Essays on the contribution of African, Caribbean, Asian and diaspora writers to 'English' literature. The 'new' literatures have most commonly been seen as a staging post en route to the current 'post-colonial' era. Yet these literatures and the diverse cultural histories they represent are older than such recent interpretations of them. This collection of essays investigates ways in which we can return to 'reading' these 'new' literatures without falling back on current critical assumptions.

Contemporary Caribbean Women's Poetry provides detailed readings of individual poems by women poets whose work has not yet received the sustained critical attention it deserves. These readings are contextualized both within Caribbean cultural debates and postcolonial and feminist critical discourses in a lively and engaged way; revisiting nationalist debates as well as topical issues about the performance of gendered and raced identities within poetic discourse. Newly available in paperback, this book is groundbreaking reading for all those interested in postcolonialism, Gender Studies, Caribbean Studies and contemporary poetry.

This book represents the very first sustained account of Caribbean women's poetry and provides detailed readings of an exciting range of innovative texts. The discussion is situated in relation to the predominantly male tradition of Caribbean poetry, and explores the factors that have resulted in the relative marginality of women poets within nationalistic poetic discourses. Denise deCaires Narain employs a range of cutting-edge feminist and post-colonial approaches to focus on a diverse range of themes, such as orality; sexuality; the body; performance and poetic identity.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203165160

This book offers the first sustained and comprehensive discussion of the Jamaican writer, Olive Senior’s extensive oeuvre, including poetry, short stories and socio-cultural writings published from the late 1970s onwards. Now resident in Toronto, Senior’s work remains intensely focused on Jamaica: its landscape, language, people and cultures. Her work offers portraits of ‘ordinary’ Jamaicans negotiating the harsh postcolonial realities of life within Jamaica as well as those who migrate in search of work. The book discuss Senior’s scrutiny of the way power operates at global and local levels alerting the reader to the bigger historical narratives that position (but don’t quite ‘fix’) the individuals she writes about. The detailed inventory of Jamaican life in the short stories and poetry is consolidated in Senior’s cultural archival work. Deploying a poetics of wry understatement, Senior’s oeuvre insinuates rather than declaims its truths and makes a distinct and invaluable intervention in Caribbean Literature.

This book offers the first sustained and comprehensive discussion of the Jamaican writer, Olive Senior's extensive oeuvre, including poetry, short stories and socio-cultural writings published from the late 1970s onwards. Now resident in Toronto, Senior's work remains intensely focused on Jamaica: its landscape, language, people and cultures. Her work offers portraits of 'ordinary' Jamaicans negotiating the harsh postcolonial realities of life within Jamaica as well as those who migrate in search of work. The book discuss Senior's scrutiny of the way power operates at global and local levels alerting the reader to the bigger historical narratives that position (but don't quite 'fix') the individuals she writes about. The detailed inventory of Jamaican life in the short stories and poetry is consolidated in Senior's cultural archival work. Deploying a poetics of wry understatement, Senior's oeuvre insinuates rather than declaims its truths and makes a distinct and invaluable intervention in Caribbean Literature.