Caribbean

Overview

The plantation brought African and European languages together and produced creoles that literature took two centuries to acknowledge: Franketienne published Dezafi in 1975, the first novel written in Haitian Creole. Haiti, the world's first black republic in 1804, has the oldest written tradition in the region. Carpentier's The Kingdom of This World, published in 1949 and set in that same Haiti, advanced the notion of the marvellous real that precedes magical realism. Cuban cinema, after 1959, is the only one in the region backed by a state institute.

What circulates

Each island publishes in the language of its former metropole and reads its neighbours little: a Jamaican author appears in London, a Haitian in Paris or Montreal, a Cuban in Havana and Barcelona. Region-wide reviews and prizes have done more for internal circulation than publishing, which has stayed national.

Limits of this grouping

The zone gathers the independent islands, Puerto Rico and two French départements, Martinique and Guadeloupe, but leaves aside the Dutch territories, whose literature is nonetheless Caribbean. It also separates the islands from the continental shore, the Guianas and the Colombian coast, which share the same plantation history.

Works cited

• NovelDézafiFrankétienne · 1975A Haitian village ruled by a priest who makes zombies work, told in Haitian Creole.Literature
• NovelThe Kingdom of This WorldEl reino de este mundoAlejo Carpentier · 1949Saint-Domingue becoming Haiti, from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.Literature
• NovelMasters of the DewGouverneurs de la roséeJacques Roumain · 1944A man back from abroad searches for the water that would save his village and the peace that would allow it to be shared.Literature
• DocumentaryCoffea arábigaNicolás Guillén Landrián · 1968Havana in 1968, in the time of the coffee plan, in a commissioned short film that turns against its commission.Cinema