Explores the way writers address the formation and fate of the contemporary American working class in an age of neoliberal globalization. Specifically, the essay examines Russell Banks's 1985 novel Continental Drift, which interweaves the stories of two characters who pull up stakes and head to Florida in search of a better life: an oil furnace repair man from New Hampshire and a young, single mother from Haiti.
Hathaway describes the characters and plot of this novel, which is set in the Civil Rights era and focuses on the experiences of a Trinidadian immigrant who has come to the U. S. on a scholarship to a small, Catholic college in the Midwest
Hathaway discusses how this novel records the human toll of Guyanese politics as it chronicles the activities of one extended family suffering under the reign of a corrupt government
Within sectors of North America's African-American community, the colloquial expression "being touched by the brush" describes a multi-ethnic individual that possesses subtle Negroid physical features which are only detectable by close inspection by a "trained eye." Here, Edison discusses the historical factors in Puerto Rico and Panama that make up the foundation upon which Francisco Arrivi's "Los Vejigantes" and Carlos Guillermo Wilson's "Chombo" were constructed.;
