Reading Caribbean autobiography as a space of difference, Aljoe’s chapter aims not to emphasize rigid separation, but rather to highlight the vibrant complexity of life writing discourses throughout global African diasporas, as well as to contribute to articulations of the myriad ways in which Black lives have been represented across the globe. Aljoe elaborates on some of the ways in which Afro-Caribbean life writing can be considered a distinct tradition within a broader tradition of transatlantic African diasporic writing. Her goal is to illuminate three key issues that distinguish Afro-Caribbean life writing: the importance of attending to mediated slave narratives within larger traditions of life writing, engagements with the imbrication of notions of national and individual sovereignty, and finally, articulation of that which is grounded in the inherently Creole culture of the Caribbean.

This chapter traces how August 1st celebrations of West Indian Emancipation in the United States impacted the works of Frances Ellen Watkins and James Whitfield. As this chapter shows, such celebrations not only provided an occasion for Watkins and Whitfield to write and perform poetry, but also indelibly shaped the form and content of their works.

Since the seventeenth century, the Caribbean existed in the European imagination as a place of unfreedom, in opposition to European enlightenment and liberty. But the voices of the enslaved in the Caribbean, which are often tucked away in the writings of others, such as spiritual and conversion narratives, abolitionist speeches and portraits in ‘manners and customs’ accounts, or more ephemeral narrative fragments – offer a more complicated picture. Compared to the United States, far fewer texts that conform to the slave narrative genre survived from the Caribbean, and virtually all are mediated by a white amanuensis. This essay argues that despite this mediation, the slave narrative can be understood as dialogic, as a combined effort. Grounded in the notion of ‘creole testimony’ – a hybrid version that combines written with oral input and insists on reading against the grain to hear the subaltern’s voice – this essay demonstrates the utility of this strategy through reading several narratives by enslaved Caribbean women.