Asylum Speakers: Caribbean Refugees and Testimonial Discourse Contributor(s): Shemak, April (Author) |
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ISBN: 0823233553 ISBN-13: 9780823233557 Publisher: American Literatures Initiative OUR PRICE: $52.25 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2010 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - Hispanic American - History | Caribbean & West Indies - General - Literary Criticism | American - African American |
Dewey: 810.935 |
LCCN: 2010033990 |
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6" W x 9" (1.25 lbs) 320 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Hispanic - Cultural Region - Caribbean & West Indies - Ethnic Orientation - African American |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Offering the first interdisciplinary study of refugees in the Caribbean, Central America, and the United States, Asylum Speakers relates current theoretical debates about hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the actual conditions of refugees. In doing so, the author weighs the questions of truth valueassociated with various modes of witnessing to explore the function of testimonial discourse in constructing refugee subjectivity in New World cultural and political formations. By examining literary works by such writers as Edwidge Danticat, Nikl Payen, Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Julia Alvarez, Ivonne Lamazares, and Cecilia Rodr guez Milans, theoretical work by Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris, as well as human rights documents, government documents, photography, and historical studies, Asylum Speakers constructs a complex picture of New World refugees that expands current discussions of diaspora and migration, demonstrating that the peripheral nature of refugee testimonial narratives requires us to reshape the boundaries of U.S. ethnic and postcolonial studies. |
Contributor Bio(s): Shemak, April: - April Shemak is an Assistant Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. |