Overview

Neighbor-Homes: Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat Write Hispaniola and the Diaspora analyzes the work of two of the most acclaimed contemporary American and Caribbean authors for the first time in a single book. Extending beyond scholarly approaches to home as a theoretical construct, Neighbor-Homes considers how Alvarez and Danticat inaugurate multiple spaces of belonging for their off- and on-island fictional characters, for their diverse community of readers, and for themselves. Revealing a more complex and complete understanding of these Hispaniola-rooted authors, the project places Alvarez and Danticat into conversation at a time when the construction of a border wall and racist immigration laws confirm increasing anti-Haitian sentiment in the Dominican Republic. Neighbor-Homes incorporates correspondence between the two writers to extrapolate diverse narrative representations of Hispaniola and to highlight various themes central to their work and social justice platforms including family relationships, community building, neighbor aesthetics, statelessness, and border solidarity. Neighbor-Homes will help interdisciplinary audiences read Danticat and Alvarez with a more critical eye so that they can more adeptly and profoundly understand Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and their respective diasporas. This important study is an essential read for students and scholars of literature and social justice, cultural studies, history, and politics, as well as Caribbean, Latinx, and African diaspora literatures. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Full Product Details

9781032879741

Table of Contents

Reviews

The very best of Hispaniola. A must read for Danticat and Alvarez fans. Myers weaves the story of these two literary giants, highlighting their passion and love of their countries and how they have inspired each other for decades.” -Patricia Thorndike Suriel, Founder and Executive Director, Mariposa DR Foundation “We live in a world with bloody borders. Myers’s account of Alvarez and Danticat, two of the most important living writers and activists of Hispaniola and its diasporas, working to heal the open wounds at the heart of the island is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the transnational Caribbean and anyone contemplating how to recall and work through past tragedies that have become scar tissue between nations that is so thick we often mistake it for skin.” - John T. Maddox IV, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Professor of Spanish and author of Fractal Families in New Millennium Narrative by Afro-Puerto Rican Women (U of Wales P, 2022).

The very best of Hispaniola. A must read for Danticat and Alvarez fans. Myers weaves the story of these two literary giants, highlighting their passion and love of their countries and how they have inspired each other for decades.” -Patricia Thorndike Suriel, Founder and Executive Director, Mariposa DR Foundation “We live in a world with bloody borders. Myers’s account of Alvarez and Danticat, two of the most important living writers and activists of Hispaniola and its diasporas working to heal the open wounds at the heart of the island, is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the transnational Caribbean and anyone contemplating how to recall and work through past tragedies that have become scar tissue between nations that is so thick we often mistake it for skin.” - John T. Maddox IV, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Professor of Spanish and author of Fractal Families in New Millennium Narrative by Afro-Puerto Rican Women (U of Wales P, 2022).

Author Information

Megan Jeanette Myers is Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Iowa State University, USA. Myers is the author of Mapping Hispaniola: Third Space in Dominican and Haitian Literature (2019) and the co-editor of The Border of Lights Reader: Bearing Witness to Genocide in the Dominican Republic (2021).

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