ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine how Erna Brodber’s novel Louisiana redraws the boundaries of space and place to create areas of free movement for her characters. Brodber’s approach is interestingly different from those of Danticat and the writers discussed in Chapter 1. She shares their interventionist approach to writing history but does so in ways that attempt to transcend history and the problems of access, movement and relation that history poses. In this sense Brodber’s perspective could be called idealist, yet it presents itself as factual. In my discussion I consider how her approach engages particular ideas about areas of responsibility for the text, how the space of its remit is to be articulated and judged.
