Michelle Cliff

Abeng

Colonialism, race, myth and political awakening,are the themes of this brilliant novel by Jamaican,writer Michelle Cliff. Set in Jamaica, England,and the US, it combines lyricism and naturalism,in its story of a light-skinned woman named Clare,whose search for place and self leads her into a,world where the dividedness of being a person,neither black nor white brings exceptional,challenges.

No Telephone to Heaven

In 1858, two black women meet at a restaurant and begin to plot a revolution. Mary Ellen Pleasant owns a string of hotels in San Francisco that secretly double as havens for runaway slaves. Her comrade, Annie, is a young Jamaican who has given up her...

A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant

Free Enterprise

"Cliff is rare, and is already distinguished as a writer of great substance and power."-Jillie Olsen --

Into the Interior

Tells the stories of twelve-year-old Clare Savage's ancestors, both the black slaves on her mother's side and the white slave owners of Jamaica on her father's side.

Ä.bĕng

A Novel

In this poetic novel about colonialism and contemporary Jamaica, a light-skinned woman must find the courage to face the violence that can arise from oppression and divided loyalties

Stories

Bodies of Water

In her first book-length collection of nonfiction, Cliff interweaves reflections on her life in Jamaica, England, and the United States with a powerful and sustained critique of racism, homophobia, and social injustice. If I Could Write This in Fire begins by tracing her transatlantic journey from Jamaica to England, coalescing around a graceful, elliptical account of her childhood friendship with Zoe, who is dark-skinned and from an impoverished, rural background; the divergent life courses that each is forced to take; and the class and color tensions that shape their lives as adults. In other essays and poems, Cliff writes about the discovery of her distinctive, diasporic literary voice, recalls her wild colonial girlhood and sexual awakening, and recounts traveling through an American landscape of racism, colonialism, and genocide - a history of violence embodied in seemingly innocuous souvenirs and tourist sites.

If I Could Write this in Fire

'Everything is Now' brings together in one volume all of the short fiction of Jamaican born author Michelle Cliff. The stories examine the dualities of the modern world - black and white; America and the third world; past and present; femininity and masculinity and colonialism and revolution.

New and Collected Stories

Everything is Now

Sensuous, spare language exploring color, race and love in the Third World from the author's Jamaican perspective.

Prose and Poetry

The Land of Look Behind

Ernstpeter Ruhe

Alfred Hornung

The two volumes on Postcolonialism and Autobiography examine the affinity of postcolonial writing to the genre of autobiography. The contributions of specialists from Northern Africa, Europe and the United States focus on two areas in which the interrelation of postcolonialism and autobiography is very prominent and fertile: the Maghreb and the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. The colonial background of these regions provides the stimulus for writers to launch a program for emancipation in an effort to constitute a decolonized subject in autobiographical practice. While the French volume addresses issues of the autobiographical genre in the postcolonial conditions of the Maghreb and the Caribbean with reference to France, the English volume analyzes the autobiographical writings of David Dabydeen (Guyana), Michelle Cliff, Opal Palmer Adisa, George Lamming, Wilson Harris (Jamaica), and Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua) who have maintained their cultural Caribbean origin while living in England or the United States. Critics such as William Boelhower, Leigh Gilmore, Sidonie Smith, and Gayatri Spivak reveal the many layers of different cultures (Indian, African, European, American) that are covered over by the colonial powers. The homeland, exile, the experience of migration and hybridity condition the postcolonial existence of writers and critics. The incorporation of excerpts from the writers' works is meant to show the great variety and riches of a hybrid imagination and to engage in an interactive dialogue with critics.

Michelle Cliff

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