Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora

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In Creole Renegades, Benedicte Boisseron looks at exiled Caribbean authors-Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Maryse Conde, Dany Laferriere, and more-whose works have been well received in their adopted North American countries but who are often viewed by their home islands as sell-outs, opportunists, or traitors.

These expatriate and second-generation authors refuse to be simple bearers of Caribbean culture, often dramatically distancing themselves from the postcolonial archipelago. Their writing is frequently infused with an enticing sense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, but their deviance is not defiant.

Underscoring the typically ignored contentious relationship between modern diaspora authors and the Caribbean, Boisseron ultimately argues that displacement and creative autonomy are often manifest in guilt and betrayal, central themes that emerge again and again in the work of these writers.