Un-Scripted Others in the Other (Our) America: An Ecocritical Approach to Caribbean Novels

• In Event: Eco-Criticism and Ruptured Natures

Abstract

J. Michael Dash argues that given prevalent tropes, “the New World is overwhelmingly the realm of the natural” (Other America 28) and that the natural becomes “a significant and problematic terrain within which a counterdiscursive practice will be situated.” He further posits that the sea in the American imagination becomes “an unstable medium beyond the fixing power of any totalizing discourse” (29).
Columbus is at its origin, but many Caribbean authors continue to explore its geographical importance.
La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) by Rita Indiana (b. 1977 in Santo Domingo, DR), a novel that defies categorization, places the sea at the center of its plot due to a 21st-century ecological catastrophe. The main character, Alcide Figureoa, as well as other characters (past, present, and future), have doubles and triples throughout various eras (XVII century, 20th century, and 2034). Her boss, Esther Escudero aka Omicunlé, is dedicated to Olokun, an androgynous orisha, and to Yemaya, the orisha of the sea. Central to the plot is also an anemone rescued from the ecological disaster that destroyed all sea creatures. The the sea and the anemone—which can reproduce asexually—defy any totalizing discourse.
Indiana’s representation of Others who have remained unscripted in Caribbean letters may be categorized as contra naturam by the hegemonic discourse because they are descendants of slaves or because of alternate sexualities. In this novel, those who evolve “monstrously” is because of their disregard for the environment and in particular the Caribbean Sea.

Author

• Mary Ann Gosser Esquilín, Florida Atlantic University