'Qui chile sa?': The representation of intergenerational relationships in Caribbean women's writing: Merle Collins, Lakshmi Persaud, Edwidge Danticat, and Paule Marshall

This dissertation examines Merle Collins,' Lakshmi Persaud's, Edwidge Danticat's, and Paule Marshall's distinctive literary representations of the connections between their protagonists' relationships with their parents, friends, and fellow citizens, and the corresponding development of their personal and national identities. In this study I juxtapose the novels written by Merle Collins (Grenada) and Lakshmi Persaud (Trinidad and Tobago), which are classified as Caribbean-based novels in which the characters do not leave the island of their birth until they have attained womanhood, against those of Edwidge Danticat (Haiti) and Paule Marshall (Barbados) which depict their protagonists' emotional and geographical displacement between the United States and the Caribbean. In placing the primarily Caribbean-based novels against the North American-Caribbean ones, I underscore the diverse ways in which the intergenerational transmission of culture through proverbs, sayings, songs, and family histories is transformed by both parents and children as they adjust to life in the host society. Thus, despite their socio-cultural and generational differences, Collins' and Persaud's eponymous female characters in their respective novels, Angel and Sastra, may be viewed as potential Martines (Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory), and Sillas (Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones), since they too will be compelled to draw on memories, both painful and redemptive, while sharing their Caribbean experiences with succeeding generations.