Calypso Magnolia: Transience and Durability in the Global South
Calypso Magnolia: Transience and Durability in the Global South

Summary/Abstract: The transnational turn in U.S. literary and cultural studies has led to a new consideration of the Atlantic world, particularly of the circumCaribbean, which has been the theatre for some of the most dramatic events of Atlantic history. Haiti, as a nexus for revolution, racial turmoil, and colonial and postcolonial struggle, has always been a lodestar for Southern and circumCaribbean writers. This paper briefly considers links between the U.S. South and the Caribbean, and then examines many examples of the ways in which the Haitian Revolution was reflected in both well-known and more obscure works of U.S. Southern and Caribbean literature, focusing on writers such as Séjour, Cable, Bontemps, Faulkner, Carpentier, Glissant, and James. The concluding section demonstrates how the contemporary Southern writer Madison Smartt Bell drew on this rich literary vein to create his magnificent trilogy on the Haitian Revolution, which begins with the text considered here, All Souls Rising. I also argue that this new configuration of region and cultural history has had and will have future consequences for the status of “durable” and “transient” notions of literary canons.

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