Table of Contents

Acknowledgements  Introduction  Difficult subjects: Caribbean writing before the boom  Global villages and watery graves: recrossing the Black Atlantic  Double Agents: gender, ethnicity and the absent woman  Sexing the Subject: writing and the politics of sexual identity  Works Cited

About the Author

Nottingham Trent University, UK

Reviews

'This book will extend the archive of Caribbean texts in challenging and exciting ways, and is likely to initiate more generous and promiscuous readings of Caribbean writings, as well as making a valuable contribution to debates about the local and the global which are so central to postcolonial studies.' - Denise deCaires Narain, University of Sussex'it amounts to nothing less than a radical challenge to the canon of Caribbean literature and its repressions. It is the only comprehensive sketch of all the major blindspots of Caribbean literary history and criticism, identifying and correcting not only the exclusions of nationalist canons, but also of post-nationalist and feminist ones. Donnell thus puts into critical circulation a rich, unruly, and diverse body of literature.' - Shalini Puri, University of Pitsburgh

'This book will extend the archive of Caribbean texts in challenging and exciting ways, and is likely to initiate more generous and promiscuous readings of Caribbean writings, as well as making a valuable contribution to debates about the local and the global which are so central to postcolonial studies.' – Denise deCaires Narain, University of Sussex, UK'it amounts to nothing less than a radical challenge to the canon of Caribbean literature and its repressions. It is the only comprehensive sketch of all the major blindspots of Caribbean literary history and criticism, identifying and correcting not only the exclusions of nationalist canons, but also of post-nationalist and feminist ones. Donnell thus puts into critical circulation a rich, unruly, and diverse body of literature.' - Shalini Puri, University of Pittsburgh, USAAlison Donnell provides a thoroughly comprehensive guide to,and evaluation of, Caribbean literary criticism to date,as well as a justified counter position to its predominant paradigms in her recent - WasafiriFor the most part Donnell excels in her task,that is to challenge and revise Caribbean literary criticism. Donnell brings to light a number of neglected texts while proving persuasive reasons as to why they should be included in the contemporary canon.She also provides a detailed description of regionalised literary criticism that has resisted diasporic imperatives. - Katherine Verhagen' A stunning combination of survey, criticism, and informed reading' - Sue N. Greene, New West Indian Guide‘Donnell deploys meticulous historiography and archival research, and engages the work the work of well-known theorists and a great many critics known and not so known: one gets the sense that the book itself is, at one level, an archive.’ - Curdella Forbes, The Journal of West Indian Literature 'The quality of her research, the clarity of her analysis and the bold objectivity of her arguments models a most responsible and thorough approach for anyone working through the highly politicized debates of Caribbean literature...Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature is, rather, foundational for its comprehensive mapping and rigorous interrogation of Caribbean literature and its critical tradition. ' - Lara Cahill, Anthurium