Caribbean Studies Network Talk

Picture of William Carlos Williams on the beach in Puerto Rico

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician, closely associated with modernism. This paper examines the complexity of Williams’s relationship with the Caribbean by exploring his family history, which spanned Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and the Dominican Republic; the possible political significance of the family’s connections to the leading independentistas of the period; and Williams’s first trip to the Caribbean, to attend a writers' conference in Puerto Rico in 1941.