Dreams of Archives Unfolded : Absence and Caribbean Life Writing.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stitt, Jocelyn Fenton.

Series:

Critical Caribbean Studies

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (218 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Summary:

The first book on pan-Caribbean life writing, Dreams of Archives Unfoldedreveals the innovative formal practices used to write about historical absences within contemporary personal narratives. Although the premier genres of writing postcoloniality in the Caribbean have been understood to be fiction and poetry, established figures such as Erna Brodber, Maryse Condé, Lorna Goodison, Edwidge Danticat, Saidiya Hartmann, Ruth Behar, and Dionne Brand and emerging writers such as Yvonne Shorter Brown, and Gaiutra Bahadur use life writing to question the relationship between the past and the present. Stitt theorizes that the remarkable flowering of life writing by Caribbean women since 2000 is not an imitation of the 'memoir boom' in North America and Europe; instead, it marks a different use of the genre born out of encountering gendered absences in archives and ancestral memory that cannot be filled with more research. Dreams of Archives makes a significant contribution to studies of Caribbean literature by demonstrating that women's autobiographical narratives published in the past twenty years are feminist epistemological projects that rework Caribbean studies' longstanding commitment to creating counter-archives.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781978806566

1978806566