Resistance through liminality: A study of Michelle Cliff's "Abeng" and "No Telephone to Heaven"

This thesis argues that postcolonial women are doubly oppressed under colonialism and patriarchy. In many instances, women's acts of resistance are overlooked through discursive practices that erroneously portray women as passive victims. In order to correct this misrepresentation of women, Michelle Cliff chronicles women's oppression as well as their numerous acts of resistance in Abeng and No Telephone To Heaven. Cliff, thus, ruptures the colonial and patriarchal myths that render women powerless. Central to this thesis, is the argument that the liminal space is critical for empowerment and resistance. Liminality allows an individual to occupy two diverse worlds creating what Homi K. Bhabha calls a "Third Space." This Third Space offers migrant subjects such as Michelle Cliff a good vantage point from which to observe and record the oppression and resistance of the colonized. The thesis utilizes postcolonial theory to explicate the fragmented and contradictory experience of the colonized.