<p>Includes bibliographical references and index.</p>

Introduction: Periodizing the public sphere -- Pt. 1. The rise of the Caribbean literary public sphere, 1804 to 1886 -- The abolitionist public sphere and the republic of the lettered -- The public sphere unbound: Michel Maxwell Philip, El laúd del desterrado, and Mary Seacole -- Pt. 2. Modern colonialism and the anticolonial public sphere, 1886 to 1959 -- The intellectual and the man of action: resolving literary anxiety in the work of José Martí, Stephen Cobham, and Jacques Roumain -- The ideology of the literary: Claude McKay's Banana bottom and the little magazines of the 1940s -- Pt. 3. Postcoloniality and the crisis of the literary public sphere, 1959 to 1983 -- The expulsion from the public sphere: the novels of Marie Chauvet -- Anticolonial authority and the postcolonial occasion for speaking: George Lamming and Martin Carter -- The testimonial impulse: Miguel Barnet and the Sistren Theatre Collective -- Cultural studies and the commodified public: Luis Rafael Sánchez's La guaracha del macho camacho and Earl Lovelace's The dragon can't dance -- Conclusion: the postcolonial public sphere.