the Warburg Institute at the University of London, UK--PhD. on The Italian Renaissance
Allan K. Smith Professor of English Language and Literature at Trinity College
now divides her time between Hartford, Connecticut, and Santa Cruz, California
Cliff on her writing career: "In my family it was really considered almost taboo to
be a writer. It was too revelatory. There were too many secrets to be kept, especially
as a girl or female." (61)--At 13, her diary had been read out loud in front of her family.
Cliff did not start writing again until she was around 30.
"Most of my work has to do with revising: revising the written record, what passes as
the official version of history, and inserting those lives that have been left
out." (71 "The Art of History")
ˇ@
the issue of language--standard English vs patois--different linguistic codes
reflect different identities
the importance of history and oral culture--Cliff is revising the official history
"colourism" or color prejudice in Jamaica
homophobia in Jamaica
the issue of passing (ex.) Boy's passing (Abeng 129)
Cliff on passing in her peom "Passing"--Passing demands a desire to become invisible.
A ghost-life. An ignorance of connections./ Passing demands quiet. And from that quiet--silence."
the meaning of abeng:
"Abeng is an African word meaning conch shell. The blowing of
the conch called the slaves to the canefields in the West Indies. The abeng has another
use: it was the instrument used by the Maroon armies to pass their messages and reach
one another."
the intertexual relationship between Abeng and Wide Sargasso Sea
1. Cliff on Wide Sargasso Sea:
"Caliban speaks to Prospero, saying: 'You taught me language, and my profit onˇ¦t/ Is,
I know how to curse.'
This line immediately brings to my mind the character of Bertha Rochester, wild and raving
ragout, as Charlotte Bronte describes her, cursing and railing, more beast than human. It
takes a West Indian writer, Jean Rhys, to describe Bertha from the inside rather than from
the outside, keeping Bertha's humanity, indeed her sanity as critic of imperialism,
intact,ˇ¦ as Gayatri Spivak has observed." ("Clare Savage as a Crossroads Character" 264)
2. Antoinette and Tia // Clare and Zoe
Spivak on Antoinette and Tia--part of the "thematics of Narcissus"--Tia as "the Other
that could not be selfed because of the fracture of imperialism" (243)
class and racial gaps between Clare and Zoe--Zoe is award of Clare's privileges as someone
with fair skin and from the landed class--Zoe calls Clare a "town gal" and is afraid of
being thought of as "Guinea warrior, not gal pickney."--Clare is ignorant of the law of
property and ownership in the rural community (121)
Cliff on the protagonist Clare Savage:
Clare Savage "is an amalgam of myself and
others, who eventually becomes herself alone. Bertha Rochester is her ancestor.
Her name, obviously, is significant and is intended to represent her as a crossroads
character, with her feet (and head) in (at least) two worlds. Her first name means,
signifies, light-skinned, which she is, and light-skinnedness in the world in which Clare
originates, the island of Jamaica in the period of British hegemony, and to which she is
transported, the United States in the 1960s, and to which she transports herself, Britain
in the 1970s, stands for privilege, civilization, erasure, forgetting. She is not meant
to curse, or rave, or be a critic of imperialism. She is meant to speak softly and keep
her place. A knowledge of history, the past, has been bleached from her mind, just as the
rapes of her grandmothers are bleached from her skin. And this bleached skin is the
source of her privilege and her power, too, she thinks, for she is a colonized child.
She is a light-skinned female who has been removed from her homeland in a variety of ways
and whose life is a movement back, ragged, interrupted, uncertain, to that homeland. She
is fragmented, damaged, incomplete."
Her surname is self-explanatory. It meant to evoke the wilderness that has been bleached
from her skin, understanding that my use of the word wilderness is ironic, mocking the
masterˇ¦s meaning, turning instead to a sense of non-Western values which are empowering
and essential to survival, her survival, and wholeness. ("Clare Savage as a Crossroads
Character" 264-5)
sexual identity:
1.Cliff on lesbainism in an interview with Judith Raiskin
MC:But for Caribbean women to love each other is different. It's not Vita
Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, it's not Djuna Barnes or Natalie Barney, and it's not
Sappho.
JR: You wanted Clare and Zoe. But then thereˇ¦s the class difference between them.
MC: Yes.... But it would be taking lesbianism away from those who want to stigmatize
it as simply a sexual behavior between women that is seen as slightly decadent and upper
class, or uppermiddle class, or male imitating, or mannish (which was a word that was
used in my childhood). Putting it into a Caribbean setting as part of a woman's
self-definition, and as a way to value the female, which we've been taught so much to
devalue, really makes it different. ("The Art of History" 69-70)
2. the intimacy between Calre and Zoe in the bathing scene
(119-120, 124)--interrrupted by Clare's memory of the "battyman" Uncle Robert (125-126)--
Robert's suicide and homophobia in Jamaica
3. Cliff on Clare's sexual identity--"...Clare canˇ¦t claim her sexuality. She's not in a
place where she can. It's a very interesting thing, because the lesbian subtext in Abeng
was unconscious, at least I think it was." (601)
4. Cliff's internalization of homophobia and her self-censorship--"it's having grown up
in a society that is enormously homophobic and the fact that my mother disowned me for
being gay." (604)--an interview with Meryl F. Schwartz
Clare's divided racial identities:
presented through the oppsition between Boy
Savage and Kitty Freeman Savage
1. Boy--Anglophile--represents coloniial heritage
2. Kitty
A. cherishes darkness (127-128)--Kitty's dream of setting up a local
school (129-130)--her distrust of British education and love of black culture--
"Daffodils" vs the Maroon Girl (129)
B. Kitty's preference for the darker daughter
Jennie (129) and Clare's sense of alienation from the mother (128)--Clareˇ¦s love for
Zoe (131) is realted to this sense of alineation
Grandmother Figure:
In Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven Cliff tries "to show the power,
particularly the spiritual authority, of the grandmother as well as her victimization.
Hers is a power directly related to landscape, gardensˇK. This powerful aspect of the
grandmother originates in Nanny, the African warrior and Maroon leader.
At her most powerful, the grandmother is the source of knowledge, magic, ancestors,
stories, healing practices, and foodˇK. She is an inheritor of African belief systems,
African languages. She may be informed with ashe, the power to make things happen,
the responsibility to mete justice." ("Clare Savage as a Crossroads Character" 266-7)
fragmented narrative form in the novel
1. relfecting multiple perspectivesˇ¨
2. Lionnet Francoise--"small plot" vs huge plantations--"She has recourse to a textual
economy of 'small plots' that seems to correspond to the economy of 'small plot
farming' that maroon slaves used to engage in." (335)
Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise (1980)--collection of poetry
Abeng (1984)--novel
The Land of Look Behind (1985)--collection of poetry
No Telephone to Heaven (1987)--sequel to Abeng
Bodies of Water (1990)--collection of short stories
Free Enterprise (1993)--novel
References:
Cliff, Michelle. "Clare Savage as a Corssroads Character." Caribbean Women
Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe.
Wellesley, MA: Calaloux, 1990. 263-68.
Lionnet, Francoise. "Of Mangoes and Maroons: Language, History,
and the Multicultural Subject of Michelle Cliff's Abeng." De/Colonizing
the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography. Eds. Sidonie Smith
and Julia Watson. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. 321-45.
Raiskin, Judith. "The Art of History: An Interview with Michelle
Cliff." Kenyon Review 15.1(1993): 57-71.
Schwartz, Meryl F. "An Interview with Michelle Cliff." Contemporary Literature
34.4(1993): 595-619.
Biographical Sketch
