Although critics often use the term "Caribbean consciousness" and critics of Jacques-Stephen Alexis often speak of his antillanite, there does not seem to exist a systematic study of this consciousness in his novels. The purpose of this dissertation was to analyse how this consciousness is expressed in the novels Compere General Soleil, Les Arbres musiciens, and L'Espace d'un cillement, and how these novels contribute to creating this consciousness in the reader. In addition to the introduction, the present work comprises five chapters and a conclusion. Chapter 2 presents the writer and places him in his social, historical and literary contexts. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the cultural and geopolitical criteria which redefine space and spatial relationships within the novels. Chapter 3 studies the relocalization of Haiti in its continental and Caribbean contexts. Chapter 4 analyses Alexis' redefinition of Haitian space which re-evaluates those spaces undermined by official discourse; it also studies his use of the language of nature. Chapter 5 examines the writer's answer to the temporal and historical dispossession which has traditionally plagued the Caribbean person. It analyses the re-writing of history from a Caribbean perspective rather than from a Western or Westernized one. Chapter 6 studies how the novels express a common Caribbean identity. It proposes a definition of Caribbean culture born from a creative process of cultural marronnage and brassage. It explores the racial dimension of the Caribbean consciousness and examines the cultural metissage present in the novels. The conclusion retraces fundamental elements and themes in the Alexian discourse that emerge as expressions of a Caribbean identity and consciousness, allowing Alexis to say, in his last novel, "We, people of the Caribbean ... " ("Nous, gens de la Caraibe ... "). Among these elements, the conclusion stresses a common geographical experience of fragmentation, a common historical process and a shared process of creolization or cultural as well as physical metissage.

Doan Trouble de Fish is a collection of short stories examining the way of live for different Jamaicans in their home country and in America. The collection opens from the first-person perspective of a teenage boy struggling to understand his place amongst his group of friends in "Sat'day" and, in "'Ooman Conversation," ends with an omniscient look into the lives of a group of adult women struggling to maintain agency against the pressures of poverty. In between, we hear a boy recounting a dramatic beating from his mother, witness an encounter between a young girl and a "duppy" in the countryside, see the transformation of a man dressing in his wife's clothes to feel powerful, and are treated to guidelines on being a closeted homosexual in Jamaica. The diverse characters and points-of-view are meant to offer a tableau of what it's like to inhabit the island or to be a product of its environment. Jamaica is the unspoken character of Doan Trouble de Fish. But the more popular depictions of an island paradise are abjured in favor of urban squalor and uncompromising heat. The Jamaican environment is often harsh to the collection's characters, particularly to its women and non-masculine men. A concept underlying many of these stories is the liability of identity. A central theme to the collection is the maintenance of personal integrity in the face of an environment unwelcome to one's identity. Some characters find a way to forge ahead. Some are still trying to figure it out. / Master of Fine Arts

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-180). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Purdue University, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 320-354).

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

How are music, literature and migration connected? How are these transnational conversations affecting the way countries construct their national discourses today? This dissertation studies how gender and race are constructed and questioned in the 'cross-genre' dialogue among contemporary urban literature, performance, and reggaeton music produced in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and New York City from the1990s-2000s. This ongoing dialogue of marginalized music and literature, made possible by the accessibility of new media, results in a unique urban configuration in which gender and racial identities are negotiated, resulting in the reinforcement of a trans-Caribbean cultural circuit. Following a non-traditional structural approach this dissertation proposes a new analytical and reading model beginning with the Puerto Rican diaspora's cultural production in New York City as a point of departure, and from there expands to the rest of the Spanish Caribbean. I specifically focus on the writings of poets Willie Perdomo (NYC), and Guillermo Rebollo Gil (PR), the videos and lyrics of the reggaeton artists Tego Calderón and Calle 13 (PR), and the music and literary work of Rita Indiana Hernández (DR) in order analyze the complex interplay between music and literary texts to convey gender and racial imaginaries. I conclude that these literary, cultural, and performative texts abolish "national" configurations and are being replaced by broader definitions of "us," race, and gender to address the complexities of contemporary Caribbean transnational identitary circuits. / text

One of the challenges that Caribbean immigrant parents and children face as they settle into their new environment is interacting with teachers using their variety of English. This study seeks to explore the experiences of Caribbean immigrant parents and their children in their interactions with teachers in Toronto and the perceptions that they have about these interactions. The author’s purpose is to bring voice to their language encounters. Qualitative analysis is utilized throughout the general discussion of the study. Using Colaizzi’s (1978) phenomenology approach, data was collected through semi-structured interviews from a sample of six immigrant parents and seven children within Toronto. The central themes that emerge from the data are organized under the four research questions. The results of the research may assist policy makers, educators, teachers, and support staff who plan and implement programs geared towards enhancing the interaction between themselves and Caribbean immigrant students and parents.

Oreaster reticulatus was studied in eight populations inhabiting shallow-water grassbeds and/or sand bottoms off Carriacou and Union Island in the Grenadines, and off St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands (Caribbean). The sea star is fundamentally an omnivorous, microphagous substratum grazer: grassblades and/or surface sediments are accumulated beneath the disc by tube feet, and associated micro-organisms and detritus are ingested and digested by extraoral eversion of the cardiac stomach. Substratum grazing involves minimal foraging effort; however, the low concentration of particulate food resources necessitates frequent feeding. O. reticulatus also has a limited capacity for herbivory and can hydrolyze soluble algal cell contents. Opportunistic predation and scavenging of macrofauna may provide an important nutritional supplement, although capturable prey or carrion are generally unavailable or inaccessible to the sea star. Marked differences in individual size, storage and reproductive capacity among neighboring populations of O. reticulatus are attributed to differences in the quality and/or quantity of food resources. Intraspecific competition may limit productivity, particularly in isolated sand patches containing dense and extremely aggregated populations.

One of the challenges that Caribbean immigrant parents and children face as they settle into their new environment is interacting with teachers using their variety of English. This study seeks to explore the experiences of Caribbean immigrant parents and their children in their interactions with teachers in Toronto and the perceptions that they have about these interactions. The author’s purpose is to bring voice to their language encounters. Qualitative analysis is utilized throughout the general discussion of the study. Using Colaizzi’s (1978) phenomenology approach, data was collected through semi-structured interviews from a sample of six immigrant parents and seven children within Toronto. The central themes that emerge from the data are organized under the four research questions. The results of the research may assist policy makers, educators, teachers, and support staff who plan and implement programs geared towards enhancing the interaction between themselves and Caribbean immigrant students and parents.