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Abstract
This project presents a comparative analysis of literary presentations of women in contemporary Hispanophone Caribbean and African literature which challenge hegemonic discourses of national identity in post and neo-colonial contexts. I show that through the novels Ekomo (1985) by María Nsué Angüe, La casa de la laguna (1996) by Rosario Ferré, Nuestra señora de la noche (2006) by Mayra Santos-Febres and Guillermina Mekuy’s Las tres vírgenes de Santo Tomás (2008), contemporary Hispanophone Caribbean and African female writers interrogate masculinist discourses of nationhood which have marginalized women in the national cultures of Puerto Rico and Equatorial Guinea through degrading misrepresentations of race, gender and sexuality. Drawing on the work of postcolonial and feminist scholars like Doris Sommer, Jackie Hogan, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Tamar Mayer, bell hooks and others, I place these novels in conversation to demonstrate how Puerto Rican and Equatorial Guinean female writers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries subvert hegemonic notions of national belonging within their respective national communities. By placing the contemporary literary production of female writers from Puerto Rico and Equatorial Guinea in dialogue, my project contributes to the growing field of Transatlantic Studies which aims to examine the complex historical exchanges between the Americas, Africa and Europe. My project offers new insight into the ways in which contemporary literary production has sought to uncover to lasting effects of the Spanish colonial enterprise on women, particularly women of color, within the shifting national cultural landscapes of Puerto Rico and Equatorial Guinea.