Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Preacher And Missionary War: The Political Role Of Race And Christianity In The 1831 Baptist War, Emilee Dale

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abolitionists from the Eighteenth Century to the mid-Nineteenth Century tended to be remembered by William Wilberforce, Joseph Soul, Thomas Clarkson, Samuel Bowly, and William Lloyd Garrison. All of these men have been extremely well represented throughout scholarship and the archives. The voices that are often left out of the archives are the men and women who fought on the frontlines for their freedom. Enslaved men and women fought to the death for their freedom and are often overshadowed by White missionaries and abolitionists in the archives. Black leaders often have less representation throughout history and scholarship due to the lack …

“True Darkness And True Womanness” : A Study Of Sisterhood In Marlon James’ The Book Of Night Women, Jessica Schwartz

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

This paper focuses on the obstacles to building sisterhood and community in Marlon James’ novel The Book of Night Women (2009). I examine the acts of violence that the enslaved women at Montpelier Estate perform against one another and consider the influence the plantation environment has on these relationships. The violence that takes place among the enslaved women is especially prevalent within the group of “night women,” which consists of Lilith, Homer, Pallas, Iphigenia, Hippolyta, Callisto, and Gorgon. Despite the biological and symbolic sisterhood between these women, they more frequently express feelings of enmity than ones of community. By highlighting …

Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’S La Deuxième Mort De Toussaint Louverture, Mariana F. Past

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’s La deuxième mort de Toussaint Louverture,” Mariana Past situates the Haitian-Swiss novelist’s understudied narrative within the context of Caribbean letters and the Haitian literary tradition, then discusses the broader, intertextual implications of Toussaint Louverture’s “second” death for Haiti and the trans-Atlantic world. To what end does Pasquet deploy the aged ghost of a Haitian revolutionary icon being invoked by German Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist in the Fort de Joux castle-cum-prison within France’s remote, mountainous Jura region? What is at stake when the diasporic writer reincarnates a legendary German poet as protagonist, placing him …

De Pura Cepa: Seis Cuentos De Puerto Rico, 1548–2017, Rita M. Pérez-Padilla

Honors Papers

"De pura cepa" is a collection of six short stories, each in a different time period and different conflict in Puerto Rican history: the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, the era of slavery and sugar plantations in the mid-19th century, the transition from Spain to the United States in the first years of the 20th century, the start of mass emigrations from Puerto Rico in the mid-20th century, and finally the immediate effects of Hurricane Maria in the latter half of 2017. There is also an introductory story that takes place in the early 2000s. The collection confronts and …

Imperial Illness: Considering The Trope Of Madness In Michelle Cliff's No Telephone To Heaven, James Mccrink

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven (1996), and to scrutinize, through Christopher’s mental illness, the couched, unspoken, and deeply embedded presence of imperial hegemony in the Caribbean. I shall argue that Christopher’s mental illness is not, as one might have it, an inexplicable lapse into insanity, but both a fitting, polyrhythmic expression of longstanding postcolonial/neocolonial abuse, and a dynamic form of counterhegemonic resistance. Thus, my use of the term, imperial illness, refers to colonial impacts on the Caribbean, and how those impacts continue to play a significant role in postcolonial/neocolonial societies and, …

"Everything Remains The Same And Yet Nothing Is The Same": Neocolonialism In The Caribbean Diaspora Through The Language Of Family And Servitude, Laura Barrio-Vilar

Journal of International Women's Studies

This essay examines Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, a novel that tackles the process of decolonization from old and new forms of colonialism through the language of servitude and family (specifically, mother-daughter relationships). The novel’s protagonist is not only an example of the wave of West Indian migration and the feminization of labor, but her agency also provides Kincaid with the necessary platform to deploy her views on U.S. imperialism. I propose reading Lucy’s evolution toward self-determination as not only an individual but also a collective experience. I interpret the novel as an allegory that can help us better understand the …

El Narrador En La Ciudad Dentro De La Temática De Los Cuentos De Emigración Y Transición Puertorriqueña (1948-1968), Sandra Margarita Stern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a result of the political and economic upheavals in Puerto Rico’s governing structures during the mid-twentieth century, changes occurred in the social and cultural contexts as well. Rapid industrialization and installation of modernity became the goals for the island, which resulted in mass movement of people from agricultural rural communities to cities, namely, San Juan and New York. A reflection of this phenomenon appears in different genres of literary production during this time. This new form of writing, with its innovative approaches, grew and found preference mostly in the short story.

This dissertation focuses on the stories of this …

A Never Ending Journey: The Impossibilities Of Home In Sirena Selena Vestida De Pena And Flores De Otro Mundo, Irune Del Rio Gabiola

Irune Gabiola

Reconsiderations of home have been crucially examined in Caribbean cultural productions. As Jamil Khader argues in her article on “Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: Community and Transnational Mobility in Caribbean Postcolonial Feminist Writings,” Caribbean feminists are faced with the task of challenging a conventional idea of home that has historically located women and other marginal subjects under conditions of oppression and exploitation. In focusing on the narratives by Aurora Levins Morales, Rosario Morales and Esmeralda Santiago, she points out the infinite sense of homelessness that invades, in particular, these Puerto Rican individuals who need to find more productive manners to articulate “home” while …

Trauma Of A Perpetrator: Reimagining Perpetrators In Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker, Marinda Quist

Theses and Dissertations

This article studies the possibility of perpetrator trauma in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker. The article gives a brief historical background of the political violence in Haiti that occurred under the Duvalier dictatorship and focuses specifically on the role of Tonton Macoutes, the violent enforcers of much of Duvalier's oppression. Drawing on trauma theory, the article argues that perpetrators have been very little studied within trauma studies because of the possible moral implications of giving research time to individuals who have often chosen their own path of violence. Along with theorists such as Kali Tal and Dominick LaCapra, this article …

Dubbin' The Literary Canon: Writin' And Soundin' A Transnational Caribbean Experience, Warren Harding

Honors Papers

In the mid-1970s, a collective of Jamaican poets from Kingston to London began to use reggae as a foundational aesthetic to their poetry. Inspired by the rise of reggae music and the work of the Caribbean Artists Movement based London from 1966 to 1972, these artists took it upon themselves to continue the dialogue on Caribbean cultural production. This research will explore the ways in which dub poetry created an expressive space for Jamaican artists to complicate discussions of migration and colonialism in the transnational Caribbean experience.

In order to do so, this research engages historical, ethnomusicological, and literary theories …

Le Projet Judéo-Noir D’André Schwarz-Bart : Saga Réversible, Francine Kaufmann

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

André Schwarz-Bart’s literary call was born from his will to immortalize in writing the memory of the culture of his Jewish ancestors which was eradicated from the map of Europe during the Shoa. A pioneer of the “memory work” with The Last of the Justs, a novel awarded the Goncourt in 1959, he invented the genre of the “identity saga” whose heroes gather within themselves the centuriesold experience of their people. A similar ambition guided him while he composed a cycle – that remained mostly unpublished – about Black slavery and the culture issued from it: A Woman Named Solitude.

African American Literature By Writers Of Caribbean Descent, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

They dubbed it the Port of No Return. When their ancestors left that port at Elmira Beach, Ghana – or Goree Island, Senegal, or any of a number of similar African ports – and set out on the perilous journey over the ocean to the Americas, there was no going back for the New World Negroes. That is what for most Africans in the Americas was the beginning of their history. Whether resident in a small island nation or in the American colonies, whether under the domain of a British, Spanish, French, or Dutch colonial power, and whether shuttled back …

"I Going Away. I Going Home.": Austin Clarke's "Leaving This Island Place", Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Austin Clarke’s “Leaving This Island Place” is one of scores of Caribbean autobiographical works that focus on a bright, young, lower-class islander leaving his/her small island place and setting out on “Eldorado voyages.” The narrative of that journey away from home to Europe or Canada or the United States and the later efforts to return may be said to be the Caribbean story, as suggested in the subtitle of Wilfred Cartey’s study of Caribbean literature, Whispers from the Caribbean: I Going Away, I Going Home, which argues that while in Caribbean literature there is much movement away, there is …

El Veneno Y Los Remedios: Vida Y Muerte En La Narrativa De Mayra Montero, Jesus Castro Gorfti

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the important role that certain elements--namely poison and natural remedies--play in the narrative of Mayra Montero. Poison and natural remedies are an intrinsic part of the Voodoo and Santeria religions, which are the framework for her novels. Within these religions poison serves a dual purpose. Montero's characters employ poison not only for personal gain--and in their struggle against the establishment--but also for more beneficial means, for instance as a way of obtaining food. Natural remedies are part of the magical-medicinal nature of these religions. They maintain the physical and spiritual well-being of …

La Voz Y La Violencia Invisible En El Cuento Caribeño Contemporáneo, Carmen Bourbon

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Some short stories by Caribbean women writers feature a female protagonist speaking in her own voice, telling her own story and coming to understand herself and her circumstances. In other texts, the protagonist's voice is challenged, overwhelmed or replaced by other voices, and she continues suffering psychologically. We examine the relationship between changes in the narrative voice and the female protagonist’s fate in twelve texts, demonstrating the consequences of her ability or inability to tell her story.

Each text displays a distinct correspondence between the protagonist’s life and how it is narrated. In "Masticar una rosa", "El lado frío de …

A Never Ending Journey: The Impossibilities Of Home In Sirena Selena Vestida De Pena And Flores De Otro Mundo, Irune Del Rio Gabiola

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Reconsiderations of home have been crucially examined in Caribbean cultural productions. As Jamil Khader argues in her article on “Subaltern Cosmopolitanism: Community and Transnational Mobility in Caribbean Postcolonial Feminist Writings,” Caribbean feminists are faced with the task of challenging a conventional idea of home that has historically located women and other marginal subjects under conditions of oppression and exploitation. In focusing on the narratives by Aurora Levins Morales, Rosario Morales and Esmeralda Santiago, she points out the infinite sense of homelessness that invades, in particular, these Puerto Rican individuals who need to find more productive manners to articulate “home” while …

La Música Popular Como Arena De Negociación En La Literatura Caribeña Contemporánea, Telba Espinoza Contreras

LSU Master's Theses

Popular music is a vital part of the cultural and social life in the Hispanic Caribbean. Undoubtedly, musical contributions from Cuba and Puerto Rico to the rest of the world and especially to the rest of Latin America are of exceptional value. For instance, Cuba has created and exported the bolero, and Puerto Rican musical rhythms are at the core of salsa music. Caribbean literature has not been indifferent to the tremendous importance of music in the lives of Caribbean people; therefore, many literary texts have included the popular music in their narratives in many ways. For example, some of …

La Narrativa En La Autobiografía De Un Esclavo De Juan Francisco Manzano, Carmen L. Cosme

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

No abstract provided.

'Grung Tell Me Wud': An Introduction To Karl, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Olive Senior informs us in 'The Poem as Gardening, the Story as Su-Su: Finding a Literary Voice' that Jamaican elders believe the ground is the place where ancestral wisdom is located and they will explain and validate their warning or advice by saying, 'Grung tell me wud' (36). Jamaican linguist/literary critic/poet/and novelist Velma Pollard has put her ear to the ground of Jamaica and shared many important words of ancestral wisdom with us. This was a natural development for the talented girlchild born into an artistic family in Woodside, Jamaica, a rural community rich in folk traditions: her father was …

Sins Of The Mother(Land): Presence, Absence, And Self In Caribbean Literature, Katie Thomas

Graduate English Association New Voices Conference 2007

Through an exploration of Caribbean literature, namely Jamaica Kincaid‟s Annie John and Edwidge Danticat‟s The Farming of Bones, with references to Rosario Ferré‟s The House on the Lagoon and Bartolomé De Las Casas‟ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, I will establish the effects of Western colonization on the Caribbean female during both Western occupation and Western absence. Turning my focus from the Caribbean mother towards her daughter—the progeny of the colonized world—I will then investigate the tenuous binds and boundaries of the mother/daughter relationship, made especially tenuous under the Western gaze. Expanding my view to the …

Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives And The Second Generation By Lisa D. Mcgill (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Using second generation Americans Harry Belafonte, Paule Marshall, Audre Lorde, Piri Thomas, and the meringue hip hop group Proyecto Uno, Lisa D. McGill considers in Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives and the Second Generation the issues of identity formation of those whose heritage ultimately includes Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, most often New York City. Though her subjects come from different national, racial, and language backgrounds; though they have made their names in different media; and though they have different views of race, identity, and culture, she convincingly makes the argument that "African America becomes powerful site …

Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, And Survival By Meredith M. Gadsby (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

The folk will tell you that salt can either save you or destroy you. Toni Cade Bambara's Velma of The Salteaters realized that her survival depended on learning "the difference between eating salt as an antidote to snakebite and turning into salt, succumbing to the serpent." The lesson of similar folk wisdom is the subject of Meredith M. Gasby's Sucking Salt, where she propses as a new framework for the examination of Caribbean women's writing the survival techiniques implied in "sucking salt," techiniques suggested in her aunt's reflections on people she knew. Tantie expounded: "Little salt won't kill …

Ismith Khan (1925-2002), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Trinidadian novelist who explored the conflicts experienced by East Indians in the Caribbean as well as the racial diversity that characterizes the region. A brilliant storyteller, he created memorable characters through whom the sights and cadences of Trinidad will forever live.

Caribbean Literature (Francophone), Kasongo Mulenda Kapanga

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Caribbean Literature (Francophone), or Antillean literature, is the literature in French from Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Haiti. Except in the case of Haiti, this literature developed along three major concepts: negritude, Caribbeanness, and Creoleness. Critics trace its origins to the rise of the negritude movement (in the 1930s), when black students, intellectuals, and artists revolted against France's assimilation policies to adopt an ideology aimed at restoring black and African values embedded in popular culture. The literary landmark was undoubtedly Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, 1939).

A Conversation With Velma Pollard, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Noted poet, novelist, linguist, and educator, Velma Pollard was Visiting Professor of English at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, during the fall semester of 2001 when I conducted the following interview. John Martin, my graduate assistant at the time, assisted me in videotaping and transcribing our conversation, which took place in her cottage at the University on December 3, 2001.

Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life By Bruce King (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In Another Life Derek Walcott wrote, "I had entered the house of literature as a houseboy"; Jamaican poet Mervyn Morris signified on this image in his The Pond when he declared, "And these are my rooms now." The journey that Walcott makes from "houseboy" to master/ruler/owner of the house of literature (the Nobel Laureate is frequently acclaimed the greatest poet writing in the English language) is painstakingly detailed in Bruce King's tome Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life.

Introduction , Charles Tatum

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Contemporary cultural critics have theorized the multiple aspects of "location" in many different ways…

Colonial Violence And Trauma In The Works Of Michèle Lacrosil And Ken Bugul, Marie-Chantal Kalisa

French Language and Literature Papers

To what extent can we say that both Lacrosil and Bugul rewrite Fanon? Through the study of Cajou and Ken, respectively the Guadeloupean and the Senegalese female protagonists, this article proposes a way to derive a specifically female perspective on colonial violence. The essay focuses on the two novels, Cajou and Le baobab fou, and examines the effect of colonial epistemological violence and its specific impact on the black female’s subjectivity. The protagonists Ken and Cajou revisit their initial trauma in a quest for knowledge of their historical heritage and engage in a dialogue with Frantz Fanon, representative of black …

The Colored Girl In The Ring: A Guyanese Woman Remembers By Brenda Chester Doharris (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Brenda Chester DoHarris's The Colored Girl in the Ring: A Guyanese Woman Remembers joins the company of some of the most memorable works of Caribbean literature, those classic accounts of coming-of-age, such as George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, Michael Anthony's The Year in San Fernando, Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey, Erna Brodber's Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Zea Edgell's Beka Lamb, Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, and Beryl Gilroy's Sunlight on Sweet Water. Like most of the bildungsromans - and …

My Brother By Jamaica Kincaid (Book Review), Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In Jamaica Kincaid's six previous autobiographical novels and essays (At the Bottom of the River, 1984; Annie John, 1985; A Small Place, 1988; Annie, Gwen, Lily, Pam and Julie, 1989; Lucy, 1990; and The Autobiography of My Mother, 1996), her readers have the feeling that she has told all about her troubled life in Antigua and her painful emotional conflicts with her family (especially her mother). We discover with her new memoir, My Brother, however, that some things have been just too painful to tell - until now. Clearly the most obvious …