BEYOND NATION: CARIBBEAN POETICS IN PEDRO PIETRI'S "PUERTO RICAN OBITUARY" AND KAMAU BRATHWAITE'S "ISLANDS AND EXILES"

Pedro Pietri's and Kamau Brathwaite's poems suggest that a transnational and translingual comparative approach to Caribbean literature will highlight similarities across nationalities born of parallel colonial histories and emigration experiences. While the texts themselves might not articulate a transnational or translingual perspective, their intertextuality suggests that such a relationship exists. This paper will focus explicitly on how history, language, and religion play out within poems about the emigrant experience in the metropolis. I will argue that colonialism and the transnational movement from the Caribbean to urban centers have fostered similar emigrant experience even among colonial subjects with different national identities.