Faizal (Deen) Forrester
PhD Candidate
Faizal (Deen) Forrester is a Doctoral candidate in the Department of English Language and Graduate Fellow (2016) in Migration and Diaspora Studies. His current research investigates the limitations of diaspora theory to account for the figurative power of diaspora so often depicted in the work of Caribbean and Caribbean-Canadian writers. His dissertation will focus on intergenerational Anglophone, Francophone and Hispanophone Caribbean literary texts and the roles they play in wittingly (and unwittingly) articulating concepts of diaspora as agents of psychically embedded identitarian power.
He is the author of Land Without Chocolate, a Memoir (Wolsak & Wynn) and was featured in Thomas Glave’s LAMBDA award-winning anthology, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writers from the Antilles (Duke UP) and Kofi Campbell’s The Queer Caribbean Speaks: Interviews with Writers, Artists, and Activists (Palgrave Macmillan). He has published articles on Jean Rhys, Edgar Mittelholzer and Caryl Phillips. “The Greatest Films,” a collection of poems, is forthcoming from Mawenzi House (Fall 2016).