The Minister of Mercy Is a Homegirl

Abstract

Abstract:This review essay on Laurie R. Lambert's Comrade Sister: Caribbean Feminist Revisions of the Revolution (2020) considers the narrative and rhetorical strategies that Black women political figures use in their memoirs to represent US imperial presence and violence in the aftermath of the Grenada Revolution. As it highlights Lambert's attention to Joan Purcell's truncated temporal framing of the Grenada Revolution, the essay offers a close reading of Phyllis Coard's memoir to elaborate the significance of temporality in literary representations of the revolution and to question how the memoir as a genre both elaborates and dulls trauma. Rather than emphasize and celebrate the exceptional quality of Black women political figures and their careers, the essay points to a close reading practice that more seriously considers Black womanhood and empire.