Discusses the poetry of Afro-Cuban writer Nancy Morejón, focusing on her poetry collection, Paisaje célebre (Fundarte, 1993). Compares the book to her previous work, and discusses the political and social influences that shaped it. Notes that this book marks an important stage in Morejón's poetry, in that it celebrates a new and different country and voice - one of indepedence and freedom.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
261 p, Contents: Language. Pidgins and Creoles ; Papiamentu : a look at the language -- Slavery. Slavery and Africa ; Spanish discovery and rule of the ABC Islands ; The emergence of the Dutch ; Dutch slavery on the ABC Islands ; Revolts and emancipation ; The formation of Papiamentu : how did it happen? ; The Sephardic Jews of Curacao ; The role of the church ; Papiamentu vs. Dutch : society, education and law ; Oral tradition ; The written word ; The issue of standardization -- Present and future. Papiamentu in the Netherlands ; The present-day situation and the future
"Calypso in its modern incarnation (from roughly the turn of the century onward, that is) has always been commercially-oriented, always creole and cosmopolitan, always "compromised," shaping and re-shaping itself according to bourgeois imperatives and market forces; this is in great measure what made it "modern" (see, esp., Cowley). ... And as for the U.S. market, calypso had been cultivating it since the first luxury-liners put into port in Trinidad in the early 'teens. ... So if, by the end of World War II, calypsonians had figuratively speaking bought the bungalow (as West Indians did quite literally two decades later, when they snapped up not only the row houses of Flatbush and Crown Heights, but also the cottages of western Long Island), then buying into a dodgy proposition like "world music" amounted to just one more mortgage payment." --The Author
On January 1, 1804, Gen. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, proclaimed to the world that his country, henceforth to be called Haiti, was free and independent. Previously dominated by France since buccaneers settled there in 1697, the small Caribbean island, whose eastern portion was under Spanish rule, had become an important slave colony. The slaves were imported from Africa and lived a harsh reality in comparison to the minority white slaveholding population. In 1789, Santo Domingo, as France called the colony, consisted of 450,000 enslaved Blacks, 40,000 whites, and 28,000 free Blacks and mulattos. The death rate for the enslaved population was high: While more than 800,000 Africans had been enslaved in the colony in the 1700s, only 450,000 survived in 1789. In 1791 a slave rebellion under the leadership of Vodou priest Boukman sparked a revolution that lasted thirteen years, culminating in independence in 1804. Toussaint L'Overture was the primary leader among the enslaved population, playing France against the British and Spanish, as he maneuvered the struggle closer to independence. However, in hoping to maintain a friendly relationship with France, L'Overture was deceived and placed in the French gallows upon an invitation to France. His able subordinates Dessalines and Henri Christophe, however, continued the liberation effort achieving independence and eventually driving all whites off the island nation.
Based on the correspondence and diaries of three slaveholders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article identifies the differences in the attitudes and behaviour of each planter towards his slaves in response to structural constraints or norms. These include political, administrative, civic and religious institutions, but also the economic system, social expectations and cultural norms. The author concludes that, although one can detect degrees of harshness in the treatment of field labourers, sexual exploitation seems constant and intractable in all three cases. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT];
The Los Angeles Caribbean Carnival, held in late Oct 2002, featured uninhibited dancing from scantily-clad women, entertainment from Calypso Rose and other Caribbean musicians and plenty of good food.
