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Abstract:
In a select group of works by late 20th and early 21st century Curaçaoan women novelists and poets such as Nydia Ecury (1926-2012), Diana Lebacs (b.1947), Myra Römer (b.1946), Aliefka Bijlsma (b.1971), and Mishenu Osepa-Cicilia (b.1978), we see through what is often an autobiographical subjectivity, a "transnational collective plurality and difference" that describes the empowering physical and psychological possibilities that come with cross-national travel, immigration, cosmopolitanism, and linguistic multiplicity. This paper will present the politics of Curaçaoan-Dutch Caribbean women's cosmopolitanism and linguistic multiplicity as transformative tools for personal and collective agency and activism for autonomy.
Introduction
There is a cultural and identity politics that underline the literary narrative in the Curaçaoan Dutch Caribbean diaspora. The colonial history coupled with linguistic, social, political, and economic developments on the island certainly speak to the body of literature produced by Curaçaoan Dutch Caribbean novelists and poets. This region in the Caribbean has continued to produce literary works often times invisible to Euro-Dutch, non-Dutch, and nonPapiamentu/o speakers. There is fortunately a steady growing interest in Curaçaoan Dutch Caribbean literature with the understanding that these works may speak to the cultural core of the island. Translations of the works by Curaçaoan writers are now readily available, and complete journal collections and anthologies in English have been dedicated to Dutch Caribbean literature.1
This article is another contribution to the much-needed examination of Dutch Caribbean literature and culture. I introduce an overview of some of the literature by a select group of five Curaçaoan women novelists and poets who either introduce women characters or themes about women in their works. Among the five are the canonical novelists and poets from the 1970s and 1980s, Diana Lebacs (b.1947), and Nydia Ecury (1926-2012), with the remaining three being the more contemporary 21st century poets, Myra Römer2 (b.1946), Aliefka Bijlsma (b.1971), and Mishenu Osepa-Cicilia (b.1978). I choose five novelists and poets to project a comprehensive and assorted overview of contemporary Curaçaoan Dutch Caribbean women's literature. The intention here is to: (1) extend upon the already established literary analysis about Dutch Caribbean women writers, (2) commence a critical dialogue about a women's literary thought from the Curaçaoan Dutch Caribbean diaspora, and (3) to interpret the vernacular of this literary thought. Though I do acknowledge...