Coda

Abstract

Where the book opened with a scene of archival destruction meant to ensure historical silence around socially prohibited interracial desire, I conclude with the digital photographer Roshini Kempadoo’s cover image, which visualizes the book’s project to read the intimate domain in order to more complexly understand experiences of feminine citizenship. Taken from the artist’s 2000 Virtual Exiles series exploring issues of place and identity for migrants moving between home and host countries, “Amelia” stands as a powerful image of contemporary Caribbean womanhood rei-magined and rewritten against the backdrop of colonial inscription and erasure. Thus, like the contemporary Caribbean women writers explored in this book, Kempadoo reconstructs Caribbean women’s presence in the face of archival absence.

i should like to explain that Amelia George’s first name is not on record. I have searched everywhere … in Georgetown as well as the British museum without being able to trace it Amelia is therefore my own invention The portrait i have painted of her, too is purely imaginary as nothing can be discovered about the sort of person she was …