Rise Up?: New Directions in the Caribbean Women's Bildungsroman

Abstract

In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenally successful Broadway hip hop musical Hamilton!, the anthemic phrase “rise up!” returns several times as a lyrical and musical refrain. The Puerto Rican identity of Hamilton! ’s author and the Nevisian origins of its title character suggest that the idea of “uplift”— the quest for social ascension often associated with African American and American culture more broadly—is something that can also be seen as a core theme in Caribbean cultural expression. In fact, this same leitmotif of rising up has been central in the Caribbean coming-of-age novel, from Jane’s Career by H.G. DeLisser to canonical mid-century novels by George Lamming, Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, and Jacques-Stephen Alexis to more-recent-but-nowclassic offerings from women writers such as Merle Hodge, Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Collins, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Caribbean writers have repeatedly turned to the bildungsroman to explore the promises and pitfalls of regional decolonization, the uneven participation of women in currents of social change, and the contemporary struggle to survive and thrive in the latest dispensations of globalization. Two new books—Madinah Girl, by TrinidadianGrenadian author Anna Levi, and Moun Lakou, by Guadeloupean novelist Marie Léticée—carve out new spaces in the generic niche established by previous generations. Both are debut publications and together they point to how the Caribbean coming-of-age novel continues to function and be transformed in the way critic Maria Helena Lima describes as “one of the ways individuals find to create themselves as subject within new social and political contexts.”1 Both novels also suggest that the future of Caribbean literature is in good hands. Madinah Girl offers an unflinching depiction of life in the margins of contemporary Trinidad that is guaranteed to shock any reader unprepared for essays