Diaspora, Transnational Heritage, and Poetic Interorality

Negotiating Chinese Caribbean Identity in "Song of the Boatwoman" and "The Godmother and Other Stories"

Abstract

This paper examines Chinese oral heritage and its contribution to Caribbean interorality in a diasporic context through a focus on individual lives in Meiling Jin’s Song of the Boatwoman and Jan Lowe Shinebourne’s The Godmother and Other Stories. Both Jin and Shinebourne illustrate that Chinese oral heritage, which is not fixed but subject to constant change, can be used in a transformative way to facilitate integration and create a sense of belonging for those participating in the Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, which provides a new way to understand Chinese Caribbean identity. The linguistic, structural and thematic uses of Chinese oral storytelling and folk customs not only revise colonial history by retrieving the silenced stories of Chinese Caribbean people, but also integrate the Chinese as valid members of the Caribbean community by stressing their shared grounding in the plantation experience and post-independence struggles.