SOURCE: Review of When Women Rule, in Quill and Quire, Vol. 51, No. 7, July, 1985, p. 59.

In the following review, Garebian evaluates Clarke's depiction of racism and its brutal impact on the West Indian immigrant characters in When Women Rule.

The title of [When Women Rule] is slightly misleading in that it suggests a gender imperialism as its major theme. Although women do dominate psychologically and physically several of the male protagonists, Austin Clarke's true themes are indignity and embarrassment, caused by racial and economic conditions rather than gender distinctions.

The eight stories deal with the passions of West Indian immigrants to Canada. The tensions and motifs are certainly familiar to anyone who has read Clarke's novels and earlier short fiction, but they do not lose their force because of this familiarity. Brutality dominates the mood of most of the stories, for it penetrates the social milieu the characters inhabit...