Category: Recent Publications

Edited by Raphael Dalleo and Curdella Forbes

The years between the 1920s and 1970s are key for the development of Caribbean literature, producing the founding canonical literary texts of the Anglophone Caribbean. This volume features essays by major scholars as well as emerging voices revisiting important moments from that era to open up new perspectives. Caribbean contributions to the Harlem Renaissance, to the Windrush generation publishing in England after World War II, and to the regional reverberations of the Cuban Revolution all feature prominently in this story. At the same time, we uncover lesser known stories of writers publishing in regional newspapers and journals, of pioneering women writers, and of exchanges with Canada and the African continent. From major writers like Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Jean Rhys to recently recuperated figures like Eric Walrond, Una Marson, Sylvia Wynter, and Ismith Khan, this volume sets a course for the future study of Caribbean literature.

Purchase the book here.

Raphael Dalleo’s essay on the U.S. occupation of Haiti appears in the most recent issue of sx salon. The special issue, guest edited by Vanessa Valdes, is titled “Haiti in the Hispanophone Caribbean Literary Imaginary.” Dalleo’s contribution takes research from his new book, American Imperialism’s Undead, to argue for the importance of the U.S. occupation from 1915 to 1934 to understanding Hispanic Caribbean writing about Haiti.

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A new edited collection about Pierre Bourdieu’s influence on postcolonial studies. The volume features essays by Graham Huggan, Sarah Brouillette, Chris Bongie, and others, covering topics that include the B.B.C.’s Caribbean voices program and the South African publishing industry; analysis of Bourdieu’s fieldwork in Algeria during the decolonization era; and comparisons between Bourdieu’s work and alternative versions of literary sociology such as Pascale Casanova’s and Franco Moretti’s.

For more information, visit http://postcolonialbourdieu.scholar.bucknell.edu.

The collection Beyond Windrush: Rethinking Postwar Anglophone Caribbean Literature, edited by J. Dillon Brown and Leah Rosenberg, has been published by University Press of Mississippi.

Beyond Windrush stands out as the first book to reexamine and redefine the writing of the crucial post-World War II era, often considered as the founding moment of West Indian writing through figures like V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Sam Selvon. The collection’s fourteen original essays make clear that in the 1950s there was already a wide spectrum of West Indian men and women–Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, and white-creole–who were writing, publishing, and even painting. Many lived in the Caribbean and North America, rather than London. Moreover, these writers addressed subjects overlooked in the more conventionally conceived canon, including topics such as queer sexuality and the environment. This collection offers new readings of canonical authors (Lamming, Roger Mais, and Andrew Salkey); hitherto marginalized authors (Ismith Khan, Elma Napier, and John Hearne); and commonly ignored genres (memoir, short stories, and journalism).

Raphael Dalleo’s chapter in the volume is entitled “Marie Chauvet and the Writer’s Exile from the Postcolonial Public Sphere.” He looks at the parallels between the work of Haitian writer Marie Chauvet and Barbadian George Lamming, to show how despite their locations in different linguistic traditions and physical locations, they are engaging with some of the same issues of the writer’s relationship to social movements and the crisis of the literary public sphere.

Contributors include many of the major critics of West Indian literature, including Alison Donnell, Donette Francis, Evelyn O’Callaghan, Glyne Griffith, Kim Robinson-Walcott, Faith Smith, Michael Bucknor, Michelle Stephens, and Edward Baugh.

More information about the book is available here.