Transit as a strategy of life and literature: the transnational literary project in resistance by Afro-Caribbean intellectuals Eric Walrond, Claude McKay and Samuel Nation

This article argues that the literary endeavors of Afro-Caribbean writers from the beginning of the twentieth century, such as Eric Walrond, Claude McKay, and Samuel Nation, challenge the very notion of the national literary canon. This is due to their transnational and transcultural character that goes beyond language, cultural, national, and regional borders. Moreover, it shows that their writings, from Walrond's collection of short stories (Tropic Death) to McKay's many novels (Banana Bottom, Home to Harlem, Amiable with Big Teeth) to Nation's essays, foster a transnational, transatlantic, multicultural, and plurilingual literary geography in which the countries of Central America, most notably Panama and Costa Rica, play a central role. These three authors also share a deep concern for racial justice and therefore elaborate a critique of racism and Eurocentrism in their work that is partially rooted in Garveyism. I further argue that it is the very experience of migration, of a life in transit, that contributes to the creation of a pan-African consciousness in defiance of (neo)colonial social impositions and expectations.