This dissertation examines the migratory experiences of the protagonists from four African diasporic novels: Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy (1999), Kehinde by Buchi Emecheta (1994), Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (1994), and The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982). When analyzed comparatively these texts demonstrate that a completely integrated identity (that merges two cultures) is contingent upon a return to the protagonist's cultural roots either by the protagonist herself or someone who is closely aligned with her. The protagonist or her representative must travel to her ancestral homeland and in the process develop a value system that reflects the duality of her identity.
Explores the experiences of Bangladeshi, Caribbean and Pakistani women working in three parts of the public sector: health, local government and higher education. Drawing on interviews with managers and with women employees, the study demonstrates the complexity and unevenness in the way inequality regimes are produced, reproduced and rationalized.
Discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the association of legal reform challenges with public discourse on homosexuality and heteronormativity, sexual expression in the dancing of Caribbean women, skin bleaching for dark-skinned women.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
762 p., A biography of the novelist Jean Rhys, author of Quartet and Wide Sargasso Sea, who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. Jean Rhys's childhood, her momentous first love affair, her three marriages, the disasters which befell her husbands, her drinking and its consequences: all are shown with unsparing clarity.
Focuses on calls by the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network (LACWHN) for the full exercise of human rights regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Highlights the discrimination facing lesbian women in the field of healthcare services.
147 p., Discusses how blackness, femaleness and Puerto Ricanness (national identity) is presented in commercial media in Puerto Rico. National identity, no matter how differently defined, is often constructed through claims to heritage, "roots," tradition, and descent. In the western world, these claims, almost inevitably allude to questions of "race." In Puerto Rico, it is the mixture of the Spanish, the Taino Indian, and the African, which come to epitomize the racial/traditional stock out of which "the nation" is constructed, defended, and naturalized. This mixture is often represented by images, statues, murals across the island that display the three racialized representatives, as the predecessors of the modern, racially mixed Puerto Rican people. In their portrayals of black women, figures as Mama Ines (the mammy) and fritoleras (women who cook and sell codfish fritters), Caribbean Negras (Black Caribbean women) contemporary media draw upon familiar representations to make black women bodies intelligible to Puerto Rican audiences.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
301 p, The Family as the Agent of Socialization -- "I wouldn't be where I am today." Creating Moral Citizens through Church and School -- The Sky is the Limit: Migration to Britain -- Nurse Training and Education -- 'I've always wanted to work': Black Women and Professionalism -- Combining Work, Family and Community -- Nation Home and Belonging.; "Moving Beyond Borders is the first book-length history of Black health care workers in Canada, delving into the experiences of thirty-five postwar-era nurses who were born in Canada or who immigrated from the Caribbean either through Britain or directly to Canada. Karen Flynn examines the shaping of these women's stories from their childhoods through to their roles as professionals and community activists. Flynn interweaves oral histories with archival sources to show how these women's lives were shaped by their experiences of migration, professional training, and family life. Theoretical analyses from post colonial, gender, and diasporic Black Studies serve to highlight the multiple subjectivities operating within these women's lives. By presenting a collective biography of identity formation, Moving Beyond Borders reveals the extraordinary complexity of Black women's history."--pub. desc.
217 p., A comparative study of late 20th-century migration narratives by African American and Afro-Caribbean women, such as Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid, and Loida Maritza Pérez. Informed by critical race theory, postcolonial, and feminist approaches to literature, this dissertation intervenes in literary studies of the African diaspora by underscoring the cultural and political implications that class and national differences have on intra-racial relations among Blacks.
About the Colectiva Mujer y Salud or Women and Health Collective from the Dominican Republic leadership in coordinating efforts to decriminalize abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean through the September 28 Campaign. Notes that the Campaign's action is driven by factors including restrictive abortion laws, persecution of women who engage in the practice despite the risks, institutional obstacles, and interference from organized religion.
