The Body as a Palimpsest: Stor(y)ing Memories in Michelle Cliff’s Clare Savage Novels and Gayl Jones’s Corregidora

Abstract

Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987) as well as Gayl Jones’s Corregidora (1975) are narratives of “yellow” women; Clare Savage’s and Ursa Corregidora’s bodies are palimpsests—their color inadvertently reveals the silenced history of racial and sexual exploitation. Both authors reconstruct the submerged past and engage with the stor(y)ing memories, but their narratives illustrate different dynamics and outcomes of “scraping off” the dominant narratives of the past. Ursa and Clare grapple with interlocking and competing stories of the past. For both of them motherhood is connected with making political choices of “painting over” or “scraping off” the disconcerting remains of their pasts.