“It was a song about a white cockroach. That’s me. That’s what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I’ve heard English women call us white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all…” [pg. 61]

 In Wide Sargasso Sea, the protagonist Antoinette Mason is a Creole daughter of plantation owners. Growing up in Coulibri, Jamaica, she and her family faced discrimination from both the natives of Jamaica as well as other Whites living on the island. Although they are plantation owners, they are still considered “poor whites”, never quite seen as possessing equal status with the other Whites – a fact the natives are aware of and use against the Mason family. This is demonstrated in the violent climax of Part I, where a group of men burn the Mason home to the ground and try to prevent their escape.

In this passage, Antoinette explains her issues with identity and culture. She is rejected by both the natives and the people whom we expect her to identify with the most. Although her situation is different than that of the identity struggles outlined in Hall’s essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, one can draw some parallels between her feelings and the feelings of those displaced by the slave trade. Hall calls Africa, which all slaves are descended from, the “missing aporia” – a sort of missing link in the chain of culture. Antoinette feels this to an extent – she is descended from English people, but still struggles with who she is (not quite English and not quite Jamaican or Martiniquan). He also mentions that culture and identity are not hardly defined, but are constantly changing entities; they have elements of the past, the present, as well as the future and “undergo constant transformation”. We begin to see how this affects Antoinette’s sense of identity in her brother’s letter to her husband. In his letter, he explains the dark past of her family – how they are cunning people, all afflicted with madness that was considered characteristic of Creole people. I can sense Antoinette trying to overcome her family’s past (especially her mother’s madness) but finds it difficult to completely forget and put things behind her.

Another parallel we can draw between the two texts is the comparison between Martinique and Jamaica, as well as its people. In Hall’s essay, Martinique is viewed as somewhat superior to Jamaica. It is richer, more fashionable, and people of mixed raced are considered “sophisticated”. Contrast this with Wide Sargasso Sea, where people from Martinique are considered strange in the way they talk and some of their other cultural practices. People of mixed race are not seen as sophisticated, but face some of the same rejection that Antoinette experiences. Not fully black and not fully white, they feel like they belong to neither group – a sentiment Antoinette’s brother also expresses in his letter to her husband.