GILLESPIE / DE BEAUVOIR


 But what makes Barbados even more special, and the reason why so
 many visitors keep returning to the island year after year, is the people.
 Barbadians, called Bajans, are warm and friendly souls, always ready to
 greet you with a sincere smile. Barbadians make you feel welcome and
 special, in this lovely Caribbean Island. You'll feel its your home and you
 will want to come back again and again [...]

 In this representation, the people of Barbados become its most valuable
commodity because of their "natural" ability to serve and placate the tourist
/ consumer. This depiction is the most familiar portrait of Barbadians and of
the resi dents of the Caribbean generally. As Polly Pattullo has written,

 Not only the place but the people, too, are required to conform to this
 stereotype. The Caribbean person, from the Amerindians whom
 Columbus met in that initial encounter to the twentieth-century taxi-
 driver whom tourists meet at the airport, are expected to satisfy those
 images associated with paradise and Eden. The images are crude: of
 happy carefree, fun-loving men and women, colourful in behaviour,
 whose life is one of daytime indolence beneath the palms and a night-
 time of pleasure though music, dance and sex (142).

The historical weight of these images is overwhelming and highlights the
necessity of textual interventions in the interruption of these discourses.
 In addition to the political work of fictional texts by Caribbean writers,
oral narratives from Caribbean peoples open the door for the rewriting of
these limited and limiting constructions. In Bajan vernacular, the word
doormouth means a threshold. The oral narrative format becomes a
doormouth-an opportunity to resist the hegemonic representations of the
people of the Caribbean through the centering of autobiographical self-
representation. The potentially resistive qualities of oral narrative mirrors
the work of Caribbean fiction writers such as Maryse Conde and Michelle
Cliff, who use their texts to "rediscover their pasts and rewrite their history
in their own words, transforming that which has been suppressed by those
who have held cultural power" (Herndon 731). For example, Michelle Cliff's
creation of the transgendered Harry/Harriet character in her novel No
Telephone to Heaven is perhaps one of the most compelling representations
of the multiplicity and liminality of the Caribbean. Cliff's Harry/Harriet
inhabits and epitomizes the complexities of post-colonial Caribbean
identities-following a brutalizing and violating youth, Harry/Harriet is both
a vital and insightful center for "her" community, yet s/he is not only
unappreciated, s/he experiences a prophet's rejection. S/he also embodies
revolutionary resistance grounded in a rejection of the political, economic,
and ideological systems that are the source of the oppressions s/he
experiences.