During and after the two World Wars, a cohort of Caribbean authors migrated to the UK and France. Dissecting writers like Lamming, Césaire, and Glissant, McIntosh reveals how these Caribbean writers were pushed to represent themselves as authentic spokesmen for their people, coming to represent the concerns of the emigrant intellectual community.
Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration: Narratives of Displacement is a collection of thirteen chapters that explores the literary tradition of Caribbean Latino literature written in the U.S. beginning with José Martí and concluding with 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Junot Díaz. The essays in this collection reveal the multiple ways that writers of this tradition use their unique positioning as both insiders and outsiders to critique U.S. hegemonic discourses while simultaneously interrogating national discourses in their home countries. The chapters consider the way that spatial migration in literature serves as a metaphor for gender, sexuality, racial, identity, linguistic and national migrations.
The literature of Caribbean writers living in the United States embodies a duality, an awareness of multiple sites of identity as well as conflict of place and space. Easily grouped with African Americans, Caribbean peoples and other immigrants from the African Diaspora make up the quasi-political face of Black America. But as immigrants from a former colonized community, Caribbean writers carry with them a historical experience that differentiates them from African Americans - they stand on the border of two spaces. What impact does this duality have on Caribbean literature written by writers who have left the «home» space for American soil? As many writers have suggested, Caribbean writers are continuously looking back to home in an attempt to understand who they are and where they belong. This book postulates that it is through nostalgia, or an attempt to renegotiate the past, that the Caribbean writer attempts to reconcile his/her duality. Nostalgia can be directly linked to an understanding of, and by extension a critique of, American social and political practices as well as an appraisal of colonial influences in the Caribbean. Thus the discourse of Caribbean writers living in America operates on different levels: Although Caribbean migratory writers are continuously looking back to «home», this nostalgia is tied to a reevaluation of American and island consciousness. The texts discussed in this work are, in effect, engaged in critical analysis; the texts «perform criticism» of the «home» country and «that man's country» - the United States.
This interdisciplinary study focuses on recent migrant literature by five outstanding authors from the anglophone, francophone and hispanophone Caribbean: Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, Curdella Forbes and Caryl Phillips. Anthea Morrison offers a unique focus on Caribbean migration from a diverse corpus of texts. The analysis emphasizes the importance of travelling in the Caribbean imaginary and the discourse of identity and offers close readings of several "migrant narratives". Care is taken to underline the specificity of the national contexts which inform the work of each author, despite the manifest commonalities they share as Caribbean writers, and further, to illustrate the heterogeneity of Caribbean thought. The analysis seeks to demonstrate that Caribbean migrant literature is far from monolithic, not only because of inevitable sociopolitical and historical differences between the distinctive territories but also because of the singularities of temperament and experience which shape the attitudes of individual writers vis-à-vis the land left behind. At a time when, both regionally and internationally, issues of multiculturalism, migrancy and an apparent resurgence of nativism are topics of urgent discussion, New Crossings brings timely focus to the continuing importance of migration in Caribbean experience and in Caribbean literature.
Caribbean women have long utilized the medium of fiction to break the pervasive silence surrounding abuse and exploitation. Contemporary works by such authors as Tiphanie Yanique and Nicole Dennis-Benn illustrate the deep-rooted consequences of trauma based on gender, sexuality, and race, and trace the steps that women take to find safer ground from oppression. Taking Flight examines the immigrant experience in contemporary Caribbean women’s writing and considers the effects of restrictive social mores. In the texts examined in Taking Flight, culturally sanctioned violence impacts the ability of female characters to be at home in their bodies or in the spaces they inhabit. The works draw attention to the historic racialization and sexualization of black women’s bodies and continue the legacy of narrating black women’s long-standing contestation of systems of oppression. Arguing that there is a clear link between trauma, shame, and migration, with trauma serving as a precursor to the protagonists’ emigration, Jennifer Donahue focuses on how female bodies are policed; how moral, racial, and sexual codes are linked; and how the enforcement of social norms can function as a form of trauma. Donahue considers the relationship between trauma, shame, and sexual politics and investigates how shame works as a social regulator that frequently leads to withdrawal or avoidant behaviors in those who violate socially sanctioned mores. Most importantly, Taking Flight positions flight as a powerful counter to disempowerment and considers how flight, whether through dissociation or migration, functions as a form of resistance.
This volume examines the phenomenon of mass population migration from the Caribbean to North America and the United Kingdom and the social, cultural, and economic adaptation of the immigrants to their new environments. A central theme of this volume is that twentieth century Caribbean migration is more than the migration of labor in search of jobs; it is also a movement of households and thus affects not only the well-being of family members but also their social relationships. The contributors provide new analytical perspectives on the factors that motivate this movement, and the social, cultural,and economic impact of the movement on the household itself. The volume is divided into three parts. Part I examines the historical movement to the United States and the United Kingdom. The chapters in this section explore the relationship between the character of Caribbean development and the factors motivating the migration of households, the nineteenth century beginnings of twentieth century mass Caribbean migration, and the social and economic experiences of the post-World War II Caribbean immigrants in Britain. Part II looks at the problems of settlement and adaptation in the major urban centers where Caribbean immigrants have tended to concentrate, giving special attention to the status of Caribbean women in the United States and the role of social networks in helping immigrants to adapt to their new surroundings. The final section looks at the problem of illegal migration from the Caribbean to the United States, drawing on data from the annual reports of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Students, researchers, and policy-makers will find In Search of a Better Life an important contribution to the understanding of the total migration process.
This book represents the product of a two-year research project and a four-year personal journey to explore the relationship between migration and economic development in the Caribbean area. Does Caribbean immigration to the United States assist or impede the economic development of the Caribbean? Would the curtailment of immigration affect the stability of the Caribbean? Can a certain mix of development strategies significantly reduce the pressures for migration? What can the United States and the Caribbean countries do separately and together to improve the prospects for economic development while permitting migration at manageable levels? This book begins with these questions and ends with some answers.
