Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice (New World Studies)

By: Ruth Behar and Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken and Bryan Cheyette and Sarah Phillips Casteel and Natalie Zemon Davis and Neil R. Davison and David Gantt Gurley and Kathleen Gyssels and Anna Ruth Henriques and Heidi Kaufman and Cynthia McLeod and Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger and Caryl Phillips and Ben Ratskoff and Rachel Rubinstein and Efraim Sicher and Leonard Stein and Linda Weinhouse

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Caribbean Jewish Crossings is the first essay collection to consider the Caribbean's relationship to Jewishness through a literary lens. Although Caribbean novelists and poets regularly incorporate Jewish motifs in their work, scholars have neglected this strain in studies of Caribbean literature.The book takes a pan-Caribbean approach, with chapters addressing the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Part 1 traces the emergence of a Caribbean-Jewish literary culture in Suriname, St. Thomas, Jamaica, and Cuba from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. Part 2 brings into focus Sephardic and crypto-Jewish motifs in contemporary Caribbean literature, while Part 3 turns to the question of colonialism and its relationship to Holocaust memory. The volume concludes with the compelling voices of contemporary Caribbean creative writers.