Course

WGST-230 Global Issues in Women's Studies

Document Type

Student Paper

Publication Date

2017

Disciplines

Women's Studies

Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement

The Caribbean by far is probably one of the most diverse regions represented in the face of history. Geographically, each island is dynamic in the continuous change and flow of possession by Europeans and influences of the countless peoples of various extractions. This diversity is evident in the realization that there is a queer inability for scholars, and people alike to truly define what is the Caribbean and what it means to be a part of this region. Referencing the Caribbean is almost always focused on a specific island community/locality in that region, which gives the impression of the Caribbean as a region of difference, and that it can’t have a sense of a collective identity. Though often played off, the region we know today is mainly comprised of people of majority African descent. These people are descended from the same Africans brought to the region of the Caribbean over 400 years ago via the Atlantic Slave Trade. Africans, in supplying the labor necessary to build the infrastructure of the region of the Caribbean, also laid down the cultural foundations for the area. Africans however, are not the only peoples that created this unique space. Other fairly marginalized groups such as immigrants from the Indian subcontinent were instrumental in the cultural and even political formations of areas in the Caribbean. Through a global feminist perspective lens there lies the indelible mark of how the rise of capitalism, colonial powers, and the social and political dynamics of slavery, typified women of African descent as subjects of their environment. Afro-Caribbean women in particular were the very products of the unique space that was, and still is the region of the Caribbean (Showers Johnson 79).

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Prize Winner, 2017