African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
280 p, Quetzalcoatl and the smoking mirror (reflections on originality and tradition) / Wilson Harris -- Beyond a boundary: Magical realism in the Jamaican frame of reference / Erna Brodber -- Of boloms, mirrors, and monkeymen: what's real and what's not in Robert Antoni's Divina Trace / Rhonda Cobham -- Boeli van Leeuwen's The sign of Jonah: eschatology in the Dutch Caribbean / André Lefevere -- Omeros: Walcott and the tradition / John Chioles -- Plantation emblems in the Dutch seventeenth century: Albert Helman's contrastive analysis / Ineke Phaf -- Beyond sites of execution: Haiti and the historical imagination in C.L.R. James and Alejo Carpentier -- In the name of the mother: Lamming and the cultural significance of "mother country" in the decolonization process / Ngugi Wa Thiong'o -- "A different kind of creature": Caribbean literature, the Cyclops factor and the second poetics of the propter nos / Sylvia Wynter -- The erotics of colonialism in contemporary French West Indian literary culture / A. James Arnold -- Paul Gilroy's slaves, ships, and routes: the middle passage as a metaphor / Joan Dayan -- Creolization and nation building in the Hispanic Caribbean / Antonio Benítez-Rojo -- Sketching a literature from the French Antilles: from negritude to Créolité / Maryse Condé -- The unity of Caribbean literature: a position / Silvio Torres-Saillant -- Realisms of the fictive imagination: outsmarting Sisyphus, amending Eldorado, writing Caribbean / Timothy J. Reiss.;
Discusses the emergence of Afro-Hispanic literature over the past 25 years. Details the many social and political factors that have influenced the literary movement. Argues that the emergence of Afro-Hispanic literature is timely in its challenging of traditional views of what is admissible into the literary canon.;
Discusses the emergence of an Afro-Cuban aesthetic. Notes the major contributions of Cuban writers Félix Tanco, Antonio Zambrana, Nicolás Guillén, Miguel Barnet, and others to the literary movement. Remarks that these authors give us a view of Latin American history from "below the deck of a slave ship" - a view that is very different from the traditional one.;
Discusses the poetry of Afro-Cuban writer Nancy Morejón, focusing on her poetry collection, Paisaje célebre (Fundarte, 1993). Compares the book to her previous work, and discusses the political and social influences that shaped it. Notes that this book marks an important stage in Morejón's poetry, in that it celebrates a new and different country and voice - one of indepedence and freedom.;
