Diaspora literature in Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips

This article analyzes diaspora literature in Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips. Phillips is known and recognized as an author of the Black Atlantic because his fictions weave the multiple experiences of the black diaspora and explore all its facets. Crossing the River, like many works belonging to Afro-Caribbean literature, presents a synthesis of very diverse contributions and attaches particular importance to the fragmentation of beings but also to their dislocation; dislocation that language cannot transcribe. In other words, placing his novel in a resolutely postcolonial perspective, Caryl Phillips invites the reader not to consider an identity fixity in the process of hybridity and shows how the polysemic concepts of «culture» and «identity» Diasporic blacks build on each other and refer to the related notions of «diaspora», «deterritorialization», or «creolization». Following these analyses, this research indicates that this novel by Phillips reflects a deep understanding of the impact of exile on the culture and psyche of the West Indies, but his original contribution to this haunting theme of Caribbean literature is to show that Caribbean migration is part of American and British history and thus participates in the construction of a new American and British sensibility.

کلیدواژه ها:

Caribbean literature ، blacks ، Caryl Phillips ، Crossing the River ، Diaspora