Of Griottes & Pantomimes: Dyaspora Love, Dreams, Memories, and Realities in the Works of Edwidge Danticat as They Relate to Black Feminisms
In "Griottes & Pantomimes: Dyaspora Love, Dreams, Memories, and Realities in the Works of Edwidge Danticat as they relate to Black Feminisms", I explore the ways Danticats characters confront race, class, gender, sexuality and religiosity. It is my belief that Danticat uses her fiction literature to translate Black and Third World feminist theory into fictive practice. In my reading of Danticats work, she uses aspects of Black Feminisms to induce her characters with a standpoint epistemology that allows her to both express and resist their oppression. I use Danticats Breath, Eyes, Memory, Krik? Krak!, and The Farming of Bones to both construct her views on Haiti as a country with a distinct political history and to interrogate the manner in which she uses literature to dissect, problematize, and re-construct a Haitian female identity. Lastly, I work to understand how Danticats work fits into the discourses of Black, Caribbean, and Haitian womanhood and feminisms.