African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
160 p., Chronicles the history of slavery in Haiti through a recitation of the brutality of the colonisers and the often mundane and trivial ways in which they attempted to dehumanize Haitians. It seeks to illustrate how Haitians' 300-year journey to freedom was illuminated by the African philosophy of Ubuntu, a world view that embodies human solidarity, respect, dignity, justice, liberty, and love. In this philosophy, Africans found an unmatched strength to resist slavery.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
412 p, Includes Thomas Bonnici' "Diaspora in Caryl Phillips's Crossing the river (1993)" and Adrian Grima's "They are us": interview with Caryl Phillips"
351 p., Explores the racial and gender decolonization of New York and Curaçaoan women in a select group of novels, paintings and performance text by women from Curaçao and New York City. The Curaçaoan novels are: Aliefka Bijlsma's Gezandstraald [Sandblasted] (2007); Loeki Morales' Bloedlijn Overzee: Een Familiezoektocht [Overseas Bloodline: A Family Search] (2002); Myra Römer's Het Geheim van Gracia [The Secret of Gracia] (2008). The Curaçaoan painters are: Jean Girigori (1948), Minerva Lauffer (1957) and Viviana (1972). The New York novels and performance text are: Black Artemis' Picture Me Rollin' (2005), Angie Cruz's Soledad (2003) and Nelly Rosario's Song of the Water Saints (2002) and Josefina Báez's Dominicanish (2000). The ways the women characters, figures, images and voices align to subvert gendered delineations as well as the stifling cultural and colonial imprints on their bodies and their selves in Curaçao and New York are central to the decolonizing project explored here.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
323 p., A comprehensive study of the decisive 5-year period between 1962 and 1967 which witnessed the unfolding of an intense decolonization dialogue between Britain and its far-flung Eastern Caribbean possessions at the height of the Cold War.
Examines the colonial experiences of eight formerly British-controlled territories- Barbados, Jamaica, Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya, India, Burma, and Singapore -to identify how the processes and policies of the colonial enterprise affected their respective contemporary rule of law outcomes.
Literary criticism of the books "Corregidora" by Gayl Jones and "Lucy" by Jamaica Kincaid. Examines the novels' depictions of mother-daughter relationships and analyzes the cultural and psychosocial forces encountered by the protagonists.
