Bringing together the most exciting recent archival work in anglophone, francophone, and hispanophone Caribbean studies, Raphael Dalleo constructs a new literary history of the region that is both comprehensive and innovative. He examines how changes in political, economic, and social structures have produced different sets of possibilities for writers to imagine their relationship to the institutions of the public sphere. In the process, he provides a new context for rereading such major writers as Mary Seacole, José Martí, Jacques Roumain, Claude McKay, Marie Chauvet, and George Lamming, while also drawing lesser-known figures into the story.

Dalleo’s comparative approach will be important to Caribbeanists from all of the region’s linguistic traditions, and his book contributes even more broadly to debates in Latin American and postcolonial studies about postmodernity and globalization.

“A comprehensive, meticulously researched new book.”

–Leon Bynum in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

“An ambitious, original study of the literary public sphere.”

–Faith Smith in sx salon: a small axe literary platform

“The range of Dalleo’s scholarship and the care with which he marshalls argument are both impressive…An innovative and significant book.”

–Elaine Savory in Savannah Review