Research Catalog

Beyond Windrush : rethinking postwar Anglophone Caribbean literature

Title
Beyond Windrush : rethinking postwar Anglophone Caribbean literature / edited by J. Dillon Brown and Leah Reade Rosenberg.
Publication
Jackson [Mississippi] : University Press of Mississippi, [2015]

Details

Additional Authors
  • Brown, J. Dillon, 1971-
  • Rosenberg, Leah
Description
vii, 260 pages; 24 cm.
Summary
"This edited collection challenges a long sacrosanct paradigm. Since the establishment of Caribbean literary studies, scholars have exalted an elite cohort of émigré novelists based in postwar London, a group often referred to as "the Windrush writers" in tribute to the SS Empire Windrush, whose 1948 voyage from Jamaica inaugurated large-scale Caribbean migration to London. In critical accounts this group is typically reduced to the canonical troika of V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Sam Selvon, effectively treating these three authors as the tradition's founding fathers. These "founders" have been properly celebrated for producing a complex, anticolonial, nationalist literature. However, their canonization has obscured the great diversity of postwar Caribbean writers, producing an enduring but narrow definition of West Indian literature. Beyond Windrush stands out as the first book to reexamine and redefine the writing of this crucial era. Its fourteen original essays make clear that in the 1950s there was already a wide spectrum of West Indian men and women--Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, and white-creole--who were writing, publishing, and even painting. Many lived in the Caribbean and North America, rather than London. Moreover, these writers addressed subjects overlooked in the more conventionally conceived canon, including topics such as queer sexuality and the environment. This collection offers new readings of canonical authors (Lamming, Roger Mais, and Andrew Salkey); hitherto marginalized authors (Ismith Khan, Elma Napier, and John Hearne); and commonly ignored genres (memoir, short stories, and journalism). "--
Series Statement
Caribbean studies series
Uniform Title
Caribbean studies series (Jackson, Miss.).
Subject
  • West Indian literature (English) > History and criticism
  • Caribbean literature (English) > History and criticism
  • National characteristics, Caribbean, in literature
  • LITERARY CRITICISM / Caribbean & Latin American
  • HISTORY / Caribbean & West Indies / General
  • LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Caribbean & Latin American
  • Caribbean literature (English)
  • West Indian literature (English)
Genre/Form
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
  • 9781628464757
  • 1628464755
LCCN
2014045132
OCLC
YBP 2014045132
Title
Beyond Windrush : rethinking postwar Anglophone Caribbean literature / edited by J. Dillon Brown and Leah Reade Rosenberg.
Publisher
Jackson [Mississippi] : University Press of Mississippi, [2015]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Series
Caribbean studies series
Caribbean studies series (Jackson, Miss.).
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Added Author
Brown, J. Dillon, 1971- editor.
Rosenberg, Leah, editor.
Other Form:
Online version: Beyond windrush Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2015] 9781628464764 (DLC) 2014047725
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