Indigeneity and the Motherline: Contrasting Two Caribbean Women Writers (original) (raw)

2017, Ruminations: The Andrean Journal of Literature

The category of indigeneity is problematic, especially when applied to the heterogeneous geographies and layered histories of settlement, colonization and hybridization of the Caribbean. Writers of Afro-Caribbean descent—including those belonging to the Caribbean diaspora—can perhaps be regarded as indigenous only through a broader interpretation of the concept of indigeneity. Interpreted thus, indigeneity includes processes like self-identification as indigeneous, myth-making about land and origins, privileging folklore and orality, invoking the past through legends and hero-figures, resisting erasure and silencing, and working out narrative strategies to reclaim their landscape and their roots. This paper argues that one of the important strategies of indigenous identity-making is the concept of the ‘motherline’: a notion developed by feminist writer Naomi Lowinsky in the context of Black mothering practices (1992). Motherlines help women writers to retrace and connect to their roots, in their families, territories, communities, and feminine histories through shared storytelling. In this paper, I have studied two contrasting texts to explore the making of motherlines and their connections to histories, identities and indigeneities. Lorna Goodison’s memoir, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island (2007), maps these motherlines to reconnect to her ancestry, her homeland/s and her communities in order to fashion her own indigenous and female identity. On the other hand, Jamaica Kincaid’s novel, The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) explores the rootlessness, trauma, and loss of identity that results from the absence of and failed search for a motherline. Although antithetical, both these texts converge to posit the value and necessity of searching and finding a route to the roots through the motherline.