Geography and Identity in Maryse Condé's Dieu nous l'a donné

Maryse Condé, widely recognized as a novelist who explores the complex geographies of colonial and postcolonial experience, began her career as a radical playwright. Her first published work was a five-act play titled Dieu nous l'a donné. Using the heightened materiality of the stage to confront misogynic territorial connotations and clichés, Condé offers an angry and potentially liberating geography lesson. Her portrayal of the promiscuous permeability and subversive resilience of Caribbean feminine spaces challenges reader or spectator with positions of identity that do not conform to either Western social models or optimistic celebrations of a nourishing Créolité.