Caribbean literature and the public sphere: from the plantation to the postcolonial

Introduction: Periodizing the public sphere

Pt. 1. The rise of the Caribbean literary public sphere, 1804 to 1886

The abolitionist public sphere and the republic of the lettered

The public sphere unbound: Michel Maxwell Philip, El laúd del desterrado, and Mary Seacole

Pt. 2. Modern colonialism and the anticolonial public sphere, 1886 to 1959

The intellectual and the man of action: resolving literary anxiety in the work of José Martí, Stephen Cobham, and Jacques Roumain

The ideology of the literary: Claude McKay's Banana bottom and the little magazines of the 1940s

Pt. 3. Postcoloniality and the crisis of the literary public sphere, 1959 to 1983

The expulsion from the public sphere: the novels of Marie Chauvet

Anticolonial authority and the postcolonial occasion for speaking: George Lamming and Martin Carter

The testimonial impulse: Miguel Barnet and the Sistren Theatre Collective

Cultural studies and the commodified public: Luis Rafael Sánchez's La guaracha del macho camacho and Earl Lovelace's The dragon can't dance

Conclusion: the postcolonial public sphere.