The ‘Pleasures’ and Displeasures of Exile in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage (1985) and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy (1990)

Abstract

Abstract: Drawing on a close textual analysis of Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy and a theoretical framework grounded mostly in Migration and Diaspora Studies, this article addresses the complexities of migration from poor Caribbean countries to the industrialized West. It also examines the contentious passage from the certainties of home to the perils and intricacies of exile. Central to this paper is also the investigation of the migrant’s grappling with his/her border existence once his/her craving for the West is bluntly ridiculed in the host country with systematic racism, marginalization, displacement, un-belonging, exclusion, and other related predicaments. I finally examine the role of memory and nostalgia in preventing the migrant’s total loss in the new exilic milieu. More often than not, the migrant’s unfulfilled dreams in the host country and the many of discomforts of exile awaken him/her to the true value of home and the place of origin.