Introduction

This Introduction formulates the postcolonial-psychoanalytic feminist theory of matria, an imagined maternal space and time, through reading fictions of history written by and about Caribbean women. It reconceptualizes matria as an imagined maternal space and time that (re)unites Caribbean mothers with daughters. The tripartite introduction opens with the section, “Matri(a)lineage,” which revisits Sigmund Freud’s theory of mothers and daughters in the Oedipal complex and traces matria’s feminist psychoanalytic and (post)colonial feminist literary roots. The following section, “Mother-(Is)lands: Daughters Fictionalize the Past,” explicates matria, as a Caribbean maternal space and time, in relation to historical fiction and history. Lastly, “Volcanic Daughters: Matria Redux,” provides an overview of the book’s structure and the pre- and post-millennium novels selected for close-reading.