Caribbean Queer: Inscriptions and Potentialities in Shivanee Ramlochan’s Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting and Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads

Abstract

[eng] This study aims to analyse how queer subjects are able to articulate their non-normative and unstable gendered and/or sexual identities in Caribbean literary texts, drawing on both Caribbean cultural and queer theories. In the present study I will focus on how some characters are depicted as queer subjects in some poems from Shivanee Ramlochan’s Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting and in Nalo Hopkinson’s novel The Salt Roads and on how both texts open the possibility to imagine constructions of gender and sexuality that contest hegemonic heteronormativity based on a binary system. More specifically, I will analyse how both authors’ construction of cultural identities in relation to queer subjects draws on Caribbean cultural manifestations and folklore, as both authors present narratives that are attendant to local realities. In addition, this paper elucidates how these authors inscribe the presence of queer characters in Caribbean history, space and time. This study aims at contributing to the emerging field of Caribbean queer studies

[cat] La finalitat d’aquest estudi és analitzar com els subjectes queer articulen les seves identitats de gènere i/o sexuals com a no normatives i inestables en textos literaris caribenys, tenint en compte tant teories culturals caribenyes com queer. El meu estudi es centra en com alguns personatges estan representats com a subjectes queer en algunes composicions del poemari Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, de Shivanee Ramlochan, i en la novel·la The Salt Roads de Nalo Hopkinson, així com en la possibilitats que ambdós textos ofereixen per a imaginar construccions de gènere i sexualitat fora de l’heteronormativitat hegemònica basada en un sistema binari. Més específicament, analitzaré com les dues autores construeixen les identitats culturals dels subjectes queer a partir d’expressions culturals i folklore del Carib, atès que ambdues autores ofereixen narratives que responen a realitats locals. A més, intentaré dilucidar com les dues autores inscriuen la presència de subjectes queer en la història, el temps i l’espai. El present estudi té com a finalitat contribuir a la disciplina emergent d’estudis queer caribenys.