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Caribbean Romances:
The Politics of Regional Representation

by Belinda Edmondson

240 pages, 6 x 9 • Print-on-demand paperback ISBN 978-0-8139-1822-8 • $29.50

Cloth ISBN 0-8139-1821-9 • $59.50


THIS INTERDISCIPLINARY VOLUME on postcolonial Caribbean culture brings together ten essays by exciting young scholars who challenge some of the established assumptions of postcolonial studies. The contributors look at ways in which the "romance" trope is employed within contemporary Caribbean popular culture and literature to idealize the newly independent, postcolonial societies of the region.

The essays situate this discourse of idealization in its historical and cultural contexts and reveal how it is a reinvention of the old romance ../images initially constructed in the imperial imagination of Europe and America.

Contents:

  • Introduction: "The Caribbean: Myths, Tropes, Discourses," Belinda Edmondson, Rutgers University
  • "Canonized Hybridities, Resistant Hybridities: Chutney Soca, Carnival, and the Politics of Nationalism," Shalini Puri, University of Pittsburgh
  • "Soca and Social Formations: Avoiding the Romance of Culture in Trinidad," Stefano Harney, Pace University
  • "Trinidad Romance: The Invention of Jamaican Carnival," Belinda Edmondson
  • "All That Is Black Melts into Air: Negritud and Nation in Puerto Rico," Catherine Den Tandt, University of Alberta
  • "Positive Vibration?: Capitalist Textual Hegemony and Bob Marley," Mike Alleyne, Florida A & M University
  • "'Titid ak pèp la se marasa': Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the New National Romance in Haiti," Kevin Meehan, University of Central Florida
  • "Shadowboxing in the Mangrove: The Politics of Identity in Postcolonial Martinique," Richard Price and Sally Price, College of William and Mary
  • "Beautiful Indians, Troublesome Negroes, and Nice White Men: Caribbean Romances and the Invention of Trinidad," Faith Smith, Brandeis University
  • "Homing Instincts: Immigrant Nostalgia and Gender Politics in Brown Girl, Brownstones," Supriya Nair, Tulane University
  • "Derek Walcott: Liminal Spaces/Substantive Histories," Tejumola Olaniyan, University of Virginia



Reviews

"This collection offers perhaps the first systematic critique--and deconstruction--of some of the central categories in postcolonial theory in general and Caribbean cultural and literary studies in particular. The contributors, by writing on English, French, and Spanish speaking Caribbean countries, succeed in overcoming one of the major handles in the study of the literatures and cultures of the region--the barriers set up by colonial languages. This book brings a fresh perspective to Caribbean studies and takes its popular culture beyond tourist art."--Simon Gikandi, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor



The Author

Belinda Edmondson is Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies at Rutgers University



Related Links



Caribbean Romances: The Politics of Regional Representation
by Belinda Edmondson
240 pages, 6 x 9 • Print-on-demand paperback ISBN 978-0-8139-1822-8 • $29.50
Cloth ISBN 0-8139-1821-9 • $59.50

http://www.upress.virginia.edu/edmondson\.html

Revised 1/9/09