Islands in the Air: Travelling by Plane in Anglophone Caribbean Literature

Although airports figure prominently in contemporary Caribbean life, literary responses to this space are less common than one might expect—and critics have largely neglected the few that do exist. This article analyzes key texts from the Caribbean diaspora, including short stories by Jamaica Kincaid, Earl Lovelace, Dionne Brand, and Makeda Silvera, which examine air travel as a reflection of the larger forces reshaping Caribbean space in the twenty-first century. Each of these authors grapples with the rise in air travel in the Caribbean in the 1980s because of cheaper fares and increased routes. Unlike many Caribbean narratives which actively avoid the airport to negate the tourist takeover of Caribbean space, these authors reclaim the airport as an important site of creative transformation and political critique for diasporic Caribbean identity.