West Indian literature and Federation: imaginative accord and uneven realities

Donnell, Alison ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8722-6974 (2020) West Indian literature and Federation: imaginative accord and uneven realities. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 24 (1). pp. 78-86. ISSN 0799-0537

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Abstract

This essay explores the particular importance conferred on literary expression within a wide range of writings dedicated to understanding and responding to the project of the West Indies Federation. Although federation was conceived, and briefly achieved, as a political expression of community building and people making, the consistent practice of referencing and invoking literary works across these writings reveals the project’s central and necessary investment in the reimagination of identities and belongings. Yet while the literary expression of a West Indian sensibility helped to articulate the political consciousness necessary for change, it could not finally overcome the sources of tension in the region. Importantly, too, the same West Indian writers who symbolized the collective belonging to the region, so cherished by federation, were themselves embroiled in the discordant realities of economic markets and measures and caught between national and international belongings.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Modern and Contemporary Writing Research Group
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 Oct 2019 09:31
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2022 05:19
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/72555
DOI:	10.1215/07990537-8190601

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