Caribbean Genesis

Jamaica Kincaid and the Writing of New Worlds

By Jana Evans Braziel

Subjects: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, American Studies, African American Studies, Postcolonial Studies
Paperback : 9780791476543, 245 pages, January 2010
Hardcover : 9780791476536, 245 pages, January 2009

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Table of contents

Introduction: Caribbean Genesis, Alterbiography, and the Writing of New Worlds
1. Alterrainsof "Blackness" in At the Bottom of the River
2. Jablesse, Obeah, and Caribbean Cosmogonies in At the Bottom of the River
3. The Diabolic as Diasporic in Annie John and Lucy
4. Genre, Genealogy, and Genocide in The Autobiography of My Mother
5. Death and the Biographical Autograph in My Brother

6. Genre, Genealogy, and Genesis in Mr. Potter
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Philosophical exploration of Jamaica Kincaid’s entire literary oeuvre.

Description

By exploring the breadth of Jamaica Kincaid's writings, this book reveals her work's transmutations of genre, specifically those of autobiography, biography, and history in relation to the forces of creation and destruction in the Caribbean. Jana Evans Braziel examines Kincaid's preoccupation with genealogy, genesis, and genocide in the Caribbean; her adaptations of biblical texts for her literary oeuvre; and her authorial deployments of the diabolic as frames for both rethinking the boundaries of genre and altering notions of subjectivity, objectivity, self, and other.

Jana Evans Braziel is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati and author of Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora.