Mujeres Escritoras En Tiempos De Postcolonización.

With reference to Wide Sargasso Sea, Annie John and Breath, Eyes, Memory what narrative techniques are used in order to ‘write back’ to the dominant European colonial discourse and ideology.

Postcolonial writers: Woman.

The three authors of the books Wide Sargasso Sea, Annie John and Breath, eyes, memory are women and ‘native or subaltern women were, as it is called, doubly or triplymarginalized. That is to say, they were disadvantaged on the grounds not only of gender but also of race, social class, and, in some cases, religion, caste, sexuality, and regional status’ (Boehmer; 2005; 216)

Women have suffered several abuses along the history because they were only women.
Postcolonial women had it worse. They were the women of a country that just achieve its independence fromGreat Britain and despite all the happiness, crimes and rapes were occurring in the streets.

Once they were ‘free’ from the colonizers, they wanted to be heard and to ‘insist on the diversity and layeredness of women’s experience, and on the validity of forms of self-expression and community other than those prevalent in the West.’ (Boehmer: 2005; 218).

On those three books –Wide SargassoSea; Annie John; Breath, eyes, memory- are shown how the three little girls are growing as the country is growing.
Under their point of view, the reader can comprehend how it was the colonisations and the later independence from the other side of the story.

As a common characteristic with the three books, it can be highlighted that ‘postcolonial women writers from India, the Caribbean, thePacific, and across Africa are equally concerned to bring to the fore the specific textures of their own existence.’ (Boehmer; 2005; 219).

By reading the book it can be seen that they have various thing in common.
* The three main characters are women.
Annie, Sophie and Antoinette (later known as Bertha)
* They become mature women through the book.
I.E; Annie has twelve years old at thebeginning of the book. Antoinette is a young girl and Sophie has also twelve years old.
* They discover love, passion and prohibited things.
Annie meets ‘the Red Girl’, Sophie meets Joseph and Antoinette meets her husband-to-be Rochester.

But, with a much further reading, you can see that they also:
* Start by seeing their mothers as the only person they want to be when they grow up.“I hated this frown and once. I touched her forehead trying to smooth it.” (Wide Sargasso Sea: 3)
“My mother and I often took a bath together […]. Other times, it was a special bath in which the barks and flowers[…]” (Annie John: 14)
“’Am I the mother you imagined?’ She asked, with her eyes half-closed. […] For now I coulnd’t ask for better,” I said” (Breath, eyes, memory: 59)

* Finishthe book by seeing their mothers as a mere ghost of what they were at the beginning.
“‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘Why did she go away?’” (Wide Sargasso Sea: 27) In this case, she starts to realize at the end of part one.
“My mother and I each soon grew two faces: one for my father and the rest of the world, and one for us when we found ourselves alone with each other” (Annie John: 87)
For Sophie(Breath, eyes, memory) the situation is more difficult and odd because she has just had her mum. Like she says “My mother now had two lives: Marc belonged to her present life, I was a living memory from her past.” (Breath, eyes, memory: 56)

How they write back?

What is to write back?

To write back defined as “the symbolic and literary firmly engaged in the process of eliciting positive(and necessary) change in the real word. The explosion of Eurocentric notions of canonicity, literature and language falicitates a ‘decolonisation of the mind’ of both African reading audiences and their neo-colonial counterparts (Wa Thiong’o; Lewis).
It can be linked to Caribbean because they want to do the same.
What they try by writing back is to be heard because ‘colonisers not only colonise...