Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
204 p., Examines cultural and literary material produced by Afro-Mexicans on the Costa Chica of Guerrero and Oaxaca, Mexico, to challenge the selective and Euro-centric view of Mexican identity in the discourse about racial and ethnic homogeneity and the existence of black people in the country, as well as assumptions and stereotypes about gender and sexuality.
Dionne Brand's memoir, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, touches on the author's childhood in Trinidad and adulthood in Canada but is equally concerned with understanding and intervening in the larger histories among which Brand situates her identity. Her sources are rich and varied, and they can be broken down into three general types: the historical archives written during the 'age of exploration' and the slave trade; the contemporary archives of newspapers and journals; and the creative archive of postcolonial writers, or the neo-archive.
