Caribbean Creolization: Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language, Literature, and Identity

This volume brings together prominent writers from the English, French, Spanish, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean in an examination of creolization and its impact upon the region's literary production. It is especially noteworthy for the broad spectrum of Caribbean nationalities that it includes: writers from Cuba, Curacao, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Panama, Suriname, and Tobago. Together, they are engaged in redefining Caribbean identity and esthetics, and their reflections on this process trace the evolution of a dynamic regional literature and identity out of materials displaced amid the movement of colonial empires and nationalistic and economic upheavals.

The collection addresses a number of controversial issues, among them the survival of racism in mestizaje cultures of Hispanic nations of the Caribbean, the opposing theories of the history and development of Papiamento and Haitian Creole, and the role of Creole languages in the production of consciousness and literature.