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In this essay, I explore issues relating to race, gender, class and identity in the film adaptation of Joseph Zobel's novel, La rue cases negres (translated, by Keith Warner, into English under the title Black Shack Alley). The film, Rue Cases Negres (released under the English title Sugar CaneAlley), was directed by Euzhan Palcy, a filmmaker who, like Zobel, was born and raised on the island of Martinique in the French West Indies. Zobel's novel was published in 1950, and banned on the island for 20 years after its publication. I argue that Palcy's film adaptation reflects ideological differences with the novel, differences that reveal a "pan-African feminist" perspective-albeit somewhat ambivalently at times. Some of these ideological differences emerge from her identity as a woman with exposure to both Caribbean and other feminist/womanist discourses, and from having grown up in a post-departmentalization Martinique in which attitudes toward assimilation have become less optimistic.
Some characteristic features of a "pan-African feminist" critical praxis1 include the recognition of the mutifaceted nature of black women's oppression, and consequently, the need to fight oppression on multiple fronts, involvement in the struggle for social transformation, the notion of "womanish" behavior (including the everyday defiances of oppression by ordinary black women), a form of feminism stressing male-female complementarity, and the totality of human experience (not just issues of gender). Other characteristics include values emphasizing survival, female autonomy and self-reliance, collectivity over individualism, recognition and respect for alternative systems of knowledge (such as the oral tradition), cultural expression as a major forum for political struggle for black women, and an emphasis on contextualization of cultural production, dissemination, and consumption.
The formulation of a pan-African feminist framework is intended to counter the tendency of mainstream Western feminists to dismiss work that does not privilege gender as the most worthy focus of analysis. For example, in one of the earliest film anthologies on women filmmakers to actually include women of color, Quart labels their work as "pre-feminist," remarking that for Third World women filmmakers, "often other social problems in these cultures seem more pressing" (241). Precisely. This accusation has been made against Palcy too; for example, Pallister criticizes Palcy for being insufficiently concerned with the alienation of black women. Such criticisms reflect a Western mainstream...