Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Myth of the Vulnerable Body -- Chapter 1: Lurking Shadows: Ethnography, Colonialism, and Crime in Patrick Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnifique -- Chapter 2: Illness and Utopia in Severo Sarduy's Pájaros de la Playa -- Chapter 3: Coming of Age in the Tropics: Girlhood and the Making of the Colonial Body -- Chapter 4: Erotic Interventions: The Political and the Intimate in Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother -- Chapter 5: Abjection and Aesthetic Violence in Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's Trilogía sucia de La Habana -- Notes -- References -- Index.