On Activist Mothers and Gentrifying Lovers: From the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement to the Model-Minority Myth in the Caribbean Romance Novel

Abstract This article explores a new generation of Caribbean writers in the early twenty-first century who wrestle with self-representations, when the model-minority myth and strategies such as wealth accumulation and property acquisition became the only forms of resistance to urban displacement possible, once the equity structures that were hard won by the civil rights movement were dismantled. Specifically, I explore the affordance of the romance novel genre in Olga Dies Dreaming (2022) and Neruda on the Park (2022) to discuss this dilemma between confrontational struggle and assimilation. Ultimately, this article illustrates a shift in Latinx literature toward historically commercial genres that have become key cultural spaces to discuss pressing contemporary political themes.