A Regarded Self

“Kaiama L. Glover's magnificently written A Regarded Self recovers voices long relegated to the margins. It is also a new and thrilling kind of criticism, uncompromising in its resistance to generalities about Afro-Atlantic and Caribbean Studies. Seamlessly joining literary reflection and oral history, it unveils a new understanding of the aesthetic and the political. For once returned to their significant histories in the Caribbean, these magisterial terms gain force and momentum. Glover's unparalleled analyses of Maryse Condé, René Depestre, and Jamaica Kincaid make readers rethink the nature of mastery and subjection, as well as the false divide between sacred and profane.” — Colin Dayan, author of Haiti, History, and the Gods

“In this rigorous and elegantly executed book, Kaiama L. Glover performs the disorderly womanness that she theorizes by offering feminist challenges to established Caribbean scholarly practices, tropes, and readings that reinforce masculinist valorizations of ‘community.’ Offering innovative, unconventional perspectives on well-known literary texts, A Regarded Self stands to be an important work.” — Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders

"Readers should be able to work their ways out of the boxes that define texts and approach them closely from less controlled zones. As such, Glover’s A Regarded Self is a timely and much-needed book, in these times when readers may feel compelled to pay allegiance to the labels and theories in vogue before actually regarding the source book itself." — Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika, Public Books