African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
166 p., Gives a comprehensive analysis of the literary and theoretical discourse on race, culture, and identity by Francophone and Caribbean writers beginning in the early part of the twentieth century and continuing into the dawn of the new millennium. Examining the works of Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, Leon Damas, and Paulette Nardal, the author traces a move away from the preoccupation with African origins and racial and cultural purity, toward concerns of hybridity and fragmentation in the New World or Diasporic space.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
275 p., Explores the complicated post-colonial infrastructure of Caribbean society and life as an African American through the work of Erna Brodber. Brodber's novels "Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home," "MYAL," and "Louisiana" all explore various facets of the Caribbean and African American experiences. The author traces nuances of the Caribbean psyche, the importance of matriarchs, traditional slave dances, obeahs, Santeria and other African-based religious expressions, as well as politics and history.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
313 p., Analyzes the phenomenon of mati work, an old practice among Afro-Surinamese working-class women in which marriage is rejected in favor of male and female sexual partners. Wekker describes the lives of these women, who prefer to create alternative families of kin, lovers, and children, and gives a fascinating account of women's sexuality that is not limited to either heterosexuality or same-sex sexuality. She offers new perspectives on the lives of Caribbean women, transnational gay and lesbian movements, and an Afro-Surinamese tradition that challenges conventional Western notions of marriage, gender, identity, and desire.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
951 p., A story of an African elderly who is blind, and on the verge of death, travels to from African to Brazil in a hunt for the lost child for decades.