Introduction

In recent years, due to the displacement of growing numbers of political refugees and economic immigrants, and the unprecedented rise of international travel, human beings are increasingly in one another’s space and are faced with cultural difference, whether or not they leave the place where they were born. There is overlap between themes explored by Cuban American and Cuban immigrant writers, in particular the treatment of migration, return, and the relationship to the homeland. The heightened intrusion of tourism has resulted in the predictable uprooting of local Caribbean communities whose residents are converted into new global proletarians, either working for the tourist economy or transnational immigrant workers in North America, Europe, or more prosperous Latin American countries. Dominican and Cuban writers and filmmakers display continuity with the tradition in their treatment of the effects of mass out-migration and foreign tourism.