Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1997

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Lewis, Krishnakali

Abstract

Ema Brodber combines sociological concerns with her creative imagination in two novels, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home and Myal. Her stated aim is to provide people of the African diaspora with tools to face the world more confidently. She is particularly interested in the plight of women in postcolonial Caribbean countries whose lives are determined by imperialist and patriarchal discourses. The tools she provides are linguistic. By integrating Jamaican Creole and English Brodber enacts her protagonists' struggles to find a language capable of expressing their reality and opposing colonizing fictions. The novels chart the transition from child to adult of two characters, Nellie and Ella. They grow up in Jamaica during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was a time when confusing class, color and gender ideologies, promulgated by written and oral traditions, inhibited healthy identity formation. Migration to America sufficiently distances them from Jamaica to allow for an interrogation of the conflicting messages about womanhood which Jamaican society promulgates. On returning home, they learn that the imperialist and patriarchal ideals that shape society can be challenged. In particular, they realize the power of words to effect change. Through a new critical awareness born of personal experience and a revisiting of history, they also learn that Jamaican culture can nurture as well as harm them.

Extent

96 p.

Comments

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1997.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

Identifier

FADT15461

Format

pdf

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