Caribbean Archipelagoes: Comparative Insular and Colonial Studies by Yolanda Martínez San Miguel was recently published by University of Florida Press [with cover art by Antonio Martorell (“Las Antillas letradas,” 2014)]. Lanny Thompson (author of Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories under U.S. Dominion after 1898) writes, “An original and significant contribution to the scholarship of comparative literature of the Caribbean. Skillfully integrates sociohistorical processes and their connections to cultural representations, ranging from cartography to literature, poetry, and beyond, and explores the political imaginaries suggested through these representations.” Warm congratulations, Yolanda!
Description: While the Caribbean is often studied by focusing on individual islands and their pasts, Caribbean Archipelagoes proposes a new way of understanding this vital part of the world by placing it in conversation with other island chains, emphasizing those in the Pacific that share similar colonial histories. Drawing on cultural productions and concepts by thinkers such as Audre Lorde, Édouard Glissant, Derek Walcott, Michelle Stephens, Godfrey Baldacchino, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, and Lanny Thompson, Yolanda Martínez San Miguel calls for a reexamination of the Caribbean as a colonial archipelago—a network of islands shaped by the shared challenges and strategies of empires.
Analyzing a variety of primary sources in the Caribbean and places such as Guåhan and Hawai‘i, including historical maps and travel diaries from early colonial explorers, calypso songs about Caribbean federations, and contemporary art and poetry, this book reveals how island networks have been imagined and managed by French, Spanish, and Anglo imperial powers from the fifteenth century to the present. By incorporating narratives of underrepresented perspectives, such as those of Chinese migrant and queer communities, and through innovative concepts of archipelagic thinking, the book provides a powerful new framework for understanding colonial and decolonial imaginaries in the Caribbean and beyond.
Yolanda Martínez San Miguel is the Marta S. Weeks Chair and professor of Latin American and Caribbean literatures and cultures at the University of Miami. She is the author of Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-Colonial Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context.
For more information, see https://floridapress.org/9781683406280/caribbean-archipelagoes/