“Variable identities”: Locating Indo -Caribbean women's voices

This thesis investigates the problematic position of women within the (post)colonial situation as portrayed by Indo-Caribbean female writers. It is particularly concerned with the way that the national culture is preserved and developed on the basis of the complex history of the region that now constitutes the countries of Trinidad and Tobago as well as Guyana. Coming from a cultural background with a restrictive understanding of women's role in society, these writers express a distinct view of women's possibilities to participate in the production of national culture. The thesis is structured chronologically according to the setting of the novels in an attempt to trace back a cultural debate about national identity for East Indians—and particularly East Indian women—in their Caribbean home countries. Chapter 1 discusses two novels by Janice Shinebourne and Lakshmi Persaud, both set in the pre-independence era in the 1950s and 1960s. Through their coming-of-age theme, these texts critically explore the role of the Indo-Caribbean woman in the colonial era and her options for the future in a possibly post-independence nation. Chapter 2 analyses two further novels by the same authors, which take up the question of how a restrictive cultural heritage can be used to enable women from Indo-Caribbean communities to participate in the nation-building process. Chapter 3 investigates two novels by Narmala Shewcharan and Lakshmi Persaud, both set in independent Guyana. The two texts negotiate women's participation in the forming of a national culture that is severely disrupted by political and racial conflict. Chapter 4 uses two novels by Oonya Kempadoo to show the consequences of an increasing creolisation process in the contemporary Caribbean. Chapter 5 considers the way in which two novels by Lakshmi Persaud and Ramabai Espinet depict their female protagonists in Canadian exile while struggling to position themselves within the context of their cultural heritage.