Michelle Cliff (1946–2016) was a Jamaican-American writer, scholar, and critic whose works focused deeply on race, gender, identity, and postcolonial struggles. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and later moved with her family to New York City. Cliff pursued her education in both the United States and the United Kingdom, completing her undergraduate studies at Wagner College in Staten Island and earning her Ph.D. at the Warburg Institute, University of London.
A prolific writer, Cliff produced fiction, essays, and poetry that interrogated the legacies of colonialism, racism, and class inequality. Among her well-known works are Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise (1980), Abeng (1984), No Telephone to Heaven (1987), Free Enterprise (1993), and If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire (2008). Across her career, she remained committed to exploring the complexities of Caribbean identity, diaspora, and the personal-political intersections of being a biracial woman navigating colonial legacies.
Cliff wrote Abeng in 1984 as a semi-autobiographical novel rooted in her Jamaican childhood. The protagonist, Clare Savage, mirrors many aspects of Cliff's own struggles with racial identity, belonging, and the burden of colonial history. By situating Clare's story in mid-20th century Jamaica, Cliff sought to reflect the tension between personal identity formation and the larger sociopolitical upheavals of a country moving towards independence from British rule.
The novel became an avenue for Cliff to reclaim silenced histories and to challenge the Eurocentric narratives imposed on Caribbean societies. Through Clare's journey, she underscores how colonial education, racial hierarchies, and gender expectations shape an individual's sense of self.
The word "abeng" refers to a horn made from a cow's horn, historically used by the Maroons—communities of escaped enslaved Africans in Jamaica—as a tool for communication. It carried both practical and symbolic importance: practically, it signaled danger or gathered people; symbolically, it became a call for freedom and resistance.
By choosing Abeng as the title, Cliff anchored her narrative in the cultural memory of resistance against enslavement and colonial oppression. The abeng functions in the novel not only as a historical emblem but also as a metaphorical call to awaken silenced voices, reclaim buried histories, and assert identity. It reflects Cliff's own intellectual project of amplifying marginalized Caribbean stories.
Cliff's inspiration for Abeng stemmed from her own experiences growing up biracial in Jamaica—caught between whiteness and blackness, privilege and marginalization. Her work was also shaped by her exposure to the broader postcolonial discourse and the women's liberation movement of the 1970s.
