Calls for Papers: Caribbean Literature: Racialized Voices, Hybridized
Identities (Anthology 2/21/2006)

We invite essays on the diasporic implications of multiracial and
multicultural characters and their hybrid cultural consciousness in
Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean texts. The site of the diasporic cultures
may be in the Caribbean itself or in transnational locationsin the
Metropole or in the various sites of migration common to Caribbean nationals.

In spite of a large presence of Indo-Caribbeans, works by authors coming
out of the Caribbeanother than a few well known names, such as
Naipaul--rarely reflect their experiences. When we do read available
literature, it focuses on ideas of cultural hybridity or créolité and
creolization in separate racialized spaces. When interracial mixing is
represented, it is usually between White and Black characters. In
postcolonial and transnational locations, we are still struggling with
ideas regarding the fear of miscegenation or construction of colonial
desire in Black and White terms. When Albert Memmi in The Colonizer and
The Colonized and Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Mask bring up racial
mixing in terms of racial hybridity, it is between a Black man and a White
woman, or between a Black woman and a White man. Where is the literature
that reflects collaborations and interethnic mixings in sexual and cultural
terms in the contemporary period? For example, in Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji
on the Beach, for the first time, an Afro-Caribbean man and an Indian woman
in the UK are romantically and sexually linked in British cinema. For this
anthology, the focus on race will not be simply the one traditionally
associated with Caribbean writings, but will, hopefully treat interactions
of Caribbean personages of African and Indian ancestry and cultures as in
Earl Lovelace's The Dragon Can't Dance. Additionally, seldom do we read
literature by Indo-Caribbean women writers, nor do we hear voices of GL/Q
(Gay, Lesbians, and Queer) community. What is lacking in Caribbean
Literature is voices from the margins and those especially tackling racial,
ethnic and sexual hybridity and intra-racial collaboration or
conflicts. Caribbean literature is typically read as Afro-Caribbean
literature, with a few Indo-Caribbean voices thrown in the mix to make it
interesting. What this project hopes to accomplish is the showcasing of
literature reflecting the merging and intermingling of racialized voices
locating hybridized identities in the interstices of Afro-Caribbean and
Indo-Caribbean literarily landscape. How are the two diasporas shared and
commingled, reflecting historical and cultural roots of each in literature
of hybridity, racial and inter-ethnic as well as cultural?

The editors are prominent writers in the area of postcolonial and immigrant
literature, and would be appreciative of reading any manuscripts which
might fulfill stated vision in the collection. All essays will be refereed
by independent scholars in the field of Caribbean Literature.

Please send one-page abstracts along with a completed 20 page paper to
<mailto:trose_at_nmu.edu>trose_at_nmu.edu or
<mailto:jsingh_at_nmu.edu>jsingh_at_nmu.edu by the end of May, 2006. Please
indicate Title, Name and Affiliation of author. We will notify you by the
end of August as to the selection of your essay for the collection.

Jaspal K. Singh
Assistant Professor, English Department
Gries Hall, Northern Michigan University
1401 Presque Isle Avenue
Marquette, MI 49855
Phone: 906-227-1832
Email: jsingh_at_nmu.edu
Fax:906-227-1096

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Received on Fri Feb 24 2006 - 11:28:32 EST