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Acknowledgments This book benefited from the generous support of family, friends, colleagues, libraries, and research foundations, all of whom deserve mention but some of whom I fear I may omit. I would like to thank the Research Foundation of the City University of New York (CUNY), the Tow Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation for enabling research that took me all around the Atlantic. Such research would have been much more difficult without the assistance of the librarians and archivists at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center; the University of the West Indies, Mona; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Centre des archives nationales d’outre-mer in Aix-enProvence ; the American University in Cairo; the American University of Beirut; and Columbia University. I am very grateful to my editors at the University of Virginia Press, Cathie Brettschneider, Ellen Satrom, and J. Michael Dash, for shepherding this book through the submission and production processes, and in particular for placing my manuscript with readers who saw what this book could be when I could not. Tim Roberts and the editors at the American Literatures Initiative offered patience and meticulous care with the manuscript. I would like to thank the publishers Taylor and Francis Ltd. for allowing me to reproduce sections of “World Literature and Diaspora Studies” from The Routledge Companion to World Literature, edited by Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir, as part of Chapter 5. An earlier version of Chapter 2 first appeared in MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, issue 34.4 (2009), and is reprinted by permission of the journal. At Columbia University, Farah Jasmine Griffin made crucial suggestions while I was conceptualizing this project, and Frances NegrónMuntaner and Brent Hayes Edwards also offered valuable feedback during its early stages. David Damrosch and Joseph Slaughter have been viii Acknowledgments tirelessly reliable sources of feedback and wisdom, and both this book project and my professional trajectory owe much to them. At Brooklyn College, I would like to thank all my colleagues in the English Department , especially our department chair Ellen Tremper for her encouragement and expert navigation of academic bureaucracy; James Davis, Joseph Entin, and Martha Nadell for their seasoned advice on research and teaching; and my Caribbeanist colleagues Rosamond King, Tamara Mose Brown, and Vanessa Pérez for their camaraderie. CUNY’s Faculty Fellow Publication Program allowed me to share earlier drafts of two chapters with a congenial group of peers under the charismatic leadership of Shelly Eversley: Maria Bellamy, Amy Robbins, Jody Rosen, Charity Scribner, and Vanessa Valdés. At the American Comparative Literature Association, Theo D’haen, David Damrosch, and Djelal Kadir invited me to participate in an extremely productive set of seminars on world literature, while Michael Allan co-organized with me a similarly productive seminar that has deeply marked this book. Numerous cities have also marked this book, and I would not have been in as good a position to write in them were it not for numerous friends and colleagues. In New York, beyond those already mentioned, I would like to thank Bina Gogineni, Kairos Llobrera, Emily Lordi, Richard So, and Elda Tsou. In Cairo, Walter Armbrust, Aaron Jakes, Mara Naaman, and Lucie Ryzova were constant companions. In Beirut, Dahlia Gubara and ‘Ali Wick shared with me their expertise on archives and historiography, as well as their libraries and sharmut; while Christine Boustany and Kamran Rastegar offered friendship and hospitality in the Chouf. In Kingston, Carolyn Cooper, Mariano Paniello, and Clavell Lynch ensured the success of my research trips. Finally, I would like to thank my family. I owe my abiding interest in histories and textures of the diasporic voice to my late grandparents, may they rest in peace. My parents and my sister patiently endured all those voyages, physical and intellectual, that made me difficult to reach. My daughter Hadley has kept my storytelling fresh by demanding so many stories “from my mouth.” My son Sasha has arrived just in time to see this project finally fulfilled. And my wife, Elizabeth Holt, has been a bottomless source of love and ideas. This book, and my life as I know and want it, would not have been possible without you. ...

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