African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
191 p., Conceptualizes the idea of jolie-laide ("the beautiful ugly") as a fully elaborated sexual poetics by three women writers of the African diaspora: Gayl Jones (USA), Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua, Caribbean), and Jackie Kay (Scotland, UK). The introductory chapter situates the study in a critical and cultural context and defines key terms. The chapters that follow analyze the thematic preoccupations and narrative strategies of the three writers' respective novels ( Corregidora and Eva's Man, The Autobiography of My Mother , and Trumpet ) and historicize the novels' explicit and implicit ideologies. With their jolie-laide portrayals of gender, the body and sex and sexuality, these three writers fashion complex representations of black female sexual subjectivity and critique the biased images, exaggerations, distortions, and silences of earlier representations. Recognizing that jolie-laide can be used to problematize racial, gender, and sexual binaries, these novelists exploit the structural possibilities of a jolie-laide sexual poetics to address culturally taboo topics in explicit, graphic, and imaginative language and with inventive jolie-laide tropes. They challenge white supremacist stereotypes of black sexuality as well as the sanitized characterizations of black sex found within the literary traditions of black respectability.
330 p., This dissertation examines the major works of Trinidad-born playwright Mustapha Matura, dealing with plays written from 1970 to the present. By considering the relation of Matura's work to Britain and Trinidad, it explores the complexity of identity performance in postcolonial theatre and the ongoing need for agency among diasporic communities. Postcolonial scholarship fully recognizes the significance of writing in the development of postcolonial identities, yet dominant postcolonial theory largely excludes theatre from discussions of that development. Given its aural and visual presentation and its immediate interaction with an audience, theatre provides a unique postcolonial moment through which audience members can survey issues of race and place in their lives.
227 p., Considers the often-silenced, tangible traces that the Haitian Revolution and radical anti-slavery have left in the greater Caribbean as they emerge in contemporary cultural productions. The author looks at national trends in the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Jamaica in order to formulate an understanding of the uses of gendered images of slavery and blackness in modern nation-building campaigns. Critically assesses what is left out of these narratives and how these gaps serve specific purposes. Argues for the centrality of the Caribbean in any true understanding of the history of modernity and the contemporary nation-state by investigating the after-shocks of the Haitian Revolution and of radical anti-slavery.
Ventura de Molina, Jacinto, b.1766 (Author), Acree,William G. (Editor), and Borucki,Alex (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Language:
Spanish
Publication Date:
2010
Published:
Madrid: Iberoamericana
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
285 p., Contents: Mapa del Río de la Plata hacia 1800 -- Cronología sobre Molina -- El Río de la Plata en los años de Jacinto Ventura de Molina / Alex Borucki -- Un sueño realizado : un letrado negro y el poder de la escritura / William G. Akree, Jr. -- [Notas] -- Escritos de Jacinto Ventura de Molina, c. 1817-1837. Escritos históricos y autobiográficos. Los afrodescendientes en los escritos de Molina. Peticiones al poder. Molina en los escritos de sus contemporáneos / [various authors]. Defensor de los pobres. Escritos políticos y literarios.; Collection consists chiefly of works by Ventura de Molina: political, historical, literary, and legal.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
141 p., Contents: Haciendo visibles a los invisibles / Paula Marcela Moreno Zapata --
Breve introducción sobre los aportes literarios y culturales afrocolombianos --
Catálogo de la Biblioteca de Literatura Afrocolombiana --
Guía de animación a la lectura : Biblioteca de Literatura Afrocolombiana / Beatriz Helena Robledo y José Ignacio Caro.
178 p., This dissertation is about the role that conservative religious notions of racial ideology played in the historical origins of black nationalism and pan-Africanism. Focuses on the writings of an African Caribbean, Edward Blyden, as the centerpiece of the study. Blyden, a native of Saint Thomas (Virgin Islands) and considered one of the "fathers" of both pan-Africanism and African nationalism, was a particularly complex diasporic intellectual. Traveling first to the United States in the pre-Civil War period, then to Africa and Britain at the height of the European imperial venture - and Christian missionary efforts - Blyden served as a conduit between the West (the United States and Britain) and both a traditional and a Muslim Africa. He saw his role as one of mediating (critiquing/translating) these divergent voices and ideologies with the object of constituting a "modern," pan-African subject.
