Contemporary research on Caribbean literature displays a rich variety of themes, literary and cultural categories, forms, genres, languages. Still, the concept of a unified Caribbean literary space remains questionable, depending upon whether one strictly limits it to the islands, enlarges it to adopt a Latin-American perspective, or even grants it inter-American dimensions. This book is an ambitious tentative to bring together specialists from various disciplines: neither just French, Spanish, English, or Comparative studies specialists, nor strictly "Caribbean literature" specialists, but also theoreticians, cultural studies scholars, historians of cultural translation and of intercultural transfers. Case studies and concrete projects for integrated research alternate with theoretical and historiographical contributions.

This groundbreaking book analyzes the theme of community in seven French Caribbean novels in relation to the work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The complex history of the islands means that community is often a central and problematic issue in their literature, underlying a range of other questions such as political agency, individual and collective subjectivity, attitudes towards the past and the future, and even the literary form itself. Celia Britton here studies a range of key books from the region, including Édouard Glissant's Le Quatrième Siècle, Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco, Daniel Maximin's Ile et une nuit, and Vincent Placoly's L'eau-de-mort guildive, among others.

Throughout this book, Kevin Meehan offers historical and theoretical readings of Caribbean and African American interaction from the 1700s to the present. By analyzing travel narratives, histories, creative collaborations, and political exchanges, he traces the development of African American/Caribbean dialogue through the lives and works of four key individuals: historian Arthur Schomburg, writer/archivist Zora Neale Hurston, poet Jayne Cortez, and politican Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In addition to noting dialogues of unity, People Get Ready focuses on instances of intellectual elitism, sexim, color, prejudice, imperialism, national, chauvinism, and other forms of mutual disdain that continue to limit African American and Caribbean solidarity.

Despite the increasing importance of the concept of "diaspora" and its widespread use in academic case studies and in the self-description of a number of minority communities and networks, the subject has received relatively little general scholarly treatment. Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities, addresses this lack by providing a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the political and cultural ideas and groups involved. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, the book contains examinations of major concepts and theories, including migration, ethnicity, and postcolonialism.

Study of diasporas provides a useful frame for reimagining locations, movements,identities, and social formations. This volume explores diaspora as historical experience and as a category of analysis. Using case studies drawn from African and Asian diasporas and immigration in the U.S., the contributors interrogate ideas of displacement, return, and place of origin as they relate to diasporic identity. They also consider how practices of commensality become grounds for examining identity and difference and how narrative and aesthetic forms emerge through the context of diaspora.

Coined in the third century B.C., the term diaspora has evolved into a buzzword used to describe the migrations of groups as diverse as ethnic populations, religious communities, and even engineers working abroad. This concise book provides a critical introduction to the concept of diaspora, bringing a fresh, synthetic perspective to virtually all aspects of this topic. Stéphane Dufoix incorporates a wealth of case studies--about the Jewish, Armenian, African, Chinese, Greek, and Indian experiences-- to illustrate key concepts, give a clear overview on current thinking, and reassess the value of the term for us today.

Haiti has long played an important role in global perception of the western hemisphere, but ideas about Haiti often appear paradoxical. Is it a land of tyranny and oppression or a beacon of freedom as site of the world's only successful slave revolution? A bastion of devilish practices or a devoutly religious island? Does its status as the second independent nation in the hemisphere give it special lessons to teach about postcolonialism, or is its main lesson one of failure? Haiti and the Americas brings together an interdisciplinary group of essays to examine the influence of Haiti throughout the hemisphere, to contextualize the ways that Haiti has been represented over time, and to look at Haiti's own cultural expressions in order to think about alternative ways of imagining its culture and history.Thinking about Haiti requires breaking through a thick layer of stereotypes. Haiti is often represented as the region's nadir of poverty, of political dysfunction, and of savagery. Contemporary media coverage fits very easily into the narrative of Haiti as a dependent nation, unable to govern or even fend for itself, a site of lawlessness that is in need of more powerful neighbors to take control. Essayists in Haiti and the Americas present a fuller picture developing approaches that can account for the complexity of Haitian history and culture.

Caribbean Critique seeks to define and analyze the distinctive contribution of francophone Caribbean thinkers to post-Kantian Critical Theory.

Bringing together the most exciting recent archival work in anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone Caribbean studies, Raphael Dalleo constructs a new literary history of the region that is both comprehensive and innovative. He examines how changes in political, economic, and social structures have produced different sets of possibilities for writers to imagine their relationship to the institutions of the public sphere. In the process, he provides a new context for rereading such major writers as Mary Seacole, José Martí, Jacques Roumain, Claude McKay, Marie Chauvet, and George Lamming, while also drawing lesser-known figures into the story. Dalleo's comparative approach will be important to Caribbeanists from all of the region's linguistic traditions, and his book contributes even more broadly to debates in Latin American and postcolonial studies about postmodernity and globalization.

Patrick Chamoiseau: A Critical Introduction examines the career, oeuvre, and literary theories of one of the most important Caribbean writers living today. Chamoiseau's work sheds light on the dynamic processes of creolization that have shaped Caribbean history and culture. He is the recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the prestigious Prix Goncourt for the epic novel Texaco. The author's diverse body of work, which includes plays, novels, fictionalized memoirs, treatises, and other genres of writing, offers a compelling vision of the postcolonial world from a francophone Caribbean perspective. An important addition to Caribbean literary studies, Patrick Chamoiseau is an indispensable work for scholars interested in francophone, Caribbean, and world literatures as well as cultural studies. Scholars and students with interests in creolization, neocolonialism, and globalization will find this work particularly valuable. Patrick Chamoiseau brings the writer's major works of fiction into dialogue with lesser-known texts, including unpublished theatrical works, screenplays, visual texts, and treatises. This holistic, comprehensive, and largely chronological study of Chamoiseau's oeuvre includes analyses of various authorial strategies, especially the use of narrative masques, cross-cultural storytelling techniques, and creolizing poetics.

John Conteh-Morgan explores the multiple ways in which African and Caribbean theatres have combined aesthetic, ceremonial, experimental, and avant-garde practices in order to achieve sharp critiques of the nationalist and postnationalist state and to elucidate the concerns of the francophone world. More recent changes have introduced a transnational dimension,replacing concerns with national and ethnic solidarity in favor of irony and self-reflexivity.New Francophone African and Caribbean Theatres places these theatres at the heart of contemporary debates on global cultural and political practices and offers a more finely tuned understanding o fperformance in diverse diasporic networks.

Because of a shared experience of European colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery, issues of culture and identity are major concerns for African and Caribbean playwrights. Slavery and colonialism had involved systematic acts of cultural denigration, de-humanization and loss of freedom, which left imprints on the collective psyches of the colonized Africans and enslaved peoples of African descent in the Caribbean. Both experiences brought intense cultural and psychic dislocations which still impact in various ways on the lives of Africans and peoples of African descent around the world. African and Caribbean playwrights try to help their peoples regain their dignities by affirming their cultures, histories and identities. The book focuses on the similarities and differences between Caribbean theatre and the theatre of sub-Saharan Africa, showing how identities and cultures are negotiated and affirmed in each case.