“Home” and “Homelessness” in Black-Diasporan Literature

Abstract

The motif of “home” and “homelessness” seems to be a recurrent one in Black-Diasporan literature, especially, the literature of the Caribbean. The historical dislocation of the Islands, coupled with the cultural and racial diversity of the area has given rise to what can be referred to as a plural society. The result is the creation of the formless, casual society with haphazard standards and the emergence of the confused, unaccommodated man. The fragmented nature of the society gives the West Indian an acute sense of “homelessness” and is best described as paradoxical since it insists on roots and rootlessness; “home” and “homelessness” at the same time. This motif of “home” and “homelessness”; the predicament of the nomadic society and individual, the wanderer in space and time who can find no anchorage is discussed in this paper. Being a literary research, the work is mainly library-based. First, a selection of published literary works by Caribbean writers have been rigorously examined and as many relevant critical references as could be found have been used to sharpen the focus of the arguments. In the end, it is found out that because of the dissolving and indistinct environment in which the people find themselves, the characters try to seize upon something to give permanence to their lives and to arrest the flux, so that the works discussed in this paper constitute individual attempts to overcome dereliction and “homelessness”.

Keywords: home, homelessness, black-diasporan, literature