1. Clare as a Crossroad Character in Michelle Cliff’s Abeng
Consequences of Crossing Over at Crossroads
Stories of Growth: Caribbean Women Writers (3)

2. Outline Quiz Michelle Cliff: Introd. Abeng Chap 15-17
hunting scene and its reasons;
bathing scene and what it reveals –gender and race
the issue of languages
Quiz

3. Michelle Cliff as a Creole
born in Jamaica (1946), educated in the US and UK and now resides in the USA
works:
Abeng (1984) –our excerpt
No Telephone to Heaven (1987)
“White Creole” Identity:
“My family was called red. A term which signified a degree of whiteness In the hierarchy of shades I was considered among the lightest. The countrywomen who visited my grandmother commented on my 'tall' hair - meaning long. Wavy, not curly (Cliff, 1985: 59).

4. Michelle Cliff—Experience of Crossing Over
Race: asked to pass as white
Gender:
Sent to an all-girl boarding school and fell in love with a girl there.
The diary in which she wrote about it was read by her parents. They read it out loud to the other family members. (source)

5. Abeng-Major Themes
Race:
& the issue of language (patois vs. Standard English)
-- the importance of history and oral culture (story-telling)
“colourism” or color prejudice in Jamaica
the issue of passing (129) as self-denial
“Passing demands a desire to become invisible. A ghost-life. An ignorance of connections…. Passing demands quiet. And from that quiet--silence.” “Passing” (Cliff Claiming an Identity, 21)
Intersection & Interaction of gender, sexual, class, racial identities

6. Language: Jamaican Creole
Use online Dictionaries
e.g. Pickney at Jamaican Patwah
(patois) Him a jus pickney (english) He is just a child
e.g. wunna & fe at The Caribbean Dictionary

7. Passing: Examples Assimilation, self-denial, confusing of categories
The Human Stain (film 2003) Novel by Philip Roth
Abeng –
Kitty (black or “red”) --
+ Boy (“white”) 
p. 129

8. Intersectionality
Multiple causality, or interlocking system of oppression
Standpoint epistemology
Resisting Oppression
"domination always involves the objectification of the dominated; all forms of oppression imply the devaluation of the subjectivity of the oppressed" (Collins, 1986, p. S18).  (Ref. Wikipedia)

9. The Double Meaning of Abeng & Maroon
Maroon – isolated (WSS) & rebel armies
Abeng -- an African word meaning conch shell. both about colonial control and resistance to colonialism
Two meanings:
The blowing of the conch called the slaves to the canefields in the West Indies.
2) the instrument used by the Maroon armies to pass their messages and reach one another.”

10. Mixed Race Characters in Abeng
Freeman
(landed, red)
Savage
(colonists; planters)
Albert & Mattie Freeman
(see below)
Kitty Freeman * p. 128
Boy Savage
Clare Savage; Jennie Savage
Ben (C’s cousin) & Joshua (half cousin)
(source:
Erasing Blackness, Effacing Clare In Abeng, Clare Savage is a pale mixed race, 12-year-old Jamaican girl. Her father, "Boy," claims a pure-white lineage, but his family is intimately tied with black Jamaicans, and his own ethnic identity is mixed. His maternal grandparents are both mixed race people of white, Miskito Indian, and African ancestries, and his father is a white Italian. Clare's mother, Kitty, is also mixed race even though Boy denies it. The story follows Clare's emerging young womanhood: her first menstrual period; her friendship and female love for dark-skinned Zoe, who lives on her grandmother's property; and her increasing awareness of race, class, and gender politics in her community and culture, both of which harbor enduring effects of colonialism. Clare's family members erase the "taint" of their blackness in their self-perceptions. The Savages, Cliff's narrator reports, defined themselves according to "color, class, and religion, and over the years a carefully contrived mythology was constructed, which they used to protect their identities. When they were poor, and not all of them white, the mythology persisted" (Abeng 29). The aunt and uncle of Clare's father, Boy Savage, teach him to believe in this mythology, and then he proudly passes it--lies and all--to Clare, his eldest daughter, for "[s]he was a true Savage, he assured her. Her fate was sealed" (45). Clare is never really her mother's daughter; even her maternal grandmother, Miss Mattie, always considers her to be her father's child. After Clare steals Miss Mattie's gun in order to hunt down an infamous wild pig, Miss Mattie senses that Boy should deliver punishment because "the girl was his child after all" (145, italics added). For her part, Clare is unsure where her allegiances should lie. She resists her father's pressure to claim an all-white identity: Her father told her she was white. But she knew that her mother was not. Who would she choose were she given the choice: Miss Havisham or Abel Magwitch? She was of both dark and light. Pale and deeply colored. To whom would she turn if she needed assistance? From who would she expect it? Her mother or her father--it came down to that sometimes. (36)

11. Characters in Abeng (2): Underclasses
Miss Ruthie (squatter, black) Zoe
the cane-cutter
Mass Cudjoe (the pig) *
Old Joe (the bull)

12. The Savages
Judge (Clare’s great-great-grandfather) -- burned his slaves alive on the eve of emancipation
“His mind was on a 'higher' plane--he was concerned about the survival of his race. He was fearful of the mixing that was sure to follow freedom--in which the white seed would be diluted and the race impoverished”(38).
“…He was not to blame. These people were slaves and would not know how to behave in freedom. They would have been miserable At that moment these people were his property, and they were therefore his to burn” (39-40)
Boy: According to their arrogance, the Savages saw themselves as blameless for any
downward turn in their fortunes. They managed to relinquish responsibility
for their lives The definition of what a Savage was like was fixed by color,
class, and religion, and over the years a carefully contrived mythology was
constructed, which they used to protect their identities. When they were poor,
and not all of them white, the mythology persisted. They swore by it. (29)

13. Irony: The Savages—not all whites
The Savages defined themselves according to "color, class, and religion, and over the years a carefully contrived mythology was constructed, which they used to protect their identities. When they were poor, and not all of them white, the mythology persisted" (Abeng 29).

14. Kitty Freeman
"Kitty's mother was both Black and white, and her father's origins were unknown—but both had brown skin and a wave to their hair.
.... Her people were called 'red' and they knew that this was what they were The Freemans did not question this structure…”
[cause] “... a settling of blood as some lighter skins crossed over one or other of the darker ones--keeping guard, though, over a base of darkness. And a trickle of white people …made the island whiter than it actually was" (54).

15. Ironies in the Freeman’s
Ms. Mattie -- Against Clare’s being with Zoe
Kitty: locking her blackness deep inside

16. Cliff on Clare Savage
Clare Savage "is an amalgam of myself and others, who eventually becomes herself alone. Bertha Rochester is her ancestor. Her name, obviously, is significant and is intended to represent her as a crossroads character, with her feet (and head) in (at least) two worlds.
Clare: a light-skinned female who has been removed from her homeland in a variety of ways and whose life is a movement back, ragged, interrupted, uncertain, to that homeland. She is fragmented, damaged, incomplete.“ (e.g. her missing her mother)

17. Ref. Cliff on Clare Savage
Savage: “Her surname is self-explanatory. It meant to evoke the wilderness that has been bleached from her skin, understanding that my use of the word wilderness is ironic, mocking the master’s meaning, turning instead to a sense of non-Western values which are empowering and essential to survival, her survival, and wholeness. ("Clare Savage as a Crossroads Character" 264-5)

18. Abeng: Our Excerpt’s “Crossroads” of Gender, Class, Race & the Chain of Being
Hunting in Nature
Pig snake vs. mongoose; kid goats
Bull, above birds, above chickens (stupid)
Bathing: Class & Gender
Class: Owner’s Girls vs. washwoman & cane cutter
Gender: Owner’s girl vs.
Uncle Richard: Gender & Race
Robert [battyman] + American negro
Kitty vs. Boy; Clare vs. Zoe: Race + Class+ Gender

19. Abeng: Our Excerpt Chap 15: hunting episode
The natural world outside the plantation
Clare and hunting pp. 114 (Clare’s memory 115) –
Zoe’s persuasion: against hunting. pp. 116
Bathing pp. 119 (Clare’s reflection );
Cane-cutter’s interruption
Chap 16: gender and racial implication and causes of Clare’s acts
Why shoot?
Robert
Clare
Boy vs. Kitty
Chap 17: consequences:
Zoe’s thinking
Clare’s facing the grandmother

20. Abeng: Discussion Questions
G4: Hunting: Why do you think Clare wants to go hunting? How do issues of human use of nature intersect with those of race & gender relations?
G2: Bathing: Why is the cane-cutter’s sudden presence so embarrassing? Does Clare shoot out of fear or shame, or both?
G1: Gender Politics & Race Relations– Uncle Robert vs. Clare; Kitty vs. Boy
G3: Race Relations -- Consequences: Zoe’s and Clare’s Perspectives; Clare vs. Ms. Mattie

21. The Hunting Episode in Context
The history of natural lives//colonialism pp. 112
the origin of the pig--the native of the island
the Maroon ritual and gender differences
the mongoose
from India (112)
“the true survivor” (113)
symbolic meaning—about hunting and survival; how the natural habitat has been changed by colonial practices
Does Clare enjoy killing wild animals? What is the symbolic meaning of this hunting for Clare? pp. 114, 115,

22. Animals (112-14) Bushmaster (image source) Mongoose (image source) hog

23. Clare’s motivation
She does not enjoy hunting (e.g. experience of eating goat and roasted birds);
Wanting to eat the pig’s testicles and penis (to increase masculinity or power over it)?
Proving herself to Her mother Kitty: Kitty Hart, Anne Frank, Doreen Paxton
Imitating her cousins--Joshua and Ben and their shooting birds and hunting for a pig.
Kitty Hart, Anne Frank –girls suffering from Holocaust
Doreen Paxton—Claire’s classmate, who is thrown out of class because of her epileptic seizure, thus revealing her inferior position as a black.

24. Clare and Zoe
What are the differences between Zoe and Clare? ( WSS -- Antoinette and Tia)?
Zoe:
calls Clare “town gal” class difference
is afraid of being thought of as “Guinea warrior, not gal pickney.” ( )  gender limitation
Clare
split; “limited” (119);
recognize her “selfishness”; her lack of understanding of property and ownership (121)—Clare’s alienation from the native code; unconscious of her own class privilege

25. Zoe & Clare (2):bathing scene
What is the significance of the bathing scene ( , 124) in the episode? Is the relation between the two girls lesbian?
Why is Clare so afraid of being seen by the cane-cutter?
Why does Cliff follows it with a narration of “battyman” in Ch. 16?
How does the family describe the “battyman” Robert ( )? What has happened to him? What is the connection of Robert’s story with the relationship between Clare and Zoe?
What divides Clare and Zoe?

26. Zoe & Clare (2):bathing scene
Clare: Self-definition & Communication p. 120;
121 (the space between them) Clare starts to understand and decides not be selfish again (124) –respecting class boundaries, but crossing gender-race ones.
122 Cane-cutter
Chap 16: Gender boundaries--Robert and the American negro (124-26)//
Chap 16: racial boundaries crossed by Clare and Zoe (:someone darker than herself” p. 127)

27. Clare’s Split Racial Identities
Boy’s teaching of “race and color and lightening” (127)
Kitty’s influences:
Kitty’s cherish of darkness ( )—”keep darkness locked inside” (129)—melancholic
Kitty’s dream of setting up a local school ( )--her distrust of British education and love of black culture--“Daffodils” vs the Maroon Girl (129)
Kitty’s preference for the darker daughter Jennie (129) and Clare’s sense of alienation from the mother (128) Clare’s love for Zoe (131)
Thinks Clare likes passing (129)

28. Languages--English and Patois
What kind of language does Zoe use? What is the significance of different languages in the novel? (e.g. Clare to Zoe, to the cane-cutter, and to Ms. Mattie) (122, 134).

29. Note: Pig Cudjoe
In Jamaica, the growing strength and frequency of attacks by these Maroon groups between the 1650s and 1680s erupted into a full-blown war--known as Cudjoe's War, after its Akan leader--by In 1739, the British empire sued for peace and signed a historic treaty—Cudjoe’s Treaty--giving the once-enslaved Africans autonomy and recognition as free people.

30. Note 2: Resisting Women in Jamaican history
(p. 128)
Nanny -- the legendary Maroon leader, famed both for her strategic prowess and for her ability catch a bullet between her buttocks and thereby return it whence it came (the novel p. 14)
Inez-- the descendant of Maroon and Miskito Indian parents;
imprisoned and raped by Clare's great-grandfather the judge and turned into his concubine, she capitalizes on his absence to escape, and in doing so takes pains to aid a group of rebellious slaves acquire a piece of land where they can live undisturbed
She aborts the fetus she carries with the help of Mma Alli, the sorceress
米斯基託人是中美洲的印第安人，其領地從宏都拉斯的卡梅倫角延伸至尼加拉瓜的格蘭德河一帶。他們有自己的語言米斯基托語，但是有相當多的人講米斯基托克里奧爾英語，西班牙語，拉瑪語（Rama）和其他語言。克里奧爾英語的使用源於與英國人的頻繁接觸。許多人信基督教。
現在即使還有純血統的米斯基託人，也已經很罕見，因為幾個世紀以來，逃亡黑奴在他們那兒尋求避難，並與他們通婚。他們的領地外人難以進入，因此較少受到西班牙殖民者的入侵。

31. Self-Testing What is passing? Who wants Clare to do it? 20%
What does “speaking buckra” mean? How about “gal smaddy”? 20%
Explain the significance of one of the following scenes/characters in 3 sentences? 60%
The hunting scene
The bathing scene
Clare’s memory of her uncle Robert
Clare’s relations with her mother Kitty

32. References
Cliff, Michelle. "Clare Savage as a Corssroads Character." Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Ed. Selwyn R. Cudjoe. Wellesley, MA: Calaloux,
Michelle Cliff