The Paradoxes of Identity in Michelle Cliff’s Novel Abeng

Abstract. Based on a close textual reading of Jamaican writer Michelle Cliff’s novel Abeng, this paper investigates a case in point of Caribbean identity complexity. In particular, I examine the psychological, racial, historical, and social dilemmas generated by female mulatto identity in the contentious context of colonial Jamaica in the 1950s. In this context, the very existence of the female mulatto systemically called to mind the traumatic memories of sexual exploitation, rape, racial and gender nullification, and other forms of aggression the black female was victim of under the three-century long slavery enterprise of Europe. I explore how and why the female mulatto’s attempts at identity negotiation and self-assertion and her struggle for social and racial acceptance are often met with outward rejection by the very society she is part of. I also investigate how the female mulatto’s contradictory legacies and conflictual affiliations (being at once black and white, descendent of slaves and masters, colonized and colonizer, and African and European) hinder her from claiming any identity and aggravate her sense of loss. My paper starts with the assumption that the precarious identity of the female mulatto is, in fact, inseparable from the deeper complexities that have characterized black Caribbean identity and history for entire centuries.