Elsewhere in the City: The Urban Poetics of Caribbean Women's Migration

In this groundbreaking examination of literary narratives of Caribbean women’s migration, Dawn Fulton reveals their authors’ intentions to correct stereotypes that frame the Caribbean woman as out of place in the city. Elsewhere in the City examines depictions of New York, Toronto, London, Paris, and Montreal in the works of such authors as Edwidge Danticat, Angie Cruz, Gisèle Pineau, Nalo Hopkinson, Esmeralda Santiago, and Andrea Levy. These authors, Fulton shows, use the figure of the Caribbean migrant woman as an urban foil who recuperates the city’s disavowed temporal and spatial landscapes, illuminating the formative role of nature, domestic labor, plantation economies, and the colonial past in the urban landscapes of the Global North. Bringing together texts from the anglophone, hispanophone, and francophone Caribbean, Elsewhere in the City demonstrates how centering Caribbean migrant women’s experiences can transform understandings of urban ecology.