African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
358 p, Chancy aims to show that Haiti’s exclusion is grounded in its historical role as a site of ontological defiance. Her premise is that writers Edwidge Danticat, Julia Alvarez, Zoé Valdés, Loida Maritza Pérez, Marilyn Bobes, Achy Obejas, Nancy Morejón, and visual artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons attempt to defy fears of “otherness” by assuming the role of “archaeologists of amnesia.” They seek to elucidate women’s variegated lives within the confining walls of their national identifications—identifications wholly defined as male. They reach beyond the confining limits of national borders to discuss gender, race, sexuality, and class in ways that render possible the linking of all three nations.
276 p., A critical examination of Haitian migration and displacement in North America that engages both a theoretical and literary analysis of exile and diaspora as consequences of migration and displacement. Argues that Haitian writers in North America inscribe migration by troping exile and diaspora to speak of the predicament of displaced migratory subjects and their inevitable crossings of places, landscapes, borders, cultures, and nations. Analyzes three novels by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat: Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), The Farming of Bones (1998), and the Dew Breaker (2004); and two novels by Haitian Canadian writer Myriam Chancy: Spirit of Haiti (2003) and The Scorpion's Claw (2005).
