Counter-Narratives And Hidden Histories: A Postcolonial Reading of Maryse Condé’s Traversée De La Mangrove and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique

Modern Caribbean Literature is dominated by the theme of cultural identity search. Evidently, postcolonial French Caribbean Literature also gives special consideration to voices and stories historically marginalized by dominant discourses. This is what the second generation French Caribbean writers refer to as the subversion of traditional discourses. In the light of postcolonial theory, this book chapter seeks to show the counter-narratives and the hidden histories of Caribbean peoples as presented in Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la mangrove and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique. The research method employed for this study is documentary in which Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique and Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la mangrove are primary sources of information along with other academic materials as supporting secondary sources. These two are Creole writers of the Caribbean literary movement of Creoleness which seeks to establish Creole cultural identity through two major counter-discursive practices. The first is creolisation of French language whose objectives is to counter the imperialist language. The other one is history re-writing, which is achieved through plural voices and popular speech. In Traversee de la mangrove, Maryse Condé subverts traditional discourse through a counter-narrative style based on plural voices. This is order to narrate the Caribbean hidden history influenced by slavery and colonisation. In Solibo Magnifique, however, Patrick Chamoiseau employs a literary style in which French and Creole language interplay in a discourse that subverts the literary canon. The study concludes that Caribbean hidden history is retold by Chamoiseau and Condé in two different styles: Creolisation of French and plural voices respectively.