Abstract

As much attention as Sylvia Wynter’s critique of Western Man has garnered during the past decade by scholars engaging with her essays of the 1980s to 2000s, her 1962 novel The Hills of Hebron foreshadows and dramatizes many of the concerns of the later theoretical writings. Reading The Hills of Hebron as a novel about limited and limiting conceptions of the human places Wynter’s thought into the context of the debates about human rights taking place in the context of decolonization during the 1960s. Remembering these debates, before the contemporary regime of human rights had been codified, shows Wynter to be an important contributor to human rights discourse during this crucial period. Engaging with her novel also helps to prevent the erasure of the contributions of women and black people from the Caribbean and the decolonizing world more broadly to these human rights debates centered around the United Nations in the years following World War II.