Research Paper on:
Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
reading of some of its fundamental ideas about culture, civilization, rationality, universalism and aesthetics" (Low 122). Critics have located Caryl Phillipss novels within this perspective. Phillips work forms an  imaginative counterpart to this position, stipulating that "formations of imperialism, racism and slavery cannot be dismissed as premodern or atavistic aberration in the rise of Western humankind" (Low 123). Crossing  the River looks to the diaspora and the "affirmative connection" between displaced Africans due to their survival for its major thematic structure (Low 123). It offers an extended meditation  on questions of kinship, as it also explores the issues of loss and yearning in the relationships between substitute "fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, lovers and  partners," within and across racial lines (Low 123). In short, Crossing the River offers the reader a plethora of voices from across the generations, as its characters are presented  as individuals, yet they are also representative (Low 123). Collectively, the voices form the fabric of the diaspora, all the while presided over by an imaginary "father" who listens to  the "many-tongued chorus" of his children. Crossing the River begins with the story of an African father that trades his three children to the owner of a slave  vessel. The children are Nash, Martha and Travis, and their stories form the basis for the three major divisions in the text. The first section of the book, entitled "The  Pagan Coast," deals with the relationship between Nash Williams, a freed slave sent by the American Colonization Society to Liberia, and his former master Edward Williams (Low 132). Nash is  sent to African in the 1830s in order to aid in establishing a Christian mission and colony, which is considered in the US to be a possible solution as to