In this Book

buy this book Buy This Book in Print
summary
In this far-reaching literary history, John Wharton Lowe remakes the map of American culture by revealing the deep, persistent connections between the ideas and works produced by writers of the American South and the Caribbean. Lowe demonstrates that a tendency to separate literary canons by national and regional boundaries has led critics to ignore deep ties across highly permeable borders. Focusing on writers and literatures from the Deep South and Gulf states in relation to places including Mexico, Haiti, and Cuba, Lowe reconfigures the geography of southern literature as encompassing the "circumCaribbean," a dynamic framework within which to reconsider literary history, genre, and aesthetics.

Considering thematic concerns such as race, migration, forced exile, and colonial and postcolonial identity, Lowe contends that southern literature and culture have always transcended the physical and political boundaries of the American South. Lowe uses cross-cultural readings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers, including William Faulkner, Martin Delany, Zora Neale Hurston, George Lamming, Cristina Garcia, Edouard Glissant, and Madison Smartt Bell, among many others, to make his argument. These literary figures, Lowe argues, help us uncover new ways of thinking about the shared culture of the South and Caribbean while demonstrating that southern literature has roots even farther south than we realize.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
  2. pp. i-vi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface
  2. pp. ix-xvii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-20
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 1. Crossing the Caribbean: Southerners Write the Mexican American War
  2. pp. 21-57
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2. Liberating Fictions: The Caribbean Imaginary in the Novels of Lucy Holcombe Pickens and Martin Delany
  2. pp. 58-92
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 3. Unleashing the Loas: The Literary Legacy of the Haitian Revolution in the U.S. South and the Caribbean
  2. pp. 93-144
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 4. Constance Fenimore Woolson and Lafcadio Hearn: Extending the Boundaries of the Transnational South
  2. pp. 145-197
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 5. A Proper Order of Attention: McKay and Hurston Honor the Hardy Peasant
  2. pp. 198-247
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 6. Palette of Fire: The Aesthetics of Propaganda in Black Boy and In the Castle of My Skin
  2. pp. 248-283
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 7. Southern Ajiaco: Miami and the Generation of Cuban American Writing
  2. pp. 284-338
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 339-380
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Sources Consulted
  2. pp. 381-408
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 409-443
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.