ABSTRACT
Across the Caribbean, female same-sex desire proves an equally fraught topic to that of male homosexuality. However, if the normative citizen Scott evokes was a ‘middle-class nationalist-modern’ male (Scott 1999, 218) then queer women are further removed from this formulation on the grounds of gender as well as sexuality, a dual negation explaining why King has asserted powerfully that ‘Caribbean lesbians do not exist’ (King 2008, 190). Literature of the post-war period is commonly viewed as propagating similar effacement, with King contending that this body of work is dominated by men’s novels in which ‘women often have little purpose except as sexual partners’ (King November 2002, 27). Support is given to this claim by the recent scholarship of Tinsley (2010) and Valens (2013), both of whom excavate a range of little discussed texts in order to emphasise that eroticism between women is ‘a broad phenomenon stretching across the islands and the centuries’ (Valens 2013, 4). Neither, however, addresses any fiction written between 1950 and 1980.1 Indeed, the only scholar identifying any work addressing this vexed subject is Lewis who highlights George Lamming’s Season of Adventure (1960), Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969) and Hérémakhonon (1976) by Maryse Condé (Lewis 2003, 9). Expanding this list, the chapter considers a wider range of texts by Lamming and Marshall, in tandem with Rosa Guy’s neglected novel Ruby (1976), all of which offer a contrast to the masculinist rhetoric animating this book’s earlier chapters. Despite their problematic elements, these novels can be viewed in light of Lorde’s ideas, particularly her emphasis on how the erotic makes one ‘less willing to accept powerlessness’ (Lorde 1984, 58). Throughout their pages, female characters are awakened to new conceptions of themselves and the world around them because of their desires. In the case of Marshall and Guy, relationships between women of colour also bring to mind Lorde’s writings on the importance of black women learning to love ‘what we most desire to love and touch, the problematic self, unclaimed but fiercely guarded from the other’ (159).
