African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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78 p., This documents the lack of access to reproductive and maternal care in post-earthquake Haiti, even with unprecedented availability of free healthcare services. The report also describes how hunger has led women to trade sex for food and how poor camp conditions exacerbate the impact of sexual violence because of difficulties accessing post-rape care. It looks at how recovery efforts have failed to adequately address the needs and rights of women and girls, particularly their rights to health and security.
Personal reactions of women to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Discusses the psychic trauma of living in the Haiti's displacement camps after the earthquake regarding poor access to water, violence against women and instances of forced eviction.
Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
Addresses the socially controversial issue of the public expression of sexuality in dance in the Caribbean. Of particular interest is the phenomenon of 'wining' or 'wukkin' up', dancing involving pelvic gyrations.
Initiatives in the field of sexology and sex education in prerevolutionary Cuba are barely known, as continuity between those experiences and the work carried out during the years following the 1959 revolution have not been researched. The founding of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), however, must be considered the product of a long process of political maturity on the part of Cuban women during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the broader context of the FMC, the developments in the fields of sexology and sex education over the past fifty years also must be considered. Drawing on FMC archival holdings, this article sets out a periodization of the four main stages of the revolutionary period of institutionalizing sex education in Cuba, as well as its main challenges.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
23 p., The January 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti. The risk of rape and other forms of gender-based violence in Haiti's camps has increased dramatically in the past year. This report highlights the protection needs of women and girls in camps against the background of research undertaken by Amnesty International and other organizations on violence against women and girls after the earthquake.
168 p., Explores Caribbean literature that contests the privileging of nation and diaspora community models, and instead presents the spontaneous and productive formation of communities through praxis. Conceptualizing community through this lens challenges systemic emphases on unity, shared history, and shared identity, while it simultaneously incorporates difference at its very foundation. The author draws on Caribbean and postcolonial theory, subaltern studies historiography, and feminist theory in my analysis of Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound , Erna Brodber's Louisiana, Zee Edgell's Beka Lamb , and Maryse Condé's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem.
Jamaica's veronica Campbell-Brown waves after winning the Women's 100 meters at the Diamond League Athletics meeting on Sunday May 15. in Shanghai, China. American Lashinda Demus. the meet's record holder, finished runner up in a season's best time of 54.58 seconds, with Olympic and World champion Melaine Walker of Jamaica coming third, also in an SB 54.96. The best of the other Caribbean performances came from Jamaican Dwight Thomas. He also finished fourth in the men's 110 hurdles, clocking a season's best 13.31.
Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
251 p., Showcases recent works that reflect a variety of disciplines, styles and topics that include considering Indo-Caribbean women in creative, artistic and performance text, historical and anthropological analyses, intersection with their "others" in the Caribbean and its diaspora, narratives of self, healing and spiritual growth, and roles in religion and cultural activities.
Discusses the popular notions of sexuality that lay behind the women's bodily displays during Trinidad Carnival, the iconic Carnival experience in the region, and contrasts these to some Christian notions of the body and sexuality, which see the body ('the flesh') and sexuality, as problematic even sinful.
344 p., Explores continuities and transformations in the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood in Cuba between 1902 and 1958. A dynamic and evolving process, the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood encompassed the formal and informal practices that multiple individuals--from lawmakers and professionals to intellectuals and activists to workers and their families--established and challenged through public debates and personal interactions in order to negotiate evolving systems of power. The dissertation argues that Afro-Cuban women were integral to the formation of a modern Cuban identity. Studies of pre-revolutionary Cuba dichotomize race and gender in their analyses of citizenship and national identity formation. As such, they devote insufficient attention to the role of Afro-Cuban women in engendering social transformations.
Provides a brief background of Haiti's economic development over the last several decades, along with the status of women's rights and gender-differentiated socioeconomic outcomes. Analyzes how policy neglect of gender equity in Haiti has contributed to failed economic development and identifies ways that other developing countries have successfully incorporated a focus on gender equity in their development strategy, particularly in the face of natural disaster and financial crisis.
Finds that elimination of agricultural import tariffs hurts both agricultural and non-agricultural households, via adverse factor-market effects, but impacts vary substantially by workers' gender and country of origin. Females and Haitian immigrants tend to fare better than Dominican males, and there are ramifications for both market and non-market activities.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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942 p., Verene A. Shepherd builds on her previous collaborative work with colleagues Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey and presents a completely revised and expanded version of Engendering History (1995), which became a required text in colleges and universities in the Caribbean, North America and the UK. Focuses on key debates in history, sociology and politics in its survey of the critical discourses relating to conquest, the treatment of indigenous women, slavery, emancipation and the post-emancipation period.
Makes reference to the sixth visit of Radio International Feminista (Feminist International Radio Endeavour, FIRE) on April 8-15, 2011 to highlight the development in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Particular focus is offered on the role of Haitian women and other citizens in providing first hand information on policies on international humanitarian aid, offer their inputs to international actions on women's groups and human rights, among others.
Discusses the highlights of a seminar on democracy, freedom and reproductive rights sponsored by Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales-Chile in Santiago, Chile on June 21, 2011. The event recognized abortion as a priority issue in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
241 p., Explores the power children realize in the past, present, and future from their real or imagined connections to their absent mothers in twentieth- and twenty-first-century African diasporic women's fiction, science fiction, and film. Much of the existing scholarship on the diasporic mother focuses on her place in history, yet texts by Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Gayl Jones, Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Sheree Renée Thomas, Nisi Shawl, and Julie Dash suggest through their depictions of the lasting links children create with their mothers that the power of the diasporic mother and, by proxy, the black family and community extends into the future.
On the roles of gender, migration, and sexuality in the concept of sexiles, or people who are geographically displaced because of their sexuality, in the Carribean. Analyzes the short story "La Cautiva" by Pedro Juan Soto, the novel "I Am a Martinician Woman" by Mayotte Capécia, and the novel "No Telephone to Heaven" by Michelle Cliff.
