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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
228 p, Contents: Canonized hybridities, resistant hybridities: Chutney Soca, carnival, and the politics of nationalism / Shalini Puri -- Soca and social formations: avoiding the romance of culture in Trinidad / Stefano Harney -- Trinidad romance: the invention of Jamaican carnival / Belinda J. Edmondson -- All that is black melts into air: negritud and nation in Puerto Rico / Catherine Den Tandt -- Positive vibration? Capitalist textual hegemony and Bob Marley / Mike Alleyne --"Titid ad pèp la se marasa": Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the new national romance in Haiti / Kevin Meehan -- Shadowboxing in the Mangrove: the politics of identity in postcolonial Martinique / Richard Price and Sally Price -- Beautiful Indians, troublesome negroes, and nice white men: Caribbean romances and the invention of Trinidad / Faith Smith -- Homing instincts: immigrant nostalgia and gender politics in Brown girl, brownstones / Supriya Nair -- Derek Walcott: liminal spaces/substantive histories / Tejumola Olaniyan
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
224 p., Marronage - the process of flight by slaves from servitude to establish their own hegemonies in inhospitable or wild territories - had its beginnings in the early 1500s in Hispaniola, the first European settlement in the New World. As fictional personae the maroons continue to weave in and out of oral and literary tales as central and ancient characters of Jamaica's heritage. Identifies the place of Jamaican fiction in the larger regional literature and focuses on its essential themes and strategies of discourse for conveying these themes.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published: 1953., 272 p., A powerful reflection on colonial Jamaica and the condition of the urban poor, told through the voices and stories of several boldly drawn characters.
