Chapter 19 - Caribbean Subjects in the World

Summary

This essay considers seven texts by Caribbean authors, fiction, poetry and travel narrative, which in setting and ethos move beyond diasporic spaces, thus extending the dimensions of how we understand the Caribbean experience in the world. The essay explores how travel for the Caribbean subject has almost always been considered a kind of escape and rebellion, but in this new dispensation can also be read as self-indulgence and self-care. It argues that even in these beyond spaces in the world, blackness is often traditionally oppressive, but that new Caribbean subjects are interpellated in so many different, other ways that instead race is not central to their experiences.