Caribbean Matters: Celebrate International Women’s Day with these writers

Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.

While much has been written and explored on the subject of sexism faced by women writers in the world of publishing, there are those who have been able to overcome it. Black women writers face a double hardship, however a few, like Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison, triumphed against the odds.

Caribbean and Caribbean American female authors face even more hurdles, including one of language in the case of writers in Spanish or French/Creole and subject matter, as they aren’t usually dealing with the Black American experience. Winning awards doesn’t always translate into book sales and avid readers.

In 2022, I promised to continue to highlight work of authors, poets, and scholars (male and female). In honor of International Women’s Day, I think it is an excellent time to accentuate the excellence of Caribbean pens. Though some of these women have joined the ancestors, their words live on, and they have much to teach us all.

Meet Julia Constanza Burgos García, known as Julia de Burgos who was born on February 17, 1914, in Puerto Rico, and spent most of her adult life in New York City. She died on July 6, 1953. She was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and fighter for independence for Puerto Rico, and self-identified as “Afro-Boricua” (Black Puerto Rican).

Maira Garcia, the former culture editor at The New York Times, wrote this obituary as part of a series called “Overlooked”:

When the poet Julia de Burgos left Puerto Rico at 25, she vowed never to return. It was a promise she would keep.

It was a bittersweet departure. For much of her short life, de Burgos championed Puerto Rican nationalism and identity through her writing. She self-published her first collection of poetry, “Poema en veinte surcos” (“Poem in Twenty Furrows”) in 1938, when she was 24.

Her work explored issues like the island’s colonial past and the legacy of slavery and American imperialism. In her poem “Río Grande de Loíza,” she addressed the pain and violence suffered by natives of the island and African slaves along the Puerto Rican river. […]

Born into poverty, she trained and worked as a teacher before marrying at 20. Divorced three years later, she began an intense romantic relationship with Juan Isidro Jimenes Grullón, a Dominican political exile and an intellectual from a prominent family. Her poetry gave her entree into Puerto Rico’s intellectual circles, yet she did not really fit. It was the 1930s, after all, and she was a divorced woman in a conservative Roman Catholic society, as well as working class and of African descent. The Puerto Rican intellectuals shaping the island’s identity were not ready to embrace the idea of social justice for African descendants — much less feminism.

Here’s a powerful tribute to one of de Burgo’s poems, “Ay Ay Ay de la Grifa Negra” from a Black Puerto Rican schoolteacher in Hartford, Connecticut:

I want to digress for a moment—to address racism in Puerto Rican culture and how “grifa” is a pejorative term targeting a person with kinky hair which is not “good hair”—it’s “pelo malo” (bad hair). You can hear this in the work of contemporary Afro-Boricua poet, writer, spoken word artist, and professor Mariposa Fernandez who is an inheritor of Burgos’ poetic legacy. She is also a community member here at Daily Kos.  

I’ve introduced Maryse Condé here in the past, however I feel it’s important to reintroduce her, given that the least-covered parts of the Caribbean here in the U.S. are the Caribbean French oversees territories with nearly 2.8 million inhabitants. The World Editions publishing house YouTube channel posted this tribute to her in 2020 from women she has inspired:

There is also this documentary from 2011:

Next, meet Jamaica Kincaid:

Jamaica Kincaid, born as Elaine Cynthia Potter Richardson on May 25, 1949 in Saint John’s, Antigua and Barbuda, is an American-Antiguan writer. She currently lives and teaches in the United States, having left the island of Antigua at the age of 16 to move to New York. In 1973, she adopted the pen name Jamaica Kincaid and, the following year, began to contribute writing to The New Yorker, where she became a full-time columnist in 1976. Her novels, often autobiographical, address family relations as influenced by colonial history

The Lyceum Agency  has more on her:

One of the most decorated writers of her generation, Jamaica Kincaid is a writer with a clear, illuminating vision of humanity. Written in a deceptively simple and unadorned style, Kincaid’s books are informed by her status as an uprooted subject, born in the Caribbean island of Antigua, but living in North America. Kincaid deals with such universal themes as coming-of-age and the necessity of separation from parents and establishing identity.

After leaving Antigua for New York to work as an au pair, Kincaid studied photography at the New York School for Social Research and attended Franconia College in New Hampshire. A staff writer at The New Yorker from 1974-1996, she published her first book, a collection of pieces for The New Yorker called At the Bottom of the River, in 1983. Her first novel, Annie John, followed in 1985—the coming-of-age story of a willful ten-year-old growing up on Antigua. With thirteen translations, it is estimated it is the most translated book by an Antiguan author. Further novels include Lucy, the story of a teenage girl from the West Indies who comes to North America to work as an au pair for a wealthy family; The Autobiography of My Mother, a novel set on the island of Dominica and told by a 70-year-old woman looking back on her life; and Mr. Potter which follows the life of an illiterate taxi chauffeur.

Literary Hub posted this analysis from writer Brittany Allen on Kinkaid’s short story “Girl”:

Structured like a to-do list and narrated in a hectoring maternal voice that vacillates between judgmental and caring, this single sentence story carries the reader through—well—all the concerns of a girlhood. Here’s my favorite section, towards the end:

“…this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you…”

You can read the story here, as originally posted to The New Yorker. Kincaid read the story herself at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2014:

Next, we have Mayra Santos-Febres:

Mayra Santos-Febres was born to Mariana Febres and Juan Santos Hernandez in 1966 in Carolina; she is an Afro-Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist and professor of literature. Her parents were teachers who firmly established her passion and love for literature. She has published more than twenty-five books of poetry, essay collections, and novels. Santos-Febres attended the University of Puerto Rico where she completed her undergraduate work follow by Cornell University where graduated and received an M.A and Ph.D. She is one of Puerto Rico’s most celebrated authors. Her greatest admiration in life was the beauty of black women. She didn’t grow up with her mother telling her the standard ideal of female beauty: a blonde tall girl with pretty color eyes. Santos-febres admired her mother’s beauty which taught her that she didn’t need to have the aspects of blonde white girl to be pretty. She believed that having a big nose, hips and being very dark like her mother was extremely beautiful.

Writer Arline Davila recently featured Santos-Febres for The Latinx Project:

Like many Puerto Rican scholars of my generation, I am a huge admirer of Mayra Santos-Febres. She is one of the most prolific and influential writers, critics, and teachers on the archipelago, and hearing the recent news about her developing a new Afro-Diasporic and Racial Studies Program in Puerto Rico made me smile. Funded by a Mellon grant, this historic program will be the first of its kind in Puerto Rico and across Latin America, and surely influential in the development of Puerto Rican Studies, Latinx Studies, and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies more broadly—particularly in centering blackness in all of these fields. The Latinx Project also exists thanks to the generosity of a Mellon grant, which recognized the need to invest in programs that transform the dominant conversation on Latinx Studies around race, diversity and the arts. We immediately wanted to reach out to Mayra to learn more about her plans. Mayra Santos-Febres is an award-winning author who has been shaping literary worlds through her novels and poetry, as well as through her editorial work curating and augmenting the work of Puerto Rican writers. She teaches at the University of Puerto Rico, which will house the new program. What follows is an edited version of our interview, which took place over email.

Give the whole interview a read.

The University of Maryland posted this conversation with her in 2020:

Last, but not least is the youngest of our featured writers, Edwidge Danticat:

Author Edwidge Danticat was born on January 19, 1969 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti to André Danticat and Rose Danticat. In 1981, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, where she graduated from Clara Barton High School and received her B.A. degree in French literature from Barnard College in New York City in 1990; and her M.F.A. degree in creative writing from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island in 1993.

In 1983, at age fourteen, Danticat published her first writing in English, “A Haitian-American Christmas,” in New Youth Connections, a citywide magazine written by teenagers. Her next publication, “A New World Full of Strangers,” was about her immigration experience and led to the writing of her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory in 1994. In 1997, she was named one of the country’s best young authors by the literary journal Granta. Danticat’s other works include, Everything Inside, Claire of the Sea Light, Brother, I’m Dying, Krik? Krik!, The Farming of Bones, The Dew Breaker, and Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work.

PBS interviewed her in 2013:

She reads from her novel “Claire of the Sea Light” in this PBS clip:

She recently gave a keynote address and interview at the Howard University MSRC 2024 International Black Writers Festival:

I hope if you were unaware of the work of these women, that you will explore it. Join me in the comments section below for more, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.

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