Review
Original, impeccably researched, and often compelling. . . . The breadth of DeLoughrey's research is impressive. She carefully situates Caribbean and Pacific Island works within complex matrices of colonial, neocolonial, and indigenous discourses as well as within the unresolvable tensions among competing theories of history and divergent practices of historiography. Her work is further distinguished by a consistent attention to issues of gender and an analysis of the gendered nature of key metaphors, in both Caribbean and Pacific contexts for ocean and island, migration and settlement. . . . Elizabeth DeLoughrey’s study is exemplary as a provocation to comparative methods for literary and cultural scholarship. ― Journal of New Zealand Literature (25, 2007)
A very fine exemplar of comparative island scholarship. . . . DeLoughrey is brave in attempting a review of Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. This is no easy task, since it expects a sound appreciation of regional material, as well as a sensibility to seek and tease out valid comparisons and contrasts. Nevertheless, DeLoughrey rises handsomely to this challenge. . . . Routes and Roots navigates confidently through history and anthropology, as well as through feminist, postcolonial, literary and cultural studies. ― Island Studies Journal (2:2, 2007)
Routes and Roots is a remarkable achievement. It is challenging and informed and makes for compelling reading. . . . The author is fluent, and even at times poetic, in the explication of her subject. The contribution is original and valuable in its ability to bring together the often misleadingly segregated disciplines of diaspora and indigenous studies. ― Wasafiri (23:3, 2008)
Elizabeth DeLoughrey invokes the cyclical model of the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean (‘tidalectics’) to destabilize the national, ethnic, and even regional frameworks that have been the mainstays of literary study. The result is a privileging of alter/native epistemologies whereby island cultures are positioned where they should have been all along―at the forefront of the world historical process of transoceanic migration and landfall. The research, determination, and intellectual dexterity that infuse this nuanced and meticulous reading of Pacific and Caribbean literature invigorate and deepen our interest in and appreciation of island literature. -- Vilsoni Hereniko, University of Hawai‘i
Elizabeth DeLoughrey brings contemporary hybridity, diaspora, and globalization theory to bear on ideas of indigeneity to show the complexities of ‘native’ identities and rights and their grounded opposition as ‘indigenous regionalism’ to free-floating globalized cosmopolitanism. Her models are instructive for all postcolonial readers in an age of transnational migrations. -- Paul Sharrad, University of Wollongong, Australia
From the Back Cover
In this first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literature, Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey invokes the cyclical model of the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean ("tidalectics") to destabilize the national, ethnic, and even regional frameworks that have been the mainstays of literary study. The result is a privileging of alter/native epistemologies whereby island cultures are positioned where they should have been all along--at the forefront of the world historical process of transoceanic migration and landfall. The research, determination, and intellectual dexterity that infuse this nuanced and meticulous reading of Pacific and Caribbean literature invigorate and deepen our interest in and appreciation of island literature. --Vilsoni Hereniko, Professor, Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai`i.
About the Author
Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey is an associate professor of postcolonial literatures in the Department of English at Cornell University. She is coeditor of Caribbean Literature and the Environment: Between Nature and Culture, published in 2005.
