Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
204 p., Examines cultural and literary material produced by Afro-Mexicans on the Costa Chica of Guerrero and Oaxaca, Mexico, to challenge the selective and Euro-centric view of Mexican identity in the discourse about racial and ethnic homogeneity and the existence of black people in the country, as well as assumptions and stereotypes about gender and sexuality.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
226 p., Argues that a repeated engagement with the Caribbean’s iconic and historic touchstones offers a new sense of (inter)national belonging that brings an alternative and dynamic vision to the gendered legacy of brutality against black bodies, flesh, and bone. Using a distinctive methodology she calls "feminist rehearsal" to chart the Caribbean’s multiple and contradictory accounts of historical events, the author highlights the gendered and emergent connections between art, history, and belonging.
Dionne Brand's memoir, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, touches on the author's childhood in Trinidad and adulthood in Canada but is equally concerned with understanding and intervening in the larger histories among which Brand situates her identity. Her sources are rich and varied, and they can be broken down into three general types: the historical archives written during the 'age of exploration' and the slave trade; the contemporary archives of newspapers and journals; and the creative archive of postcolonial writers, or the neo-archive.
Lalla,Barbara author (Author), D'Costa,Jean (Author), and Pollard,Velma (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2014
Published:
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
277 p, Caribbean Literary Discourse opens the challenging world of language choices and literary experiments characteristic of the multicultural and multilingual Caribbean. In these societies, the language of the master-- English in Jamaica and Barbados--overlies the Creole languages of the majority. As literary critics and as creative writers, Barbara Lalla, Jean D'Costa, and Velma Pollard engage historical, linguistic, and literary perspectives to investigate the literature bred by this complex history. They trace the rise of local languages and literatures within the English speaking Caribbean, especially as reflected in the language choices of creative writers.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
223 p., Investigates the exilic literature of Caribbean-born and Caribbean-descent writers who, from their new location in Northern America, question their cultural roots and search for a creative autonomy.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
261 p., Examines sexualities, violence, and repression in the Caribbean experience. Analyzing the sexual norms and expectations portrayed in Caribbean and diaspora literature, music, film, and popular culture. Demonstrates how many individuals contest traditional roles by maneuvering within and/or trying to change their society's binary gender systems. These transgressions have come to better represent Caribbean culture than the "official" representations perpetuated by governmental elites and often codified into laws that reinforce patriarchal, heterosexual stereotypes.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
192 p., Argues that postcolonial critics must move beyond an identity-based orthodoxy as they examine problems of sovereignty. Harrison describes what she calls "difficult subjects”--subjects that disrupt essentialized notions of identity as equivalent to sovereignty. She argues that these subjects function as a call for postcolonial critics to broaden their critical horizons beyond the usual questions of national identity and exclusion/inclusion.
"Was talking about how we keep our creativity flowing with a group of friends around a kitchen table last winter. Visiting friends from Sri Lanka mentioned that they organise regular readings to encourage themselves to write fresh work and connect with likeminded types. Very ol' skool approach. WRITE ON! was born that nite," says Akhaji Zakiya, the founder, producer and host of the series. "We'll also have an open mic part of the showcase and a panel discussion exploring how we can support Black queer art and culture. We've also commissioned a special spoken word piece, #IAmAnAfrican, by co-host Naomi Abiola to celebrate our achievements," she said. The other cohost of the evening is triple threat Twysted. With a repertoire that is expanding to include short stories and plays about women loving, [Zakiya]'s work has appeared in several publications, including "The Great Black North - Contemporary African Canadian Poetry" (Frontenac, 2013) and "Does Your Mama Know? - An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories" (Red Bone Press, 1997).
243 p., Analyzes three novels by contemporary female Caribbean and Latin American Afro-descendent writers of the diaspora: Peruvian Lucía Charún-Illescas' Malambo (2001), Brazilian Ana Maria Gonçalves' Um defeito de cor (2006), and Puerto Rican Mayra Santos-Febres' Fe en disfraz (2009). In these texts, the old and the new intermingle in the space of the narrative. The colonial past is reexamined and reconstructed out of the need to understand its reminiscences into the present and the necessity to transform the future.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
209 p., Collects interviews with queer Caribbean writers, activists, and citizens and challenges the dominance of Euro-American theories in understanding global queerness.
