Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-258) and index.
Contents
Toni Morrison's Beloved: history, "Rememory" and a "Clamor for a kiss" -- Adventures of the Magic black daughter:history and "Renaissance" in contemporary African-American women's fictions -- Mothering the Renaissance -- Return of the Magic black daughter -- Further adventures of the Magic black daughter -- One dark body -- Variations on childbirth -- Coda -- Caribbean women's literature and the mother of history -- Recovering the mother-island -- The Caribbean daughter's return -- Jamaica Kincaid and the maternal void of history -- Burning down the house: daughterly revision in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea -- Decolonizing Jamaica's daughter: learning history in the novels of Michelle Cliff -- The novel as Abeng -- Becoming history: no telephone to heaven -- Crossing water: Maryse Conde's I, Tituba and the horizontal plot -- Epilogue: history, horizontality and the postcolonial Hester Prynne: On Conde, Mukherjee and Morrison