Asylum Speakers: Caribbean Refugees and Testimonial Discourse

by April Shemak

Overview

Offering the first interdisciplinary study of refugees in the Caribbean, Central America, and the United States, Asylum Speakers relates current theoretical debates about hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the actual conditions of refugees. In doing so, the author weighs the questions of truth valueassociated with various modes of witnessing to explore the function of testimonial discourse in constructing refugee subjectivity in New World cultural and political formations. By examining literary works by such writers as Edwidge Danticat, Nikl Payen, Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Julia Alvarez, Ivonne Lamazares, and Cecilia Rodr¡guez Milans, theoretical work by Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris, as well as human rights documents, government documents, photography, and historical studies, Asylum Speakers constructs a complex picture of New World refugees that expands current discussions of diaspora and migration, demonstrating that the peripheral nature of refugee testimonial narratives requires us to reshape the boundaries of U.S. ethnic and postcolonial studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823233557
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2010
Series:	American Literatures Initiative Series
Edition description:	2
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

April Shemak is an Assistant Professor of English at Sam Houston State University.

Editorial Reviews

Imaginatively 'trespassing' and remaking the borders of Caribbean, US ethnic, and postcolonial studies, April Shemak's book offers an eloquent analysis of refugees and asylum seekers in the contradictory discourses of hospitality. Her range of material testimonial narrative, congressional hearings, photographic archives, and contemporary literature is unique. This is theoretically astute and necessary scholarship that will speak to many constituencies.-Supriya Nair, Tulane University

April Shemak's interweaving of visual, state, and literary narrativesis innovative and timely and will make an important impact on thediscourse of refugees and transnationalism.-Elizabeth DeLoughrey, University of California, Los Angeles

"Asylum Speakers is a timely and important study that performs the necessary task of 'breaking the surface of articulation' for refugees. Its readings and analyses of literary and non-literary narratives and utterances by, or on behalf of, refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. helps bring to light the extraordinary stakes-more often than not between life and death-that appears to rest solely upon the spoken word. The study's focus on western hemispheric 'forced' migrants to the U.S. from the second half of the twentieth century encompasses an extraordinarily complex mix of political circumstances and global economic reaches all intersected by contested vectors of race, class, and ethnicity. . . The refugee emerges through these pages as an extraordinarily compelling figure of our times." -Fawzia Mustafa, Fordham University

Shemak opens up new critical territory with this volume. . . Through discussions of literary works by such writers as Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Edwidge Danticat, and Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes, among others, the author suggests that scholars must open up their understanding of what shapes the peripheries of both postcolonial and ethnically based cultural and literary scholarship. . . Highly recommended.-Choice

From the Publisher

Shemak opens up new critical territory with this volume. . . Through discussions of literary works by such writers as Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Edwidge Danticat, and Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes, among others, the author suggests that scholars must open up their understanding of what shapes the peripheries of both postcolonial and ethnically based cultural and literary scholarship. . . Highly recommended.

Choice

April Shemak's interweaving of visual, state, and literary narratives is innovative and timely and will make an important impact on the discourse of refugees and transnationalism.

University of California, Los Angeles - Elizabeth DeLoughrey

Imaginatively ‘trespassing’ and remaking the borders of Caribbean, US ethnic, and postcolonial studies, April Shemak’s book offers an eloquent analysis of refugees and asylum seekers in the contradictory discourses of hospitality. Her range of material testimonial narrative, congressional hearings, photographic archives, and contemporary literature is unique. This is theoretically astute and necessary scholarship that will speak to many constituencies.

Tulane University - Supriya Nair

Asylum Speakers is a timely and important study that performs the necessary task of "breaking the surface of articulation" for refugees. Its readings and analyses of literary and non-literary narratives and utterances by, or on behalf of, refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. helps bring to light the extraordinary stakes—more often than not between life and death—that appears to rest solely upon the spoken word. The study’s focus on western hemispheric “forced” migrants to the U.S. from the second half of the twentieth century encompasses an extraordinarily complex mix of political circumstances and global economic reaches all intersected by contested vectors of race, class, and ethnicity. This mix is further complicated by linguistic barriers of language groups and the formal mediations of (mis)translation, non-commensurate levels of education, as well as unstable, fluid locales, physical casualty and debilitation. The refugee emerges through these pages as an extraordinarily compelling figure of our times.

Fordham University - Fawzia Mustafa