Creole Renegades

Caribbean Philosophical Association Nicolás Cristóbal GuillénBatista Outstanding Book Award

Caribbean Studies Association Barbara T.Christian Literary Award, Honorable Mention



In Creole Renegades,Bénédicte Boisseron looks at exiled Caribbean authors?Edwidge Danticat, JamaicaKincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Maryse Condé, Dany Laferriére, and more?whose workshave been well received in their adopted North American countries but who areoften viewed by their home islands as sell-outs, opportunists, or traitors.

Theseexpatriate and second-generation authors refuse to be simple bearers ofCaribbean culture, often dramatically distancing themselves from thepostcolonial archipelago. Their writing is frequently infused with an enticingsense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, but their deviance is notdefiant.

Underscoringthe typically ignored contentious relationship between modern diaspora authorsand the Caribbean, Boisseron ultimately argues that displacement and creativeautonomy are often manifest in guilt and betrayal, central themes that emergeagain and again in the work of these writers.



Publication of thepaperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through theAmerican Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.