Dislocation and topographic writing in I is a Long-Memoried Woman by Grace Nichols

Abstract

I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), first poetry collection by Guyanese author Grace Nichols, was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and stablished its author as one of the critically acclaimed new voices of the Caribbean in diaspora. In this article, we will explore the dislocated state of this book protagonist, enslaved and torn away from her natal Africa, and how this state is expressed and repaired through the relationship with the new inhabited space. In order to do so, we will analyze how Nichols constructs a landscape view that is expressed in a “topographic writing” in which language and landscape merge.