New PhD Thesis: Sally Anderson Boström - “Closed Place, Open Word”: Reading the Postplantation in Earl Lovelace, Milton Murayama, and Ntozake Shange

2022-05-18

This dissertation focuses on three authors who came of age in the 1980s, Earl Lovelace, Milton Murayama, and Ntozake Shange, reading their novels set respectively on Trinidad, Hawai‘i, and the Sea Islands, as postplantation expressions.

The dissertation’s specific contribution is to show how the history of the plantation is central to contemporary island discourse. The comparative study of novels about Trinidad, Hawai‘i, and the Sea Islands untangles the effect of the plantation in each of these locations: the legacies of racial and sexual trauma, poverty, and the power structures that continue to replicate the plantation, but also the culture and language that emerged in triumph from this dehumanizing system.

The public defence takes place on 14 June 2022, Ihresalen, English Park Campus, Thunbergsvägen 3H, Uppsala, 13:15.

Read more about the thesis.

More news

Last modified: 2021-02-12