Cartography, Hystérie , and Matrilineage in Marie-Elena John’s Unburnable

Chapter eight offers a close reading of a post-millennial text in which the heroine Lillian cannot restore her maternal genealogy: Marie-Elena John’s Unburnable (2006), set in Dominica. John’s text sees Lillian attempt to piece together the lives of her foremothers and to exonerate them of their alleged crimes and transgressions. In solidarity with the women in her family, Lillian becomes the fierce mythic figure of the soucouyant and dies by suicide. In bringing three women’s tragic fates together, the novel’s matria challenges the racist and sexist discursive practices from which women have little means of escaping. Unburnable thus reveals what Freud calls hysteria, which this chapter re-interprets as hystérie, that is history as erupting through/as female madness and suicide.