Introduction: Caribbean Assemblages, 1970s–2020

Summary

The period from the 1970s to the second decade of the twenty-first century has produced an extraordinarily rich and diverse body of Caribbean writings. During this half century, numerous important transitions have taken place in terms of creative opportunities for writers, as well as colossal shifts in reception and recognition. Whereas Caribbean literature was too often dismissed as a peripheral, political and/or exotic sub-branch of English/French/Spanish/Dutch Literature, there is now a much fuller recognition of its creative and imaginative brilliance, as writers from the region continue to sweep the major prizes of the twenty-first century literary world. While the scope and scale of Caribbean writings produced in the twenty-first century alone would merit a volume of this kind, tracing the historical arc of Caribbean postcolonial literary cultures from the independence era to the contemporary moment brings its own insights. In particular, it affords an analysis of how transition and change have functioned as a primary ethos of Caribbean literary production and allows this volume to chart multiple Caribbean literary (r)evolutions.