African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
288 p, Explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. Draws on cartography, travels, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, histories, politics, philosophies and literature. The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history -- the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
276 p, The history of Haiti throughout the twentieth century has been marked by oppression at the hands of colonial and dictatorial overlords. But set against this "day for the hunter" has been a "day for the prey," a history of resistance, and sometimes of triumph. With keen cultural and historical awareness, Gage Averill shows that Haiti's vibrant and expressive music has been one of the most highly charged instruments in this struggle—one in which power, politics, and resistance are inextricably fused.
Explores such diverse genres as Haitian jazz, troubadour traditions, Vodou-jazz, konpa, mini-djaz, new generation, and roots music. He examines the complex interaction of music with power in contexts such as honorific rituals, sponsored street celebrations, Carnival, and social movements that span the political spectrum.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
160 p, Twentieth-century Black literary and political figures of the United States and the Caribbean related to Africa in complex and ambivalent ways that did not prevent them from denouncing the social, economic, and political oppressions of the West against Blacks of Africa and its Diaspora from slavery through colonialism and neocolonialism.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
241 p, In Blackness in the White Nation, George Reid Andrews offers a comprehensive history of Afro-Uruguayans from the colonial period to the present. Showing how social and political mobilization is intertwined with candombe, he traces the development of Afro-Uruguayan racial discourse and argues that candombe's evolution as a central part of the nation's culture has not fundamentally helped the cause of racial equality. Incorporating lively descriptions of his own experiences as a member of a candombe drumming and performance group, Andrews consistently connects the struggles of Afro-Uruguayans to the broader issues of race, culture, gender, and politics throughout Latin America and the African diaspora generally.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
369 p., Provides a history of Brazilian racial inequality from the abolition of slavery in 1888 up to the late 1980s, showing how economic, social and political changes in Brazil during the last 100 years have shaped race relations. By examining government policies, data on employment, mainstream and Afro-Brazilian newspapers, and a variety of other sources, Andrews traces pervasive discrimination against Afro-Brazilians over time. He draws his evidence from the country's most economically important state, Sao Paolo, showing how race relations were affected by its transformation from a plantation-based economy to South America's most urban, industrialized society.
