Chapter 3 Postcritical Erotic Intimacy: Engaging with Oral Sex in Caribbean Literature

Abstract

Few critics would venture to claim that sexuality in the Caribbean is unproblematic or straightforward. In fact, it has become commonplace to reiterate, how ambivalent, problematic, or contradictory Caribbean sexualities are. Part and parcel of this axiom is the conceptualization of sex and sexuality in polarized terms; it is either frank or prude,1 shameful or casual,2 hypersexual or asexual.3 Research on Caribbean women’s sexualities tends to vacillate between topics like sexual violence and shame to sexual openness and eroticism.4 This tendency to treat sexuality in polarized