Cultural creolization, métissage, hybridity, and the in-between spaces of postcolonial thought are now fundamental terms of reference within contemporary critical thought. Entwisted Tongues explores the sociohistorical and cultural basis for writing in creole languages from a comparative framework. The rise of self-defining literatures in Atlantic creoles offers parallels with the development of national literatures elsewhere, but the status of creole languages imposes particular conditions for literary creation. After an introduction to the history of the term creole, Entwisted Tongues surveys the history of the languages which are its focus: the Crioulo of Cape Verde, Sierra Leone Krio, Surinamese Sranan, Papiamentu (spoken in the Netherlands Antilles), and the varieties of French-based Kreyol in the Caribbean. The chapter Deep Speech turns around a trope ubiquitous in creoles, one conveying the sense that their authentic registers are at the furthest remove from the high cultures with which they are in contact; Diglossic Dilemma explores the contradictions inherent in this trope. The remaining analysis explores numerous nooks and crannies of these marginal but fascinating literatures, submitting that creoles and literature in them are prima facie evidence of the human will to articulate speech and verbal art, even in the face of slavery, oppression and penury.

Though we speak English as a nation, it's no secret that America is far from uniform. Spanish, in particular, has long been touted as the language that will figure into our national future; much has been written about the need to recognize it in our laws and schools. Yet billing America as a bilingual country is a gross misrepresentation. They speak Basque in Nevada, Hindi in San Jose, and Gullah in South Carolina. We speak European, Asian, and Native American languages, as well as hybrids like Creole and Spanglish. And Elizabeth Little's home--Queens, New York--is among the most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse places on the planet. Small surprise, then, that Little felt a yearning to find the cultural and linguistic soul of the country. And she has done it in the most American way imaginable: on a road trip. This book is the result: a festive roadmap of the bounties of our country. We'll learn about the struggle of the French-speaking population of Maine to get along with the community around them; the traditional ways of the German-speaking Amish in Pennsylvania; and the rich history of the little-known African population of Nantucket. Elizabeth Little is a witty and endearing tourguide for this memorable and original trip.

This fifth volume of ASNEL Papers covers a wide range of theoretical and thematic approaches to the topics of travelling, migration, and dislocation. All migrants are travellers, but not all travellers are migrants. Migration and the figure of the migrant have become key concepts in recent post-colonial studies. However, migration is not such a new or exceptional phenomenon. From the eighteenth century onward there have been migrations from Europe to what are now called 'post-colonial' countries, and this prepared the ground for movement back to the old but also to the new centres of Europe and elsewhere. Travel and travel experience, on the other hand, have been part of the cultural codes not only of the West and not only of imperialism. The essays in this volume look at both kinds of movement, at their intersections, and at their (dis)locating effects. They cover a wide range of topics, from early seventeenth-century travel reports, through nineteenth-century women's travel writing, to such contemporary writers as Michael Ondaatje and Janette Turner Hospital.

The Haitian Revolution has generated responses from commentators in fields ranging from philosophy to historiography to twentieth-century literary and artistic studies. But what about the written work produced at the time, by Haitians? This book is the first to present an account of a specifically Haitian literary tradition in the Revolutionary era. Beyond the Slave Narrative shows the emergence of two strands of textual innovation, both evolving from the new revolutionary consciousness: the remarkable political texts produced by Haitian revolutionary leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and popular Creole poetry from anonymous courtesans in Saint-Domingue's libertine culture. These textual forms, though they differ from each other, both demonstrate the increasing cultural autonomy and literary voice of non-white populations in the colony at the time of revolution. Unschooled generals and courtesans, long presented as voiceless, are at last revealed to be legitimate speakers and authors. These Haitian French and Creole texts have been neglected as a foundation of Afro-diasporic literature by former slaves in the Atlantic world for two reasons: because they do not fit the generic criteria of the slave narrative (which is rooted in the autobiographical experience of enslavement); and because they are mediated texts, relayed to the print-cultural Atlantic domain not by the speakers themselves, but by secretaries or refugee colonists. These texts challenge how we think about authorial voice, writing, print culture, and cultural autonomy in the context of the formerly enslaved, and demand that we reassess our historical understanding of the Haitian Independence and its relationship to an international world of contemporary readers.

Vol. 1- , spring 1970- , include "A Bibliography of American doctoral dissertations on African literature," compiled by Nancy J. Schmidt.

Internationales Jahrbuch für europäische Soziolinguistik.