Walt Whitman and His Caribbean Interlocutors: Jos Mart, C.L.R. James, and Pedro Mir: Song and Counter-Song

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Walt Whitman and His Caribbean Interlocutors: Jos Mart, C.L.R. James, and Pedro Mir explores the writings of Whitman (1819-1892) and of three Caribbean authors who engaged with them. These three interlocutorsthe Cuban poet, essayist and revolutionary Jos Mart (1853-1895); the Trinidadian activist, historian and cultural critic C.L.R. James (1901-1989); and the Dominican poet Pedro Mir (1913-2000all saw in the famous American poet and pacifist a key lens through which to understand North American capitalism and is imperial projections.

Whitman and his Caribbean interlocutors are discussed against the backdrop of capitalist modernity's contradictions, as exemplified by the United States between the 1840s and the 1940s. Bernabe deftly uses Marx's exploration of the liberating and oppressive dimensions of capitalist expansion to frame his discussion of each individual author and of Mart's, James's, and Mir's responses to Whitman.

Author Bio

Rafael Bernabe is professor at the University of Puerto Rico. His many publications on Puerto Rico include, (with Csar J. Ayala) Puerto Rico in the American Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).