SOURCE: “Caribbean Women's Writing,” in Post-Colonial African American Women's Writing: A Critical Introduction, St. Martin's, 2000, pp. 93-129.

In the following essay, Wisker provides a brief history of Caribbean culture and writing, focusing on women's role and writing in the context of Caribbean culture.

^[T^]here exists among the women of the Caribbean a need for a naming of experience and a need for communal support in that process. In the past silence has surrounded this experience.

(Sistren, 1986, p. xv)

We never saw ourselves in a book, so we didn't exist in a kind of way in our culture and environment, our climate, the plants around us did not seem real, did not seem to be of any importance—we overlooked them entirely. The real world was what was in books.

(Dabydeen, 1988, p. 78)

This chapter explores a brief history of the Caribbean, concentrating on women's roles and writing and...