Polished ‘Hoes’, Dancehall Queens, and Sexual Freaks: Voices From the Margins of Caribbean Literature

Abstract

Polished Hoes, Dance Hall Queens, and Sexual Freaks: Women’s Voices From the Margins is a book-length project that will examine multiply marginalized Caribbean women’s narratives of resistance as they challenge and transform the sexual politics of black communities. Scholarship in black studies, particularly in the Caribbean, tends to reward normative behavior and marginalizes women who do not conform to set standards, deeming them deviants and denying them black citizenship–access to national belonging–within their disparate nations. Those considered “deviants” and their troubled identities are not deemed worthy of national belonging. Analyzing Anglophone literature, film, news reports, texts written by underground groups, and popular culture, in English, Polished Hoes addresses two main questions: how do marginalized Caribbean women create radical identities and counter-subcultures as they resist oppression? And what new radical politics and communities evolve from these? Polished Hoes proposes a new black resistance theory grounded in the experiences of multiply marginalized women and their challenges to various forms of oppression.