Research
Here's some recent research I've undertaken and written about.
"Dialogic Diaspora Formation and Colonial Critique: A Close Reading of the Train Scene in George Lamming’s The Emigrants"
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 14.2 (2018): 1-18
Here I explore what I think of as dialogic diaspora formation and present a close reading of the train scene in Lamming’s The Emigrants, an illustration of this social phenomenon, transitional poem, and an astute literary critique of the hegemonic relationship between Britain and its Caribbean colonies. “The Train” is a scene/poem of transition, positioned as it is between the two prose sections of the novel and between the emigrants’ arrival at the port and their lives in the city. In the scene/poem, the collective narration of the previous prose passages morphs into overlapping first-person voices as the emigrants speak with one another and connect as a diasporic community over their recognition of British brands and over a disappointing tea service. Both the recognition and the disappointment reveal the depth of imperial cultural hegemony, allow the emigrants to bond by critiquing the concept of the “mother country” as a land of milk and honey, and display Lamming’s great wit and ability to critique the colonial experience.
"Re-presenting the Caribbean: Colonial Constructs and Cultural Identity"
The Caribbean Writer 31 (2017): 350-360.
Caribbean people have been represented in multiple ways in the colonial constructs informing our cultural, national, and regional identities. In this piece I consider our ongoing task to redefine or reject these colonial constructs in order to re-present and represent ourselves. Because of the diversity of the region (among and within nations) and the legacy of colonial hegemony, this is complex. However, this diversity is rich nourishment for great efforts and results in representation.
Claiming a Space in the Thought-I-Knew-You-Place: Migrant Domesticity, Diaspora, and Home in Andrea Levy’s Small Island
South Atlantic Review. 78.3-4 (2015): 129-149
In The Signifyin(g) Monkey, his theory of the literature of the African diaspora, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explains that one crucial feature of Signifyin(g) is tropological revision and argues that across and within literary traditions diasporic authors repeat specific tropes, but with a difference (xxv). This practice “simultaneously involves a positioning or a critiquing both of received literary conventions and of the subject matter represented in canonical texts of the tradition” (113). This phenomenon—repetition with a difference—is extra-acute with the relationship between Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), two of the most notable novels of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain. In both novels, focus rests on the unrecognizability of the “Mother Country” to West Indian migrants, their confrontation with their lived sense of hegemonic Britishness, and the rise of a new Caribbean identity. In this article I explore the relationship between these two novels despite the 60-year gap between them and the experience of postwar London as a major theme in the literature of the Caribbean diaspora.
Dissertation: “At Home in the Diaspora: Domesticity and Nationalism in Postwar and Contemporary Caribbean-British Fiction”
Using literary, historical, rhetorical, and political analyses, I investigated the ways in which home is conceptualized and represented through the imagery of domesticity and the rhetoric of nationalism in the literary tradition of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain and argued that Caribbean texts challenge nationalism with domestic motifs and that, instead of necessarily being a marker of displacement, the diaspora itself has the potential to provide a sense of home to people removed from their countries of origin.
"Dialogic Diaspora Formation and Colonial Critique: A Close Reading of the Train Scene in George Lamming’s The Emigrants"
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 14.2 (2018): 1-18
Here I explore what I think of as dialogic diaspora formation and present a close reading of the train scene in Lamming’s The Emigrants, an illustration of this social phenomenon, transitional poem, and an astute literary critique of the hegemonic relationship between Britain and its Caribbean colonies. “The Train” is a scene/poem of transition, positioned as it is between the two prose sections of the novel and between the emigrants’ arrival at the port and their lives in the city. In the scene/poem, the collective narration of the previous prose passages morphs into overlapping first-person voices as the emigrants speak with one another and connect as a diasporic community over their recognition of British brands and over a disappointing tea service. Both the recognition and the disappointment reveal the depth of imperial cultural hegemony, allow the emigrants to bond by critiquing the concept of the “mother country” as a land of milk and honey, and display Lamming’s great wit and ability to critique the colonial experience.
"Re-presenting the Caribbean: Colonial Constructs and Cultural Identity"
The Caribbean Writer 31 (2017): 350-360.
Caribbean people have been represented in multiple ways in the colonial constructs informing our cultural, national, and regional identities. In this piece I consider our ongoing task to redefine or reject these colonial constructs in order to re-present and represent ourselves. Because of the diversity of the region (among and within nations) and the legacy of colonial hegemony, this is complex. However, this diversity is rich nourishment for great efforts and results in representation.
Claiming a Space in the Thought-I-Knew-You-Place: Migrant Domesticity, Diaspora, and Home in Andrea Levy’s Small Island
South Atlantic Review. 78.3-4 (2015): 129-149
In The Signifyin(g) Monkey, his theory of the literature of the African diaspora, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explains that one crucial feature of Signifyin(g) is tropological revision and argues that across and within literary traditions diasporic authors repeat specific tropes, but with a difference (xxv). This practice “simultaneously involves a positioning or a critiquing both of received literary conventions and of the subject matter represented in canonical texts of the tradition” (113). This phenomenon—repetition with a difference—is extra-acute with the relationship between Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), two of the most notable novels of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain. In both novels, focus rests on the unrecognizability of the “Mother Country” to West Indian migrants, their confrontation with their lived sense of hegemonic Britishness, and the rise of a new Caribbean identity. In this article I explore the relationship between these two novels despite the 60-year gap between them and the experience of postwar London as a major theme in the literature of the Caribbean diaspora.
Dissertation: “At Home in the Diaspora: Domesticity and Nationalism in Postwar and Contemporary Caribbean-British Fiction”
Using literary, historical, rhetorical, and political analyses, I investigated the ways in which home is conceptualized and represented through the imagery of domesticity and the rhetoric of nationalism in the literary tradition of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain and argued that Caribbean texts challenge nationalism with domestic motifs and that, instead of necessarily being a marker of displacement, the diaspora itself has the potential to provide a sense of home to people removed from their countries of origin.