San Andres, a Herstory, or Writing Caribbean History from the Margins

Abstract:The island of San Andrés is located approximately 110 miles east of the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and 300 miles west-northwest of the Colombian mainland. The literature and culture of the islands in the San Andrés and Providencia archipelago are still not very well known or studied, both within and outside Colombia, due to problems in editorial work, translation, and distribution and also because the relationship between the mainland and the islands has been often tense and difficult. The article will examine the 1987 novel San Andres, a Herstory by Keshia Howard-Livingston from the perspective of herstory, that is, narrating history from women’s perspectives. This novel, through its depiction of the travels of three generations of women, proposes an alternative history of San Andrés and the Caribbean. These women, due to their race and gender, have been doubly excluded from traditional historiography. I propose to study Howard-Livingston’s novel as a literary exercise that wants to narrate these women stories, turning herstory into “History,” and as a foundational work that questions the process of the construction of a national identity in Colombia. The novel shows the tensions and conflicts that arose because of this nationalist project and explores the relationship between identity, language, and memory in the Caribbean.