Publishing against the tide: Isla Negra Editores, an example of pan-Caribbean transL/National solidarity

Abstract

This article will take as its primary focus the independent publisher Isla Negra Editores, based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It will start by giving a brief presentation of the publisher’s editorial line before taking a closer look at two of its collections, El canon secuestrado and Los nuevos caníbales, to interrogate processes of literary circulation within the Greater Caribbean and reveal attempts at bringing together emerging (or silenced) authors from across the region and beyond. The “new classics” under study, compiled in anthologies or presented in individual formats, will provide a unique context from which to study pan-Caribbean transL/National processes as a tidal movement which anchors the circulation of the region’s literary production in specific time zones on the one hand, leading to the [re]formation and deformation of a given canon ; but also, on the other, in specific places often (although not solely) bounded by linguistic proximity, as the editorial connections between Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico testify. Eventually, the publisher’s work will be presented as a literary model for transL/National solidarity through which new cartographies of the region’s literary circulation emerge. Within this context, translation will be understood in its linguistic sense, entailing cultural, intra and inter-textual shifts and negotiations. But it will also be considered as a relational process that connects the Greater Caribbean with the tout-monde, whilst generating new forms of « minor transnationalisms » (Françoise Lionnet, Shu-mei Shih) in the hope to circumvent traditional routes of canonization.