Cuban Anti-slavery Narrative through Postcolonial Eyes: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab.

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab (1841) has come to be regarded as an iconic work in the canon of nineteenth-century Cuban fiction, celebrated as much for its literary pedigree as for its radical combination of anti-slavery and feminist ideas. Yet it has been the subject of very divergent critical appraisals. This essay sets out to breathe new life into Avellaneda’s novel by interpreting it through a postcolonial optic. Drawing on ideas from the scholarship of Edward Said and Frantz Fanon, as well as the ideas of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, these pages explore the implications of its nationalist, racial, sexual and feminist politics for Sab’s anti-slavery meaning. This postcolonial reading provides a possible solution for the conflicts between its various interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]