Caribbean Jewish Crossings is the first essay
collection to consider the Caribbean's relationship to Jewishness through a literary lens.
Although Caribbean novelists and poets regularly incorporate Jewish motifs in their work,
scholars have neglected this strain in studies of Caribbean literature.
The
book takes a pan-Caribbean approach, with chapters addressing the Anglophone, Francophone,
Hispanophone, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean. Part 1 traces the emergence of a Caribbean-Jewish
literary culture in Suriname, St. Thomas, Jamaica, and Cuba from the late eighteenth century
through the early twentieth century. Part 2 brings into focus Sephardic and crypto-Jewish motifs
in contemporary Caribbean literature, while Part 3 turns to the question of colonialism and its
relationship to Holocaust memory. The volume concludes with the compelling voices of
contemporary Caribbean creative writers.