Multiple Trajectories of Slavery: Cristina García’s Monkey Hunting as a Transnational Neo-Slave Narrative

Abstract

The bicentennial anniversaries of slave trade abolition constitute a perfect context to reflect on the legacies and representations of chattel slavery in the 20th and 21st century. Contemporary renditions of slavery, i.e. neo-slave narratives, are numerous and penned by writers across the globe, bent on revising and reclaiming oppressive historical moments. This article is informed by the “New Americanist” approach of inquiring into American literature, attempting to position America in a context of hemispheric, transnational and global terms embracing the hemisphere’s diversity and multiple migrations, rather than in a single national perspective. By analyzing Cristina García’s Monkey Hunting, I intend to show how the novel participates in emerging transnational paradigm of neo-slave narratives concerned with slavery under many guises, taking place in diverse timeframes, locations and cultures. This article strives to establish and inaugurate a variation of neo-slave narratives which responds to the burning issues and dilemmas of the modern day, a transnational neo-slave narrative. The transnational neo-slave narratives are novels set in modern or contemporary contexts, and are concerned with modern-day versions of slavery and their impact on modern-day subjects and societies worldwide.