Founded by Charlotte Rogers (UVA) and Kaiama Glover (Barnard) in 2017, the network brings together junior and senior Caribbean scholars from Africana studies, American studies, architecture, English, history, Spanish, and religious studies, among others.

In this issue of sx salon, the discussion of the novel by three University of Virginia colleagues offers a glimpse of what the Greater Caribbean Studies Network at UVA has afforded us. The novel, which was published in English translation as Tentacle in 2018, is at once a work of dystopic science fiction (set in a future Dominican Republic where hi-tech surveillance and machinery allow the state to vaporize plague-ridden Haitians) climate fiction, or cli-fi (an already fatal 2024 tsunami washes biological weapons into the Caribbean Sea) speculative time travel (contact with a Santería deity sends characters back in time) and queer fiction (opening with a gender-transition surgery) as well as a meditation on contemporaneity in art, colonial history, race in the DR, and more. Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunlé ( Omicunlé’s Maid), the first Spanish-language book to win the grand prize at the Caribbean Writer’s Association Awards (in 2017), is one such work. It is a treat when a new work of literature emerges that sparks enthusiasm in and critical engagement by scholars from multiple disciplines.

Tentacle rita indiana chapter summary