Caribbean Literature Archives

As the twenty-first century begins, the globalization of culture becomes progressively a tangible fact. The Caribbean Literature Archive Project is posited on the need to welcome traditionally marginal areas to the mainstream of contemporary scholarship. The literary humanities in North America and Western Europe have unevenly deployed their presence over electronically connected virtual communities, while important cultural geographies lying outside of this center have remained neglected. Any quick web search today could locate versions of the work of every major writer in America or Western Europe who published before the copyright cut-off date, free of charge, not to mention the well-represented stock of minor figures and microscopic cultural areas that pervade the online landscape. In the case of the Caribbean, however, one encounters underfunded efforts to offer the e-texts of a scant few authors, alongside personal web pages featuring someone's favorite poetry.

The Caribbean region is notoriously fragmented because of its colonial history. Archival materials from one culture are typically unavailable to other language areas. The CLA project will for the first time render all the basic texts of Caribbean culture available to everyone with access to digital media. The Caribbean Literature Archive has the potential to open up dialogue between regions that are currently insulated from one another by both tradition and inadequate access to primary sources. Moreover, such a project deserves to be realized in the same vein as its American and European counterparts, with the same standards of quality and on the same scale. Project Guttenberg, Project Perseus, and archives such as the Rosetti or the Blake Archive, set the standard for the international project we plan to undertake.