Chapter 23 - Writing and Reading Sex and Sexuality

Summary

Scholars such as Ian Smith, Jennifer Rahim, Nadia Ellis, Kezia Page, Rosamond King, and Timothy Chin have debunked the idea that sex and sexuality were either peripheral to or absent from the concerns of writers of the 1920s to 1970s. An examination of the sociocultural and literary-discursive mores that may have shaped the codes by which writers and critics addressed sexual issues enables an important re-evaluation of the relationship between literary works and the politics of respectability and heteronormativity often associated with the anglophone Caribbean. This examination attends to treatments of sex and sexuality that engage with nationalism, social status, queer desire, and cultural identity, and considers whether, how, and why the literary representations shifted at different points during this period and among different language traditions.