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

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 a Boat (2003), register her profound unease with the erasure from Grenadian history and social memory of both the difficult period immediately prior to the …

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3024 words

Citation: Scafe, Suzanne. "Merle Collins". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 January 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=961, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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