Literatures in English

Friday 30th September 2022

Lorna Goodison

Donnabang Kuwabang “Restoring the memories of joining between mother and son….”

 Lorna Goodison’s poetry encompasses a wide range of topics reflecting her concern with
intersecting issues confronting postcolonial Africaribbean women writers: race, gender,
culture, spirituality, sexuality, class, language history and most of all, the reclamation of
an Africaribbean motherhood and matrilienage.
Because of motherhood is central to the experiences of most Africaribbean women,
Goodison’s desire to construct a Africaribbean matrilineage leads to positively consider
the issue of Africaribbean motherhood and mothering in response to her experience of
being a mother herself, and in contradiction to the decades of seeing Afrisporic mothering
as deviant and emasculatory of their men _ children.
Goodison’s poetic recovery is linked to the voices of other Africana “Womanists”
poets including; Claire Harris, Marlene Nourbese Phillips etc. {this is a review of Lorna
Goodison’s poetry}