“In this original and provocative study, Myriam Chancy reads the catastrophic history of the Caribbean in the narrative and visual fictions of a number of remarkable women artists, disclosing hitherto uncharted maps of time and voice and remembrance. A work of studied insight, engaged criticism, and graceful sentences, it will alter not only the frames in which Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic are represented, but the very conditions for a gendered and transnational inquiry into the Caribbean present.”

— David Scott, Columbia University, Editor, Small Axe

“Rich and suggestive, this broad-ranging and original study combines interpretive readings and personal conversations with individual artists. Chancy places women’s bodies, voices, memories, and visions at the centre of a careful scrutiny of the way three global axes of power—sugar, sovereignty, and revolution—have defined and confined Caribbean history, with its traumatic events and lingering painful memories. Conjugating national and transnational approaches to the Creolophone, Anglophone, and Hispanophone islands, Chancy redefines our understanding of terror by opening up innovative cultural and scholarly avenues for hopeful new beginnings. This is a transformative intervention in the contemporary realities of the region.”

— Françoise Lionnet, UCLA, Co-editor, The Creolization of Theory

“Chancy’s multifaceted study examines contemporary Cuban, Haitian, and Dominican women’s use of literary and performance arts to resurrect marginalized and silenced subjects’ memories. Her paradigm for constructing cohesive Caribbean relations is the Haitian Revolution’s broad rejection of the French occupation, Haiti’s reclamation of national sovereignty, freedom from the imposition of Enlightenment logic, and reassertion of collective national memory. Troubling for Chancy’s transformative vision is neighbouring nations’ acceptance of imposed rather than original, indigenous cultures, thereby rejecting association with Haiti’s black majority population…. This book is an incredible read.”

— J.C. Richards, Park University, Choice