ABSTRACT
In undertaking this socio-cultural study of Caribbean migrant and diaspora fi ction in North America and England, Remitting the Text responds to the general trend in migration discourse that presents the Caribbean experience as unidirectional and uniform across the geographical spaces of the region1 and its diaspora. I argue that engaging the Caribbean diaspora and the massive waves of migration from the region that have punctuated its history requires not merely understanding communities in migrant locations and the confl icted identities of second generation migrant subjectivities, but also interpreting how these communities interrelate with, affect and are affected by communities in the region itself. This book is therefore a rethinking of the Caribbean diaspora not in deterritorialized terms, but with attention to issues of regional sovereignty and national identity as much as issues of diasporan belonging. In adopting this “two placed” gaze, Remitting the Text avoids the imbalance by which the diasporan swallows up the “local” or the local and diasporan are seen as exclusive categories with the former as a disreputable (identifi ed with colonial categories of nation or exile) or obsolete voice on the margins.
