Crossing Waters

A first-rate cultural history spanning several decades of intra-Caribbean unauthorized migrants crossing from one insular territory to another to escape natural disaster, dispossession, or animosity at home, Crossing Waters reads Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban literary texts and visual and performing arts to reveal how the region’s artists—whether working in the Caribbean proper or in diasporic locations—have engaged this chapter in the saga of Antilleans' needing to leave home.

— Silvio Torres-Saillant, Syracuse University, coauthor of The Once and Future Muse: The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat

I have been waiting for this book for almost two decades. Moreno's detailed and extraordinary discussion finally links inter-Caribbean experience to questions about immigration, race, Latinidad as a whitening ideology, and ongoing debates and explorations about what counts as "Caribbean literature and art.'" Moreno carefully constructs a decolonial interdisciplinary approach to critical race theory and literary and art criticism to study the changing narratives about cultural production in the Caribbean and its diasporas. This island-based Puerto Rican writer is deeply grateful for her work. Enhorabuena, Marisel. Gracias por este maravilloso trabajo.

— Mayra Santos-Febres, author of Boat People

Moreno seamlessly accommodates the Caribbean’s unruly multiplicities—of national contexts, identities, and migration pathways—without sacrificing nuance and specificity...Her capacious framing allows Crossing Waters to proceed assuredly through the folds of successive Caribbean geopolitical contexts—from the erosion of birthright citizenship in the Dominican Republic to shifting U.S. policy toward Cuban refugees—while maintaining a remarkably coherent arc...Moreno’s framing of migration as a process that often lacks a defined end resonates with the ongoingness of border studies writ large and Caribbean border and migration studies in particular...Scholars of migration would do well to follow Moreno’s impulse to understand border studies as both an anchor and a current.

— ASAP/J

A momentous contribution that expands the field of Latinx Studies into Caribbean water and land. It opens many crucial and fruitful avenues of consideration for the overlooked study of the travails of Caribbean undocumented migration.

— A Contracorriente

Crossing Waters is an excellent contribution to Caribbean migration studies, border studies, and Latinx literatures and cultures...[Moreno's] prose is insightful, clear, and defies traditional anthropological and necro-political contexts to argue for futurities that are not only more democratic but also centered on living and not dying.

— Centro Journal

Eloquently written for various audiences to benefit from its jargon-free pages, Crossing Waters is an invitation for generations of scholars to continue adding to the area of immigrant studies.

— The Latinx Project

Moreno calls overdue attention to intra-Caribbean migrations as represented in cultural production, thus decentering the United States as destination point...Crossing Waters successfully redraws and redefines our own critical borders.

— New West Indian Guide

Moreno breaks new ground in her focus on intra-Caribbean voyages.

— American Literary History