"Veronica Gregg's Caribbean Women should settle decisively any lingering doubts about Caribbean women's agency, contribution to indigenous knowledge production, and intellectual thought. It is also a wonderful project of ancestral recognition." —Verene A. Shepherd, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica
In this work, the first of a two-volume anthology of non-fiction writings by Caribbean women, Veronica Marie Gregg has collected works written from the end of the nineteenth century to 1980. Her selections are guided by a search for answers to such questions as: What have West Indian women contributed to the creation of Anglophone Caribbean society, politics, cultures, and intellectual traditions? How is Caribbean womanhood defined and articulated? Beginning with the writings of women born after slavery ended, this anthology expands our understanding of Caribbean women's contributions to the creation and development of Caribbean intellectual and social history.
The two sections of this anthology cover, respectively, the post-emancipation and decolonization struggles and the postwar period marked by a movement toward nation building, constitutional independence, and cultural nationalism. The volume begins with some of the earliest known writings by native-born West Indian women on political and social issues and ends at the period immediately preceding sustained academic feminist scholarship on the region. Writings in the first section are drawn primarily from newspapers, pamphlets, and occasional publications. They address key issues such as female suffrage, political equality, colonialism, race, work, culture, and social welfare. The second section includes writings by the first and second generations of professional academic women at the University of the West Indies, established in 1948. Their selections challenge many of the prevailing intellectual models that are used to define Caribbean societies and identities.
