logo Perífrasis

Perifrasis. Rev. Lit. Teor. Crit. | eISSN 2145-9045 | ISSN 2145-8987

Travel Writings of the Contemporary Afro-Caribbean Diaspora: Routes to the Metropolis, Africa, and Back to the Caribbean

No. 34 (2025-01-06)
  • María Teresa Johansson
    Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile
  • Lucia Stecher
    Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile
https://doi.org/10.25025/perifrasis202516.34.03

Abstract

This article analyses a corpus of writings about travels published since 1990 by authors from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. The analysis is organized around three  fundamental axes according to the type of displacement described: the migratory journey to the metropolis, the journey of Afro-descendant memory to Africa and the  return journey or visit to the Caribbean. In theoretical terms, the proposal dialogues with diaspora conceptualizations and postcolonial criticism. The article proposes that the experience and
reflection on the travel experience plays a central role in the articulation of discourses and imaginaries and the configuration of a diasporic space of enunciation. In this space, Caribbean migrant communities recover  memories, recognize affiliations, articulate demands and elaborate alternative identity projects.

Keywords: travel writing , diasporas , Afro-descendants , Caribbean, postcolonial critique , metropolis, routes , Africa

References

Boisseron, Bénédicte. Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora. University Press of Florida, 2014.

Bonfiglio, Florencia. “Sobre la condición migrante de la literatura caribeña: geoestéticas de resistencia, entre el turismo y la soberanía”. Revista Ístmica, núm. 24, 2019, pp. 9-26.

Brand, Dionne. A Map to the Door of no Return: Notes on Belonging. Vintage Canada, 2001.

Brubaker, Rogers. “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 28, núm. 1, 2005, pp. 1-19.

Bruner, Edward. “Tourism in Ghana. The Representation of Slavery and the Return of the Black Diaspora”. American Anthropologist, vol. 98, núm. 2, 1996, pp. 290-304.

Césaire, Aimé. “Cuaderno de un retorno al país natal”. Para leer a Aimé Césaire, selección y prólogo de Philippe Ollé-Laprune, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008, pp. 33-76.

Clarke, Robert. “Toward a Genealogy of Postcolonial Travel Writing: An Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing, editado por R. Clarke, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 1-16.

Clifford, James. Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Harvard University Press, 1997.

Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. Vintage Books, 1998.

Danticat, Edwidge. Everything Inside. Vintage Books, 2019.

Díaz, Jacquira. Ordinary Girls. A Memoir. Algonquin Books, 2019.

Díaz, Junot. Drown. Riverhead Books, 1996.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Verso, 1993.

Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. Identity: Community, Culture and Difference, editado por John Rutherford, Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, pp. 222-237.

Hartman, Saidiya. Lose your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008.

Laferrière, Dany. L’énigme du retour. Bernard Grasset, 2009.

López Ropero, María Lourdes. “Travel Writing and Postcoloniality: Caryl Phillip’s The Atlantic Sound”. Postcolonial Travel Writing. Critical Explorations, Palgrave McMillan, 2011, pp. 72-84.

Machado-Sáez, Elena. Market Aesthetics. The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction. University of Virginia Press, 2015.

Phillips, Caryl. The Atlantic Sound. Vintage, 2001.

Pratt, Mary Louise. Ojos imperiales. Literatura de viajes y transculturación. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2010.

Said, Edward. Orientalismo. Traducido por Maria Luisa Fuentes, Libertarias, 1990.

Said, Edward. Cultura e imperialismo. Traducido por Nora Catelli, Anagrama, 1996.

Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return”. Diaspora, vol.1 núm. 1, pp. 83-99.

Sassen, Saskia. Los espectros de la globalización. Traducido por Irene Merzari, Fondo de Cultura Económica de Argentina, 2003.

Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Duke UP, 1993.

Stecher, Lucía. “‘Colarse por la ventana de la novela’: Narrativas del retorno de la diáspora afrocaribeña contemporánea”. Perspectivas Afro, vol. 2, núm. 2, 2023, pp. 291-306.

Stecher, Lucía y María Teresa Johansson. “El viaje a África: memorias de esclavitud, diásporas y la Puerta de no Retorno en la escritura de Dionne Brand y Saidiya Hartmann”. Anclajes, vol. 26, núm. 3, septiembre de 2022, pp. 133-52, doi:10.19137/anclajes-2022-2639.

Trigo, Abril. “Migrancia: memoria: modernidad”. Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos, editado por Mabel Moraña, Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 1997, pp. 273-291.

Vega, Ana Lydia. “Pollito Chicken”. Vírgenes y mártires, editado por Ana Lydia Vega y Carmen Lugo Filippi, Antillana, 1994, pp. 73-80.

Zoboi, Ibi. American Street. Balzer & Bray, 2017.