Sans titre - France - 2024

photographie argentique - Agfa APX 400

Journeys, Diasporas and Migrations

Historically, travel between the islands and the mainlands has been very common in the Caribbean, from Haitians, Cubans and Jamaicans taking exile in neighboring countries, to West Indians working on the banana plantations in Central America in the early 1900s and going as far back to the Caribs and the Arawak who frequently used canoes to travel between islands and throughout the region.

In our literature, poets and writers have likened the Antilles to a lake or an estuary, a port to different parts of the world. Travels and journeys can be had physically but also mentally and spiritually to ancestral lands. A literature of traces, reconnections, translations, if traditionally literature from other cultures has been about consolidating a regional identity, Caribbean literature—and identity—in a sense has been about building bridges, rekindling connections lost and starting anew.

(See also: Intro to Caribbean Literature)

Song of the Day