Creole America

"Creole America reveals how literary culture in the New Republic period is formed not only by expansionist designs on the North American continent but also by a push for commercial empire in the hemisphere via the roots and routes of the West Indian trades." "Across an array of genres and texts - state papers, empire tracts and political pamphlets, natural histories, autobiographies, lyric poetry, drama, and prose fiction - Goudie demonstrates how distinctions between U.S. and West Indian bodies and commodities blur amid ongoing U.S. participation in the treacherous West Indian trades. Creole America thus compels readers to come face-to-face with disturbing affiliations between U.S. and West Indian creole characters and cultures at the turn of the nineteenth century."--Jacket.