Caribbean Womanism: decolonial theorizing of Caribbean women’s oppression, survival, and resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT We propose Caribbean womanism as an integrated decolonial, Caribbeanist, and womanist framework that re-imagines the intellectual and community engagement of the Caribbean diaspora toward region-facing consciousness, research, pedagogy, and activism that centres Caribbean women and the specificity of the Caribbean context. We review Caribbean sociological scholarship as a means of expanding the U.S. sociological canon that Caribbean diasporic graduate students are likely to encounter in their training. We centralize the specificity of Caribbean peoples’ historical and contemporary experience with European colonialism and U.S. recolonization, and how these necessarily shapes Caribbean understandings and experiences of race, class, gender, patriarchy, and sexuality. We highlight how these combine to inform Caribbean women’s articulations of and struggles against oppression. We draw on decades of work by Caribbean scholars across the region and the diaspora who have been clearing space for transnational, decolonial scholarships, pedagogies, and activism on Caribbean women and the Caribbean region.