Caribbean Jewish Crossings

Caribbean Jewish Crossings is the first essay collection to consider the Caribbean's relationship to Jewishness through a literary lens. Although Caribbean novelists and poets regularly incorporate Jewish motifs in their work, scholars have neglected this strain in studies of Caribbean literature.
The book takes a pan-Caribbean approach, with chapters addressing the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Part 1 traces the emergence of a Caribbean-Jewish literary culture in Suriname, St. Thomas, Jamaica, and Cuba from the late eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. Part 2 brings into focus Sephardic and crypto-Jewish motifs in contemporary Caribbean literature, while Part 3 turns to the question of colonialism and its relationship to Holocaust memory. The volume concludes with the compelling voices of contemporary Caribbean creative writers.

Sarah Phillips Casteel is Professor of English at Carleton University and the author of Second Arrivals: Landscape and Belonging in Contemporary Writing of the Americas(Virginia).
Heidi Kaufman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon and the author of English Origins, Jewish Discourse, and the Nineteenth-Century British Novel: Reflections on a Nested Nation.