4 IAN A. BETHELL BENNETr

 In Adams' essay, she reads Jamaica Kincaid's short story 'Ovando' to
 illustrate how Kincaid tackles the misconstrued representation the
 Conquistadores penned of the region and the people they met there. Kincaid
 debunks the myth of simple acceptance of their plight, by creating a fictional
 response to the dread of 'discovery' and subsequent colonisation. In Krista
 Thompson's essay, 'Postcards to History,' the images picked to represent
 the Bahamas during its colonial period are presented and, in a manner of
 speaking, disarmed. Thompson also illustrates how these pictures become
 the Bahamas and are used to sell the destination. Later, these same
 photographic renderings are redeployed back to the Bahamas as images
 (valid or not) of its past. These postcards then become a part of the country's
 historical discourse despite their constructed nature. They illustrate the
 continued nature of Western re-presentations of the Caribbean.
 Carmen Gillespie's interview with Diva Alexander in Barbados illustrates
how representations and realities often digress rather dramatically. The image
of the Caribbean as lascivious, immoral, sexually depraved and available is
taken to task here where Gillespie's interviewee tells us that gender is an
extremely important factor in Caribbean/Barbadian culture and that, in
actuality, Barbados is not an easy place to be a drag queen performer. The
apparent free-living destination is not so liberal when it comes to dealing with
themes of gender transgressions and sexuality, particularly when it is a local
who is pushing the boundaries. Diva and Gillespie destabalise the image of
loose morality and permissiveness, by illustrating that Barbados is really a very
conservative space, which departs sharply from the image created by tourism
and in the tourist mind.
 Stephen Wilkinson's work on stereotypical representations of Blacks and
Chinese in Cuban detective novels is a significant study into an area where
very little work has been done. Meanwhile, it shows how representations
can also be constructed from within the region and the culture to marginalize
'minorities' in a country's local discourse. It unpicks the images presented
of blacks and Chinese in Cuban society, and by so doing illustrates that a
great deal of misinformation and representation underpins the images
constructed of these two marginal groups within the mainstream imagination.
 Charlotte Ward's contribution is an important look at how, even without
firsthand experience artists like Wallace Stevenson constructed an image of
the Caribbean that would remain in the North American imaginary for
decades, fossilising the region into an artist's rendition of what the region is.
The region is usurped of its authority to present itself by individuals similar
to Stevens who, inhabit the location of power and are thereby empower to
speak for, or represent the Caribbean without ever stepping foot there. This
is similar to Diane Accaria-Zavala's essay on the film The Americano, which
she claims is the Monroe doctrine on film. The film, as does much of
Hollywood representations of the time, imbricates the region within the
delimited space of exotic other, silent and therefore unable to speak for itself.