This week, I resumed my search for all literature created by Caribbean authors between 1981 and 1990 as part of my work on the “Writers, Readers, and Scenes: Visualizing Caribbean Literary Encounters” project.

Continuing from last week, I was finally able to complete my search for literature written by V.S Naipaul, which I must say was quite the accomplishment. I then moved on to Derek Walcott, who I at first thought would have proved to be a lengthy process similar to Naipaul, but in actuality this was not the case. It appears, therefore, that Walcott’s prime publication period was not during the 1980s, and I know this to be fairly true since many of his works that I encountered during this time period were second and third published editions rather than originals.

I then switched gears, and began looking at female authors, namely Jamaica Kincaid and the Dominican-born Jean Rhys and Phyllis Shand Allfrey. While they did not produce a wealth of work during this period compared to Naipaul, their work spanned a wide range of genres including historical fiction, feminism, and cultural traditions. The depiction of island life and the transition from living on an island to living in a European country were also common themes explored by these writings.

As we continue to work on the WAX installation during class and steadily progress towards moving onto the next stage of the project, I have slowly begun gathering resources, such as Wikipedia links, and country of origin, to properly compile the necessary metadata for quite a number of the literary publications clipped in my Zotero folder. This has thus encouraged me to expand my search to not only include WorldCat but also archival websites like the Internet Archive and Google Books. I also believe that in the coming weeks, it will become necessary for me to gain more familiarity with utilizing WAX and GitHub, since this will influence my efficiency and performance on the project going forward.