For women writers of the Caribbean as well as for larger marginalized communities, the relationship between oral traditions and written texts is a part of the defining thread of Caribbean historiography. This article draws on Waugh and Hutcheon to examine the use of such texts by women writers of the Hispanophone Caribbean in order to highlight narrative strategies of historically marginalized groups to contest hegemonic constructions of the nation.
Analyzes the prominent role played by first wave feminism and by women writers between 1898-1903 as the Jamaica Times articulated a broad-based, middle class nationalism and launched a campaign to establish a Jamaican national literature. This archival material is significant because it suggests a significant modification of anglophone Caribbean feminist, literary and nationalist historiography: first wave feminism was not introduced to Jamaica exclusively through black nationalist organizations in the late 19th and early 20th century, but emerged in a broader phenomenon of respectable, middle class nationalism encompassing Jamaican nationalism and Pan Africanism.
