About

The primary purpose of this thesis is to develop an autoethnographic poetry as a method to explore diasporic Caribbean identity, its intersections and constructs. I critically analyse my lived experience in order to understand my place in the world as a diasporic woman. The research examines the ways my poetry, as a form of qualitative research, interrogates diasporic Caribbean identities and spaces. I show how poetry (crafting poems) can be used as a reflexive tool to explore researcher positionality. I also show how poetry can be employed to interrogate the legacies of colonialism through language and the ways in which those legacies shape everyday lived experience of diasporic Caribbean identities.

To help inform my poetry, I conducted eight open-ended interviews with eight different people retelling their experiences with the Santiago de Cuba carnival.  The thesis also includes their original poems which also inform the crafting of my poetry. Poetry is my creative critical way to present my research while challenging conventional ways of producing academic knowledge.  Furthermore, I demonstrate how poetry can be used to inform autoethnographic forms of storytelling and self-understanding. The significance of this study is that it informs our understanding of spaces configured as Caribbean and my and others’ lived experience of diaspora by introducing poetry as a method for evocative autoethnography. Using poetry as a method enables scholarship that is less prescriptive and more inclusive.