Overview

In Creole Renegades, Bénédicte Boisseron looks at exiled Caribbean authors—Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Maryse Condé, Dany Laferriére, and more—whose works have been well received in their adopted North American countries but who are often viewed by their home islands as sell-outs, opportunists, or traitors. These expatriate and second-generation authors refuse to be simple bearers of Caribbean culture, often dramatically distancing themselves from the postcolonial archipelago. Their writing is frequently infused with an enticing sense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, but their deviance is not defiant. Underscoring the typically ignored contentious relationship between modern diaspora authors and the Caribbean, Boisseron ultimately argues that displacement and creative autonomy are often manifest in guilt and betrayal, central themes that emerge again and again in the work of these writers.

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9780813068794

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[An] engaging, wide-ranging treatise on self-exiled Caribbean writers....Highly recommended. --Choice

[An] engaging, wide-ranging treatise on self-exiled Caribbean writers. . . . Highly recommended. --Choice Outstanding. ... The depth of its historical knowledge and its sustained critique of near-sacrosanct ideas of the Caribbean make this a timely book. --The Americas Boisseron's study is a highly original, fascinating analysis of an eclectic group of intellectuals and approaches many issues of fundamental importance for postcolonial and Caribbean studies. --Research in African Literatures

Author Information

Bénédicte Boisseron is Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the coeditor of Voix du monde: Nouvelles francophones.

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