This work explores how the presence of African peoples has influenced the national and literary identity of American countries that have a significant black population, but do not imagine themselves primarily as black, such as the United States and Latin American nations such as Brazil, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Tracing the differences and similarities between national literatures and the ways these nations define and stratify racial categorisations, the author shows how the literary imagination works to incorporate, reject and/or deny the numerically and culturally significant...

This work explores how the presence of African peoples has influenced the national and literary identity of American countries that have a significant black population, but do not imagine themselves primarily as black, such as the United States and Latin American nations such as Brazil.