Centering Woman: Gender Discourses in Caribbean Slave Society

by Hilary McD. Beckles

Caribbean women black, white and brown, free and enslaved, migrants and creoles, rich and poor are assembled in this book and their lives examined as they battled both against male domination and among themselves for social advantage. Females challenged each other for monopoly access to and use of terms such as woman and feminine in the process widening the existing social and ethnic divisions among themselves, and thus fragmenting their collective search for autonomy. Hilary Beckles uses the method of narrative biography with its appealing sense of immediacy of women s language, script and social politics, to expose the gender order of Caribbean slave society as it determined and defined the everyday lives of women. He also seeks to explore the effectiveness of women s actions as they searched for freedom, material betterment, justice and social security. Understanding how gender is socially determined, understood and lived serves to illuminate why and how some women subscribed to the institutional culture of patriarchy while others launched discreet missions of self-empowerment and collective liberation. This book is about feminism in action, not theorized by post-modern radicals, but by women who actively sought to create spaces and build structures within self-conceived visions of social advancement. "

Genres: History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Sir Hilary McDonald Beckles KA (born 11 August 1955) is a Barbadian historian, he is the current vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Committee.

Educated at the University of Hull in England, Beckles began his academic career at UWI, and was granted a personal professorship at the age of 37, becoming the youngest in the university's history. He was named pro-vice-chancellor and chairman of UWI's Board for Undergraduate Studies in 1998, and in 2002 was named principal of the university's Cave Hill campus. Although his focus has mainly been on Afro-Caribbean history, especially the economic and social impacts of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade, Beckles has also had a longstanding involvement with West Indian cricket, and has previously served on the board of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).

Reviews

[Neil Webb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably above my academic level, this one. But, interesting to read about women's experiences during those times.

[jPhx · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique view of the effect of slavery from women's point of view, one that is rarely put forward.