Familial Longings: Trans-Caribbean Narratives of Dictatorship and the Latin American Imaginary

In recent reinterpretations of the Caribbean dictatorial past, Caribbean American writers living in the United States challenge the Latin American dictator novel genre as a discursive tradition that reduces Caribbean culture to specific representations of power, oppression, and identity anchored in the political upheavals of the Cold War. This essay examines how the contemporary Caribbean writers Julia Álvarez, Junot Díaz, and Edwidge Danticat use familial dynamics to bring forth the multifaceted and complex realities of transnational communities, dispel ideas of cultural legitimacy based on exclusionary practices, disrupt everyday practices of cultural consumption, and empower Caribbean subjects to claim agency over their own stories and experiences.