Seeking Imperialism's Embrace: National Identity, Decolonization, and Assimilation in the French Caribbean by Kristen Stromberg Childers (review)

Seeking Imperialism's Embrace makes a useful intervention in the study of decolonization in the Antilles by taking as one of its points of departure the implications of the US's presence in the Caribbean during World War II. Set against the backdrop of the ever-present fear of an American invasion and takeover of the French islands, this critical exploration of the collective and sometimes conflicting claims to Frenchness in Martinique and Guadeloupe in wartime explains the postwar move toward political integration into metropolitan France. Childers turns an attentive eye toward the intertwining of history, geography, literary production, and international relations between the French Caribbean and the United States, in crafting a historical narrative on the process of becoming French after the war and remaining so in the contemporary moment.