“The Haves and the Have-Nots: Globalization and Human Rights in McCaulay’s Dog-Heart.” Journal of West Indian Literature, vol. 26, no. 1, 2018, pp. 70-91.
Abstract: This article examines Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay’s novel Dog-Heart (2010), a novel that tackles the very real gap between different classes, specifically Kingston’s “uptown” and “downtown” inhabitants. Presenting a cross-class relationship, which is a recurring literary trope in a number of contemporary novels of the African Diaspora, McCaulay explicitly explores class prejudices in Dog-Heart through the portrayals of the protagonists Sahara and Dexter. Additionally, Dog-Heart acts as a cultural lens through which to view the intersections of class relations, globalization and human rights. This article argues that the use of the cross-class relationship trope in McCaulay’s Dog-Heart operates to identify and foreground human rights violations as a demonstration of the limited efficacy of human rights treaties in contemporary Jamaican society.
