Saadiqa Khan
Postgraduate Student
Department of Liberal Arts
UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad

A Diasporic Outlook on Selected West Indian Short Narratives from 1500 to 1900.

During the period 1500 to 1900 it can be discerned that three major waves of migration descended upon the Caribbean region. These were the European, African and Asian groups. These migrations were both voluntary and coerced. It was these migrations that gave rise to the formative periods of Caribbean history: imperialism, slavery and post emancipation. The selected short narratives for this paper are all created by migrant peoples and are examined as travel narratives, narratives that are shaped by physical displacement and resultant psychic displacement as advocated by Srilata Ravi. The positive and negative repercussions of this process on the three major groups are examined in this paper. They are explored under social, economic, cultural, political, emotional and physical domains. Moreover, this paper also examines stylistic and thematic changes that occur in these narratives during the selected period as a result of these migrations. This examination of the selected short narratives as travel narratives using a diasporic paradigm supplements the postcolonial criticism that is often used to deconstruct such narratives.