Fugitive rhythms : re-imagining diasporic Caribbean-Canadian communities in Ramabai Espinet's The Swinging Bridge, Tessa McWatt's Out of My Skin, and Dionne Brand's What We All Long For

Abstract

How do immigrants to Canada experience exile and diaspora? What happens when a person does not identify with a nostalgic past "there" or a present "here," but rather with "nowhere"? I am interested in the development of a diasporic critical consciousness in three recent novels by Caribbean-Canadian women writers. This paper uses theories of diaspora, cosmopolitanism, hybridity, kala pani discourse, and anti-racist feminist analysis to discuss Ramabai Espinet's The Swinging Bridge (2003), Tessa McWatt's Out of My Skin (1998), and Dionne Brand's What We All Long For (2005). Overall the novels explore the potential of art and artistic strategies to express the complex condition of diaspora, to form alliances between different cultural and ethnic communities, and to enable social and political change. While acknowledging the violent and traumatic historical factors that have contributed to diaspora, the novels look to art and hybridity as sites of resistance and hope