Proposes a reading of Donna Hemans' novel River Woman in relation to other contemporary Caribbean women writers and to the early fiction of Toni Morrison. Argues that the complex affects that her representation of 'child-shifting' produces can be articulated in relation to literary texts that re-imagine historical and contemporary practices leaving a child in order to save her and in the context of the plantation.
Looks at the performance of tomboy identity in Joan Anim-Addo's collection of poetry Janie, Cricketing Lady and Margaret Cezair-Thompson's novel The Pirate's Daughter. Argues that the ongoing affects of colonialism and patriarchy in the islands of Grenada and Jamaica, shape the life narratives. To understand the way in which affect can be expressed through tomboyism in Caribbean societies, it is necessary to look at color and class alongside gender in the context of Caribbean creolization.
Hathaway describes the characters and plot of this novel, which is set in the Civil Rights era and focuses on the experiences of a Trinidadian immigrant who has come to the U. S. on a scholarship to a small, Catholic college in the Midwest
