SOURCE: Romero-Cesareo, Ivette. “Women Adrift: Madwomen, Matriarchs, and the Caribbean.” In Women at Sea: Travel Writing and the Margins of Caribbean Discourse, edited by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Ivette Romero-Cesareo, pp. 135-60. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

In the following excerpt, Romero-Cesareo examines Seacole's use of the role of motherhood as an ennobling and legitimizing tool in her autobiography.

The sea, alas! It is the only place to which we can be faithful.¹

—Adèle Hugo

Travel is an enterprise requiring a certain degree of camouflage. Travelers prepare for their encounters and negotiations with other social settings, languages, and physical surroundings, by donning protective lotions and garb, in an attempt to erase or accentuate the distance between Self and Other.² For women traveling through the Caribbean, this enterprise becomes a complex act, necessitating pretexts, smoke screens, and masks. The discourse of travel, then, whether written or spoken by/about mobile women...