The postcolonial Caribbean writer lives, broadly speaking, a veritable drama of self-expression. His or her relationship to the wor(l)d is determined by a host of complex and significant tensions and contradictions—between the oral and the written, between the intellectual elite and the popular majority, between discourse and the cry, etc. Some of these tensions are, of course, part of the challenges to writing that individuals of any cultural background might face, particularly those writers who have similarly experienced colonialization and/or imperialist occupation. Indeed, often implicit in the process of writing is a refusal—or at least an interrogation—of preexisting monolithic and proscriptive discourses. Nevertheless, the theoretical preoccupation of the Caribbean writer with identifying and rejecting—or at least reinterpreting—the structural and stylistic exigencies of European literature suggests that the stakes are particularly high.