Merle Collins

Suzanne Scafe (University of Brighton)

Ed. by Ronald Cummings, McMaster University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 4.1.1: Anglophone Writing and Culture of Central America and the Caribbean.
Vol. editors: Ronald Cummings (McMaster University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Melanie Otto (Trinity College Dublin), Jak Peake (University of Essex), Abigail Ward (University of Nottingham)

Dates

Born 1950
Activity 1970-ongoing

Places

Born in Aruba
Active in Grenada

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet

Resources

Collins' Works

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Merle Collins is best known as a Caribbean writer whose work bears witness to the short-lived but transformative events of the Grenadian Revolution (1979-1983). As well as depicting this period of historical change, her novels, poetry and non-fiction are characterised by their detailed and highly figurative representations of slavery, emancipation, colonialism and resistance. Both her novels also include representations of the ongoing struggle for land-ownership in Grenada and the Caribbean. Poems such as “Shame Bush”, in her poetry collection

Lady in aBoat

(2003), register her profound unease with the erasure from Grenadian history and social memory of both the difficult period immediately prior to the revolutionary government of Maurice Bishop and the four years of Bishop’s…

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3024 words

Citation: Scafe, Suzanne. "Merle Collins". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=961, accessed 21 November 2024.]