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Jamaica Kincaid's compact and succinct story “Girl,” the lead story in the collection (1983), has been lauded as one of the premier works in Kincaid's corpus, particularly her discourse on the making of “woman” in postcolonial Caribbean contexts. The text is essentially a set of instructions offered by an adult (assumed to be a mother), laying out the script for the performance of womanhood in the fictional society in which the female child is expected to live and perform her gender. “Girl”'s emphasis on performative acts reiterates the inextricable link between gender and performance. Undoubtedly, this landmark Kincaid story is in dialogue with Butler's theorization of the centrality of stylized acts in the creating and crafting of gendered selves. Less well known is Oonya Kempadoo's debut novel (1999). chronicles the experiences of four pubescent girls in 1970s Guyana as they learn about, participate in, and challenge some gender expectations of their immediate and wider communities. The story is told from the point of view of Lula, who keenly observes the ways in which gender roles are enacted and how these roles may be re-enacted. Her observations alert the reader to the novel's preoccupation with uncovering, or perhaps reconfiguring, how gender roles might be at once imagined and played out in contemporary Caribbean societies. Both texts illustrate how the tensions and contradictions surrounding the constructions of womanhood, and in , manhood, are engaged through performative acts, some of which ostensibly conform to prescribed gender roles but that actually undermine them.

In the Caribbean, sex is unavoidable. There's a great repertoire of double meanings. Sex is on the street - unlike here, you have to look away to avoid it. To me, it's more natural than shocking. At the same time as being very open, there's also a strong Catholic background ' It's not every unpublished author who is flown 4,500 miles to Britain to sign a publishing deal. Little wonder then that Oonya Kempadoo is being hailed as 'the new Arundathi Roy'. Now, it seems, \"the new Arundathi Roy\" has arrived - Oonya Kempadoo, 32, a Caribbean first-time novelist signed up by [David] Godwin after he tracked her down by phone at 5am at her home in Tobago. Her novel, Buxton Spice, a heady, sexually candid, coming-of-age tale set in 1970s Guyana, was the subject of fierce bidding by five rival publishers when she flew, at Godwin's encouragement, to London at the start of the year. Phoenix House, which bought the book for a \"substantial\" five-figure sum, publishes it in hardback this week.

One does not have to look far to find historical and contemporary representations of the Caribbean as an erogenous zone, a tropical space of lasciviousness, a sensual paradise of sun, sea, and sex. Since the days of colonization, both the natural world and Caribbean people have been eroticized and sexualized, especially for European and North American viewers and consumers. In Consuming the Caribbean, Mimi Sheller unpacks these prevalent discourses, situating them historically and discussing their present-day iterations. Interpreting a British Airways magazine – which describes the Caribbean as a Garden of Eden, but ‘after Eve tempted Adam with the apple’ – Sheller writes:Thus the new Eden is a perpetual garden in which sexuality can run rampant; rather than being expelled from the garden, humanity can indulge all the temptations of fertile nature and fertile sex, without guilt. Vandal-proof nature serves as a transparent metonym for sexual access to the ‘natives’ without consequence; the laws of nature and of morality have both apparently been temporarily suspended in this fantasy Jamaica, more vested in Hedonism than in Edenism. (Sheller, 2003, 69)Sheller describes this ‘view’ of Caribbean bodies as ‘part of the scenery of tropical landscapes’ which involves ‘various kinds of animalization and objectification’ (157). She cites Sánchez-Taylor who has shown that ‘sex tourism packages Caribbean people as “embodied commodities” by turning the long history of sexual exploitation of women (and men) under colonial rule into a “lived colonial fantasy” available for the mass tourist consumer’ (164).Authors and critics have negotiated the perceived burden of representing Caribbean sexuality in various ways. Charting representations of sex and sexuality in Caribbean literature, Rosamond King offers the following periodization: literature (usually authored by men) of sexual abuse by those in power, written in the 1930s; representations of women in men's novels as primarily sexual partners (often extramarital, non-monogamous, and interracial) in the 1950s to the 1970s; and novels by men and women that portray ‘women's sexual maturation, women's sexuality, and women's and men's homosexuality’ in the 1980s (2002, 27). King suggests that critical silences on these topics may reflect scholars who are ‘wary of re-inscribing myths and stereotypes’ (35) about Caribbean sexuality, but that without these analyses it is more difficult to challenge and deconstruct such discourses (36).

The early book-trade trumpetings on this talented first novel likened it to last year's Booker winner, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. Oonya Kempadoo was signed up by Roy's agent, David Godwin, who was said to have read the manuscript and once again caught the next plane out to secure its author - this time not to India, but to the Caribbean island of Tobago. The book was auctioned and became the winning publisher's lead autumn title.

Kempadoo, Oonya. Tide Running. May 2003. 224p. Farrar, $22 (0-374-27757-5).

Patrick Markee reviews the book \"Buxton Spice\" by Oonya Kempadoo.

After reading the back cover of Buxton Spice, which included praise from major British newspapers, I was prepared for Indo-Caribbean storytelling the likes of Marina Budhos' first book, House of Waiting or a poignant coming-of-age tale the caliber of Shay Youngblood's first novel, Soul Kiss. Unfortunately, by the end of Buxton Spice, I did not feel I had found a literary voice the peer of either of these writers. Despite my lack of discovery, readers who enjoy Caribbean-based literary fiction may be able to keep pace and find satisfaction with Buxton Spice. In fairness, perhaps we should wait to hear more from [Kempadoo], as her first effort may not be her best yet.

[Cliff] becomes a regular visitor to the couple's house overlooking the ocean. Quickly the relationship with the young limer (slacker) becomes troublesome, spiked with fear as he becomes less predictable. Money goes missing. Their car disappears. But Cliff is as much a riddle to us as he is to Bella and [Peter], and this is the novel's weakness. In another poetic riff, [Kempadoo] shows us Cliff's inner world as he assumes the persona of the sea. We see him displaying power and confidence that he lacks in his everyday life: \"I got juice. Respect. Respect I man, 'cause I is the real juice.\" But it is empty posturing, and he knows it. There is one scene in which the generally mild-mannered Cliff erupts with anger, knocking Bella to the floor after what appeared to be a benign confrontation. Is there some rage simmering below the surface of his inscrutable smile? In the end Cliff is too enigmatic to be a dynamic figure.

Isobel Montgomery reviews the novel \"Buxton Spice\" by Oonya Kempadoo.