22 KIM DISMONT ROBINSON

Bermudian writing both historically and ideologically with the rapidly
expanding literary tradition of the Caribbean.
 It is true that the critical analyses and re-writings of The Tempest
 and the power relationships between Ariel, Caliban, Prospero and
 Miranda, formed the early basis for an entire constellation of language
 through which Caribbean intellectuals began to articulate a post- or
 neo-colonial Caribbean discourse.2 The irony, of course, is that the
 island of Shakespeare's imagination is "the still-vexed Bermoothes;"
 ironic because this text which has formed the basis for many Caribbean
 post-colonial discourses has its roots in the literary imagination of an
 island which is neither post-colonial nor technically even part of the
 Caribbean.
 By contrast, The History of Mary Prince is one of the most widely-
read slave narratives of this century.3 The History of Mary Prince is also
of particular interest to Caribbean scholars because, unlike Harriet
Wilson's Our Nig or Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
The History of Mary Prince is the first known history published about a
black West Indian woman who escaped from slavery.4 The irony, from
a Bermudian perspective, is significant. Firstly, not only was Mary Prince
born and raised in Bermuda, but the full title of the text is The History
of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. Thus, the very
first and indisputably best-known publication produced by a black
Bermudian / West Indian establishes a historical, cultural and literary
connection between Bermuda and the rest of the Caribbean.
 Secondly and perhaps most ironically, this well-known text is least
well-known in Bermuda, and has not been taught in the Bermudian
school system until quite recently. Thirdly, although Bermuda has deep
and significant cultural, historical and familial ties with the Caribbean
- most notably St. Kitts, Jamaica, and Turks and Caicos the term
"West Indian" has been used as a marker of contempt in Bermuda in
previous generations; and it is not until the past few decades that


 2 Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. New York: The Shakespeare Society of
New York, 1908.
 3 Prince, Mary. The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself.
Moira Ferguson, ed. Revised Edition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
 4 In the revised introduction to the text, Moira Ferguson states that Prince's
narrative "combines aspects of the eighteenth-century British slave narrative, the
nineteenth-century U.S. narrative, and the format of recorded court cases of slave
abuse. Because of its rarity, Mary Prince's History is aslo sui generis, with no
comparable account extant by a female West Indian slave" (24-5).