Gragoatá (Dec 2005)
Diaspora in Caryl Phillip's "Crossing the river" (1993) and "A Distant shore" (2003)
Abstract
The old (slavery, indentured workers) and new (refugees, comfort women, immigrants seeking jobs) diasporas are analyzed within the context of Caribbean literature. Kittitian Caryl Phillips's novels Crossing the River and A Distant Shore, published respectively in 1993 and 2003, deal with both types of diaspora. While the former investigates the outcome of a Christian U.S. slave repatriated to Liberia and the vicissitudes of a Negro woman on her journey west towards freedom, the latter novel develops the diaspora problems of a modem African who flees his country because of civil war and goes to England to work. Results show that in a transnational economy people of the old diaspora are more liable to find freedom and subjectivity than those of the new diaspora. In the modem diaspora unrelieved frustration and loneliness are certain. --- Original in English.
