Description
Book Synopsis2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA)
2023 Winner, Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, Caribbean Studies Association
An innovative study of the artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean
Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean, Crossing Waters relates a journey that remains silenced and largely unknown.
Analyzing works by novelists, short-story writers, poets, and visual artistsreplete with references to drowning and echoes of the Middle Passage, Marisel Moreno shines a spotlight on the plight that these migrants face. In some cases, Puerto Ri
Trade Review
Moreno seamlessly accommodates the Caribbean’s unruly multiplicities—of national contexts, identities, and migration pathways—without sacrificing nuance and specificity...Her capacious framing allows Crossing Waters to proceed assuredly through the folds of successive Caribbean geopolitical contexts—from the erosion of birthright citizenship in the Dominican Republic to shifting U.S. policy toward Cuban refugees—while maintaining a remarkably coherent arc...Moreno’s framing of migration as a process that often lacks a defined end resonates with the ongoingness of border studies writ large and Caribbean border and migration studies in particular...Scholars of migration would do well to follow Moreno’s impulse to understand border studies as both an anchor and a current. * ASAP/J *
A momentous contribution that expands the field of Latinx Studies into Caribbean water and land. It opens many crucial and fruitful avenues of consideration for the overlooked study of the travails of Caribbean undocumented migration. * A Contracorriente *
Crossing Waters is an excellent contribution to Caribbean migration studies, border studies, and Latinx literatures and cultures...[Moreno's] prose is insightful, clear, and defies traditional anthropological and necro-political contexts to argue for futurities that are not only more democratic but also centered on living and not dying. * Centro Journal *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Rethinking the Borders of the Caribbean Archipelago
Chapter 2. Puerto Rico: Border and Bridge to the Continental United States
Chapter 3. Dominican Crossings: Displacements across Sea and Land
Chapter 4. Cubans at Sea: The Balsero Crisis in Literature and Art
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
