Precocious labrish: The girl-child narrative voice as short story poetics in the works of Marie Lily Cerat, Pamela Mordecai and Jennifer Rahim

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses short stories by Pamela Mordecai (Jamaica), Jennifer Rahim (Trinidad) and Marie Lily Cerat (Haiti) to theorize ‘precocious labrish’ as the most significant stylistic trend in short story writing among Caribbean women. Precocious labrish encapsulates the dominant presence of the prepubescent and pubescent girl, as well as the young woman as the narrative voice, critic and commentator, and in some instances consciousness, in her stories. The article harnesses the positive connotation of ‘Precocious’ and recovers the Jamaican vernacular term ‘labrish’, to characterize the loquaciousness of young girls in these works as an affirmative inscription of a decidedly subversive female presence. Always with an interrogative turn, the girl narrators in the stories considered here confront some pressing questions that emerge about Caribbean culture and social imperatives. In that way, the writers extend an established stylistic element of short story writing to tackle fresh questions and offer heightened attention to others initiated earlier, and to extend a poetics of short story writing established by writers such as Olive Senior and Jamaica Kincaid.