African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
129 p., One of only a few studies using ethnographic research to document and analyze the self-identification and retention of African culture by Afro-Mexicans in Tamiahua, Veracruz, Mexico.
Examines the lifestyles and entrepreneurial skills of Karen Theresa Curtis as a businesswoman managing her own huskers. While the free colored men were protesting their lack of civil rights, the women engaged in commerce were protected by no rights and were experiencing their own problems in defending their property.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
336 p., "The author's West Indian mail boat lay at anchor in a tropical green gulf. At the water's edge, lit by sunset, sprawled the town of Cap Haitien. Among the modern structures were the wrecked mansions of the 16th century French colonials who imported slaves from Africa and made Haiti the richest colony in the western hemisphere. In the ruins was the palace built for Pauline Bonaparte when Napoleon sent his brother-in-law with an imperial army to do battle with slaves who had won their freedom. All this was panoramic as they lay at anchor, but as night fell, it faded to vagueness and disappeared. Only the jungle mountains remained, dark, mysterious; and from their slopes came presently far across the water the steady boom of Voodoo drums." Originally publication: Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 1929.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, Projected Date: 0812
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
364 p., Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership.
