Quote by Michelle Cliff: “To be dispossessed is to be without history.”

This powerful statement links the loss of land or resources to the loss of one's narrative and cultural memory. It suggests that being stripped of one's material possessions also strips away the anchors of identity and heritage.

The mid-1980s postcolonial literary landscape frequently explored the profound link between land, heritage, and identity. Cliff's novel underscores how the act of dispossessing a people from their land also strips them of their historical narrative and cultural continuity.

Jamaican-American novelist and poet whose work explored colonialism, racial identity, and sexuality through an experimental mixing of forms and languages. Her 1984 novel Abeng is a landmark of Caribbean feminist fiction, and she was a close collaborator of Adrienne Rich.