369 p., Reconstructs the process of migration, assimilation, and the realization of full sociopolitical participation in the United States in terms of the relationship between peoples of African descent--who were compelled to migrate as slaves across the Middle Passage, and who also voluntarily immigrated from various localities within the Black Atlantic--and select groups of immigrants from other locations around the globe. The author concentrates on novels by William Faulkner, Paule Marshall, James Baldwin, and cartoonist Chris Ware, and examine closely how these authors, in their respective texts, work to restructure, reimagine, and thereby challenge the enshrined American narratives of national belonging and acculturation through literary constructions of the identities and experiences of peoples of African descent, as migrants themselves, in tandem with their social, political, economic, sexual, racial, and cultural engagements with other immigrants to the nation-state.
270 p., Juxtaposes the novels written by Merle Collins (Grenada) and Lakshmi Persaud (Trinidad and Tobago), which are classified as Caribbean-based novels in which the characters do not leave the island of their birth until they have attained womanhood, against those of Edwidge Danticat (Haiti) and Paule Marshall (Barbados) which depict their protagonists' emotional and geographical displacement between the United States and the Caribbean.
270 p., This dissertation focuses on women voices in Black British Literature between the period 1980 and 2005 - specifically in the works of Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, Joan Riley, Ravinder Randhawa, Meera Syal and Gurinder Chadha - and seeks to understand how women who are of Caribbean and South Asian descent form and reform their identities in their new home as immigrants or first-generation Britons and why their stories make a valuable and essential contribution to Black British Literature.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
223 p., Investigates the exilic literature of Caribbean-born and Caribbean-descent writers who, from their new location in Northern America, question their cultural roots and search for a creative autonomy.
