Winner, 2019 Isis Duarte Book Prize, given by the Haiti/Dominican Republic Section of the Latin American Studies Association
Winner, 2019 Barbara Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association
Highlights the histories and cultural expressions of the Dominican people

Using a blend of historical and literary analysis, Colonial Phantoms reveals how Western discourses have ghosted-miscategorized or erased-the Dominican Republic since the nineteenth century despite its central place in the architecture of the Americas. Through a variety of Dominican cultural texts, from literature to public monuments to musical performance, it illuminates the Dominican quest for legibility and resistance.
Dixa Ramirez places the Dominican people and Dominican expressive culture and history at the forefront of an insightful investigation of colonial modernity across the Americas and the African diaspora. In the process, she untangles the forms of free black subjectivity that developed on the island. From the nineteenth century national Dominican poet Salome Urena to the diasporic writings of Julia Alvarez, Chiqui Vicioso, and Junot Diaz, Ramirez considers the roles that migration, knowledge production, and international divisions of labor have played in the changing cultural expression of Dominican identity. In doing so, Colonial Phantoms demonstrates how the centrality of gender, race, and class in the nationalisms and imperialisms of the West have profoundly impacted the lives of Dominicans. Ultimately, Ramirez considers how the Dominican people negotiate being left out of Western imaginaries and the new modes of resistance they have carefully crafted in response.

About the Author
Dixa Ramirez is Assistant Professor of American Studies and English at Brown University.

Reviews
In this piercing and important study, Dixa Ramirez has given scholars of the so-called New World an indelible intellectual gift.Scholarship of the highest order. -- Junot Diaz,Pulitzer Prize winner and author of This is How You Lose Her



Book Information
ISBN 9781479867561
Author Dixa Ramirez
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint New York University Press
Publisher New York University Press
Weight(grams) 522g