Asylum Speakers: Caribbean Refugees And Testimonial Discourse (american Literatures Initiative)
by April Shemak /
2010 / English / PDF
2.3 MB Download
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.
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.
