave the travels of her mother and aunts from Barbados into her studies of migrating writers. Through these close readings, Gadsby shows that Caribbean women express complex identities born out of migration and develop practical approaches to hardship that enable them to negotiate themselves out of difficulty. Her innovative study reveals that 2sucking salt3 is an articulation of a New World voice connoting adaptation, improvisation, and creativity{u2014}and lending itself to new understandings of diaspora, literature, and feminism."--Publishers website

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

810.9/9287097291

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

LC call number

PS153.C27

LC item number

G33 2006

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography