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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
237 p., A close reading of three works by female authors. Presents a trajectory, covering different epochs from post emancipation, independence, and the contemporary, of their portrayal of subalterns, the specific strategies they use to reveal their protagonists' resistance, growth and self-affirmation.
Esteves,Carmen C. (Author) and Paravisini-Gebert,Lizabeth (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
1991
Published:
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
273 p, Contents: Tétiyette and the devil / Anonymous (Guadeloupe) -- Little Cog-burt / Phyllis Shand Allfrey (Dominica) -- Cotton Candy / Dora Alonso (Cuba) -- See me in me Benz and t'ing : like the lady who lived on that isle remote / Hazel D. Campbell (Jamaica) -- They called her Aurora (a passion for Donna Summer) / Aida Cartagena Portalatín (Dominican Republic) -- Columba / Michelle Cliff (Jamaica) -- A pottage of lentils / Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall (Haiti) -- Three women in Manhattan / Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe) -- Hair / Hilma Contreras (Dominican Republic) -- Piano-bar / Liliane Dévieux (Haiti) -- Barred : Trinidad 1987 / Ramabai Espinet (Trinidad) -- The poisoned story / Rosario Ferré (Puerto Rico) -- Cocuyo Flower / Magali García Ramis (Puerto Rico) -- How to gather the shadows of the flowers / Ángela Hernández (Dominican Republic) -- Opéra Station. Six in the evening. For months-- / Jeanne Hyvrard (Martinique/France) -- Girl / Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua) -- No dust is allowed in this house / Olga Nolla (Puerto Rico) -- Widow's walk / Opal Palmer Adisa (Jamaica) -- Parable II / Velma Pollard (Jamaica) -- Red flower / Paulette Poujol-Oriol (Haiti) -- The day they burned the books / Jean Rhys (Dominica) -- Lola or the song of spring / Astrid Roemer (Surinam) -- Brights Thursdays / Olive Senior (Jamaica) -- ADJ, Inc. / Ana Lydia Vega (Puerto Rico) -- Of nuns and punishments / Bea Vianen (Surinam) -- Passport to paradise / Myriam Warner-Vieyra (Guadeloupe) -- Of natural causes / Mirta Yáñez (Cuba)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
277 p., This wild and entertaining novel, winner of the 1986 Grand Prix Litteraire de la Femme, expands on the true story of the West Indian slave Tituba, who was accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, arrested in 1692, and forgotten in jail until the general amnesty for witches two years later. Maryse Conde brings Tituba out of historical silence and creates for her a fictional childhood, adolescence, and old age. She turns her into what she calls "a sort of female hero, an epic heroine, like the legendary 'Nanny of the maroons, "' who, schooled in the sorcery and magical ritual of obeah, is arrested for healing members of the family that owns her. Rich with postmodern irony, the novel even includes an encounter with Hester Prawn of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p, Set in both Toronto and the Caribbean, this novel gives voice to the power of love and belonging in a story of two women, profoundly different, each in her own spiritual exile.