The library currently has trial access to three new databases which will run until August 1st. Latin American Women Writers, South and Southeast Asian Literature, and Caribbean Literature are all part of the Alexander Street Literature Package which enables researchers to explore the literary heritage of diverse cultures from across the globe. New content is added to the sites on a biweekly basis, and new materials will be highlighted on each site’s respective home page.
Spanning a period from the colonial era to the present day, Latin American Women Writers is a collection of prose, poetry, and drama composed by women writing in Mexico, Central America, and South America.
This comprehensive corpus of texts, all of which are presented in the original Spanish or Portuguese, provides researchers with the feminine perspective of the development of an entire continent. Also included are essays by Latin American feminists and revolutionaries, who address both the universal concerns of women in every age and the distinctive issues of their struggles in the region.
South and Southeast Asian Literature is a collection of fiction and poetry written by authors from South and Southeast Asia and their Diasporas. The collection comprises literature written originally in English by writers who either were born in or identify themselves culturally with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Fiji.
Because the South and Southeast Asian Diasporas are so widely cast, the collection also includes the work of writers living or working in Africa, the United Kingdom, North America, and the Caribbean. The collection will focus upon literature written during the late-colonial and postcolonial eras, but it will also include earlier work that is essential to scholarship in this area.
Caribbean Literature is a collection of poetry and fiction produced in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting with the literature produced in Spanish and French colonies in the 1800s, the collection offers an extensive selection of works from every Caribbean country. Among the titles are numerous rare and hard-to-find works written in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and various Creole languages. Future releases will also feature journals, reference works, and interviews with key writers.