Amital queer: aunts, negresses, and auntie men in Dionne Brand’s “Dialectics” and Hilton Als The Women

Abstract

ABSTRACT Caribbean writers use the full array of relationships the word “aunt” signifies to formulate new ways of representing subjectivity. The Aunt's ubiquity in Caribbean literature offers critics fresh theoretical perspectives from which to account for the choices Caribbean writers make. The essay introduces the term “Amital Queer” to characterize how Dionne Brand uses aunts in her “Dialectics” poems and Hilton Als embraces the role of auntie man in The Women, to enable a critique of heteronormativity. I argue that the figure of the aunt stands in for the artists when they claim their space as speaking subjects.