Tillis explores the socio-political poetics of Blas Jiménez in the context of the negritude aesthetic in the Spanish-speaking world. The selected poems of Jiménez attest to the continuation of negritude ideology of Afrocentric thematic poetry in the Carribean and showed that the poet's social criticism is linked to an ideology of white supremacy resulting from colonialism and slavery.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
500 p, Daughters of the Diaspora features the creative writing of 20 Hispanophone women of African descent, as well as the interpretive essays of 15 literary critics. The collection is unique in its combination of genres, including poetry, short stories, essays, excerpts from novels and personal narratives, many of which are being translated into English for the first time. They address issues of ethnicity, sexuality, social class and self-representation and in so doing shape a revolutionary discourse that questions and subverts historical assumptions and literary conventions.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
287 p, Eexamines how a number of "foundational" Argentine authors—Echeverría, Mármol, Sarmiento, Ingenieros, Lugones, and others—either repressed the Afro-Argentine past or portrayed Afro-Argentines in profoundly racist ways. José Hernández (Martín Fierro) and Borges, in their allegedly sympathetic treatment of Afro-Argentines, were notable exceptions. The book has some appealing aspects. Extensive excerpts from the authors Solomianski examines—including, in Chapter 7, from nineteenth-century black newspapers and writers—give readers a vivid sense of literary representations of blackness in Argentina. And his analysis of Afro-Argentine characters in twentieth-century films, plays (including the patriotic skits presented in public elementary and high schools), and tangos is revealing and suggestive.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
191 p., The essays in this volume consider various literary and linguistic aspects of the Francophone Caribbean at the beginning of the twenty-first century, focusing particularly on the French Overseas Departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the independent islands of Haiti and Dominica. The literary chapters are devoted to new voices in the region and the Caribbean diaspora, or to recent works by established authors. Contributors offer fresh interpretations of Caribbean literary movements, and explore relevant non-literary issues such as socio-political developments which have influenced the writers of today. The linguistic chapters examine the dynamics of the respective roles of Creole and the European standard language, and consider the present viability of Creole as a literary medium. This collection will be of interest to specialists in Caribbean culture, to university students of Francophone literature, cultural studies and Creole, and to the general reader with some knowledge of the Caribbean.
