Imagined Homeland

Imagined Homeland (Dominica’s Literary Geographies)  aims to digitally recreate significant historical locations referenced literature by Dominican authors and or set in Dominica through geographical mapping, literary and historical analysis and audiovisual exhibits. The project aims to contextualize the island’s complex literary history and to explore the significant sociopolitical contexts that influenced literature about Dominica’s dynamic physical and social geography.

This project uses both close and distant reading to provide literary analysis of several literary works and will include, geographical mapping of historical locations featured in each novel and overlay mapping of novels to view Dominica’s geographical significance to Caribbean literary history. It also includes textual analysis and exhibits featuring manuscripts, images, timelines and other relevant information about the authors, their relationships to Dominica, and the novels’ focus on the natural and social landscape of the island.

Novels for analysis:

• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Orchid House, Phyllis Shand Allfrey
• Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid
• Unburnable, Marie Elena John
• Pharcel, Alick Lazare
• Kalinago Blood, Alick Lazare
• Abraham’s Treasure, Joanne Skerrett

This project is being developed to serve as a key educational resource for teaching Caribbean literature in secondary and tertiary schools. The various interpretations will also serve younger age groups by providing visual aids to the study of Dominica’s featured historic sites. The resource also hopes to attract literary communities, particularly emerging writers in Dominica as a reference site for continued literary production in and about Dominica.