A Journey Toward Self-Awareness and Restoration in No Telephone to Heaven

Abstract

This paper explores Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1987) with a focus on the protagonist Clare Savage’s migratory journey and her attempt to restore and rebuild her self and homeland. A sequel to Abeng (1984), No Telephone to Heaven portrays the racially and economically divided condition of postcolonial Jamaica and its people through the theme of self-exploration via migration and reclaiming. This paper examines how the migration of Clare, a light-skinned Creole girl, departing from and returning to Jamaica through the U.S., England, and Europe affects her self-identification. The racial discrimination Clare and her parents encounter through dislocation brings about epiphanic moments in which all three must confront their choices of identification. For Clare, her realization of her Otherness outside of Jamaica leads to new self-awareness of identity as an ongoing holistic process; this, in turn, drives her ‘spiral’ return to Jamaica and subsequent participation in a guerilla group, an act of self-identification geared toward restoring and reclaiming Jamaica and Jamaican-ness.