Miasol Eguíbar-Holgado holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Oviedo, Spain. In 2011, she followed a Master’s Degree on American Literatures in Trinity College, Dublin and she was awarded her PhD in 2015 from the University of Oviedo, for which she received a pre-doctoral scholarship. She currently works as Assistant Lecturer in English in the same university. Her research focuses on Afro-Canadian literature and postcolonial speculative fiction.
Article
“Re-framing the diasporic Subject: The Supernatural and the Black Female Body in The Salt Roads”
Abstract
This article proposes to analyse Nalo Hopkinson’s novel The Salt Roads (2003). It looks at how its intersections with gender, sexuality, and race adds new, unexplored dimensions to the spec-fic genre. More specifically, it examines how the use of the Afro-Caribbean supernatural and of the black female body in the novel, creates a redefinition of Afro-diasporic subjectivities. In many respects this novel departs from the Eurocentric concept of the diaspora and from received epistemologies in the understanding of culture and history. Instead, it creates an alternative set of routes, the salt roads, that relies on a female water spirit as unifying thread. A focus on the enslaved female black body and on relationships of solidarity among the main characters implies a subversion of the traditional heterosexual male roles that dominate works of speculative fiction. Moreover, it creates an imaginative space that redresses traditional, Western readings of Caribbean history and identity.
Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store.