Sarah M. Quesada

This dissertation studies post 1980s representations of transatlantic memory. In examining the development of the notion of “textual” memorials in the hemispheric Caribbean, it argues that cultural products respond to or complement straitened physical monuments of the slave trade. Drawing from a post-memory structure, the project expands this notion into Latin American story-telling to show how narratives share an Afro-historical reconstitution of memory over the “lieux de mémoire,” or where the plantation took root. In reassessing the ontological nature of the Caribbean narrative, the dissertation conveys the many ways in which African history is presented within the margins of texts, in the foundations of nation-building myths, but also at the intersection of contemporary conservation projects.