Intercultural Literature, Interliterariness, and the “Bildungsroman” in Caribbean-American Women’s Writings

Abstract

Focusing on literary theory, this article discusses “interculturalism” -an emerging approach- in Caribbean-American female literature focusing on four texts. First, we examine the origins and meaning of this approach introducing the notion of “interliterariness,” which can be considered a related concept. Second, we show the importance of an “intercultural” perspective to analyse Caribbean-American female Bildungsroman novels. By emphasizing that “interculturalism” seeks to highlight hybrid cultural points of views, we show that four Caribbean-American authors, namely, Raquel Cepeda, Audre Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, and Julia Álvarez articulate novel “counter-hegemonic” visions of “gender,” “race,” and “feminism,” which challenge traditional point of views on these issues prevailing in the United States. We argue that the work of the authors under examination is, sometimes, well-known but it has not yet been fully analysed from an intercultural perspective and, as a result, the novelty of the views, which emerge from these texts, has not been grasped in full by scholars. This article seeks to build on existing scholarship on Caribbean-American literature to suggest a different angle to examine it.