his essay reads Madison Smartt Bell's Haitian trilogy in the context of contemporary Haitian literature, and considers why Haitian writers have tended not to evoke the revolution in their work, and why it is an American author has produced the most ambitious work of Haitian historical fiction of recent times.;
Amy Beckford Bailey (1895–1990) was one of the politically engaged women present at the birth of the Jamaican nation in the 1930s and 1940s. Although she is widely known in Jamaica for her outstanding achievements as teacher, social worker, and feminist, what is less known is her large body of public writing. An examination of this writing broadens our sense of her accomplishments and enriches our understanding of this decisive period in the evolution of Jamaican and West Indian history, politics, and intellectual traditions.;
This essay examines public discussions around skin bleaching in Jamaica and demonstrates that a discourse of pathology is a dominant frame of meaning used to explain this practice. I argue that the practice of bleaching destabilizes popular conceptions of blackness that rely on an understanding of the body as immutable and naturally marked by race. Depicting skin bleaching as pathological attempts to recenter hegemonic conceptions of blackness and to discipline bodies so that they adhere to them.;
Analyzing the ongoing problem of Caribbean racial exploitation, particularly fear signified through one of the most potent Caribbean symbols, dreadlocks, I argue that Medusa's alterity is altered by Rastafarians' snake-like hair, but the transformative power of Rasta dreadlocks is contested through certain cinematic depictions of dread.;
