Book contents
- African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990
- African American Literature in Transition
- African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Expanding Canon
- Part II New Directions/New Literary Forms
- Part III Global Connections
- 9 Decolonial Poetics and Queer Resistance in Anglophone Afro-Caribbean Women’s Literature
- 10 Transnational Visions of Black Women Writing
- 11 Ruination and a Dramaturgical Reading of Jamaican Women’s Transnational Literature in 1980s North America
- Index
11 - Ruination and a Dramaturgical Reading of Jamaican Women’s Transnational Literature in 1980s North America
from Part III - Global Connections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2023
- African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990
- African American Literature in Transition
- African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I The Expanding Canon
- Part II New Directions/New Literary Forms
- Part III Global Connections
- 9 Decolonial Poetics and Queer Resistance in Anglophone Afro-Caribbean Women’s Literature
- 10 Transnational Visions of Black Women Writing
- 11 Ruination and a Dramaturgical Reading of Jamaican Women’s Transnational Literature in 1980s North America
- Index
Summary
The 1980s saw a shift in Black women’s literary production on and about Jamaica and its transnational relationship to the United States and Canada in particular. While these texts are largely set in Jamaica, they received acclaim among an international audience. This chapter offers a dialogue between dramaturgical reading and the Jamaican concept of ruination, evaluating how adopting the form of play text and dramatic writing aids in the creation of Black feminist writing on Jamaica’s place in the transnational imagination in North America. By mirroring both play text and production, a form that is always under the threat of temporal evaporation and erasure at the end of performance, a dramaturgical reading of these texts will evaluate how dramaturgical methods also serve as an apt analogy for the workings of ruination (something that is at once so fecund and rich that it resists all attempts at the imposition of permanence).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990 , pp. 235 - 256Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023