'Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM Press)'
Abstract
While large bulk of recent scholarship has reflected growing attention to migration, there has
been little focus on the evolving intersected marginalization and social inequalities of in-transit
women in the host land. The present study addresses the evolving phenomena of
intersectionality in the context of larger structures of racism, sexism, classism and the legacies
of colonialism. Intersectionality refers to the interlocking oppression experience produced by
the interaction of social, economic, political, cultural and racial factors. Intersectionality both
as a concept and theory is to uncover the underlying interrelated and interconnected layers of
dimensions including but not limited to race, class, gender, sex, ethnicity, age, nation and
dis/ability which generate a distinct mode of oppression, subordination and inequality for an
individual. In this study, the intersectionality related coined concept diaspora-intersectionality
is presented to acknowledge the role of the overlapping interplay of interconnected factors in
social exclusion, marginalization, class discrimination, genderization, and social locationality
of diasporic female characters in the two Caribbean women writers' works: Jamaica Kincaid's
Lucy (1987) and Elizabeth Nunez's Boundaries (2011).The authors have a number of themes in
common, both Caribbean descent with hyphenated identity living alternately in the USA and
the Caribbean. Their protagonists are also very similar; both immigrated to the West to earn
professional experience and seek happiness. Both works abundantly overlap in portraying intransit
Caribbean females whose positionings in the host land are hardly affected by
intersectional patterns resulting to translocational marginality, class-conscious exclusion and
social inequality. Thereby, intersectionality theory is beneficially opted to explore how diaspora
context shapes marginalized shifting identities and how dominant power systems construct and
neutralize social injustice and inequality for diasporic intersected individuals in the narratives