Caribbean Diaspora Literature

Prerequisites: the instructor’s permission. This course will examine texts by writers from the Spanish, French, and English-speaking Caribbean whose work has been in some way marked by exile, emigration and colonial migration. Additionally, the course will investigate the impact of displacement and transculturation on the production of new cultural subjects, the articulation of alternative definitions of nationhood, citizenship and/or sovereignty, and the contradictions of literary reception in metropolitan capitals. Among the writers that the course will engage with are Reinaldo Arenas, Piri Thomas, Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, V.S. Naipaul, and Jamaica Kincaid.