Review: A Postcolonial-feminist Interpretation of Marlene Nourbese Philip's Poetry

摘要

Wu Li's A Postcolonial-feminist Interpretation of Marlene Nourbese Philip's Poetry, the first monograph on Philip's poetry in China, is an organic combination of postcolonial interpretation and gender study of the all the 5 collections of Philip's poems originally published between 1980 and 2008. With the help of such subtexts as Philip's website, journal entries, interviews, reviews as well as Philip's personal emails to Wu, this 8-chapter monograph makes multidimensional analyses of Philip's thought-provoking themes of language, culture, identity, exile, history, racism and sexism, her original language view and poetic theory, her unconventional postmodern techniques, experimental poetic devices, anti-writing strategies as well as her female discourse, narrative pattern and body writing skills. Through diachronic analyses of the interaction between Philip's aesthetic texture and identity politics, and synchronic comparison of Philip's poetry with those of other diasporic writers, A Postcolonial-feminist Interpretation successfully penetrates into the historical profundity and cultural connotation of Philip's poetry, illustrates the postcoloniality and Caribbeaness shared by Philip and her contemporary diasporic Caribbean writers, elucidates her explicit or implicit authorial intentions, reveals her hidden or half-hidden composing motivations, and exalts her deep understanding of humanity and multidimensional perception of the multicultural world.