Narrative and the Nature of Worldview in the Clare Savage Novels of Michelle Cliff

Jamaican-born Michelle Cliff is the author of several notable works of fiction. Two of her novels, Abeng (1984) and No Telephone to Heaven (1987), feature Clare Savage, a character who continuously struggles with the conflicting values of her European father and African-Jamaican mother. Narrative and the Nature of Worldview in the Clare Savage Novels of Michelle Cliff explores how the worldviews of Cliff’s characters and narrators provide the key to understanding that struggle. William Tell Gifford explains how worldview-building is a literary technique Cliff implements to make her art accessible to cultural insiders and outsiders. By tracing Cliff’s individual narrative strategies, Gifford shows that the worldviews of her characters are philosophically sound.