In 2008, a new style in Jamaican dancehall music and dance culture known as "Daggering" emerged. Daggering music and dancing, which included lyrics that graphically referred to sexual activities and a dance which has been described as "dry sex" on the dance floor, took Jamaica by storm. The Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica was forced to crack down on broadcasting and cable stations preventing them from playing any Daggering content. This article focuses on the subsequent clash between the government and the dancehall, and seeks to identify an appropriate method for monitoring and enforcing these new standards.
Explores the pros and cons of postcolonial criticism through a zombie, a sensationalized symbol of Afro-Antillean bondage. How reworking the zombie in various cultural and political contexts lays bare the pleasures and perils of postcolonialism; Information on the novel Beso de la mujer araña, by Manuel Puig; Description of the book Wild Saragasso Sea, by Jean Rhys; Discussion on the book The Famished Road, by Ben Okri.;
Argues that the emergence of hip hop in the South Bronx can be explained by the way in which several social-political factors dictated by the needs of the world economy converged with the resistance and labor of black people in the United States and the Anglo-Caribbean in the late 1960s and early 1970
Attempts to understand what the presence of Black music means in the absence of Black people. Is this an expression of a global circulation of Afro-Caribbean cultural trends as symbols of belonging and difference among urban youngsters? Does it take us back to the history of Quintana Roo as a Caribbean region and the Black Atlantic? Is it a form of revision of Mexican national ethnic mixture and inclusion of other population groups? Adapted from the source document.
How do people respond to the news that they are HIV positive? To date, there have been few published qualitative studies of HIV diagnosis experiences, and none focusing on Caribbean people. Twenty-five HIV-positive Caribbean people in London, UK, related their diagnosis experience and its immediate aftermath in semi-structured interviews. Diagnosis with HIV caused profound shock and distress to participants, as they associated the disease with immediate death and stigmatisation. The respondents struggled with "biographical disruption", the radical disjuncture between life before and after diagnosis, which led them into a state of liminality, as they found themselves "betwixt and between" established structural and social identities. Respondents were faced with multifaceted loss: of their known self, their present life, their envisioned future and the partner they had expected to play a role in each of these. A minority of accounts suggest that the way in which healthcare practitioners delivered the diagnosis intensified the participants' distress. This research suggests that healthcare practitioners should educate patients in specific aspects of HIV transmission and treatment, and engage closely with them in order to understand their needs and potential reactions to a positive diagnosis. Adapted from the source document.
The Caribbean island of Carriacou was ceded to the British by the French after the Seven Years’War (1763). Carriacou’s population of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scots, and free people of color, along with their enslaved workers, comprised a distinctive slaveholding society in comparison to that of the old British colonies.
Discusses the relationship between economic conditions and discourses surrounding partner choice in Cuba. Holds that economic changes caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union have necessitated strategies economic survival which differ from previously-held ideals of romantic partnerships. Suggests that anxieties surrounding changes in gender and kinship relations also reflect broader concerns about Cuba's social and economic hierarchies and the future of socialism.
Reports on the researchers' findings 20 years after Lord Gifford's inquiry into race relations in the city after the 1980s Toxteth riots. Gifford reported on the prevalence of racial attitudes, racial abuse, and racial violence directed against the Black citizens of Liverpool. The authors' research focused on education and specifically the low percentage of Black teachers compared to the whole teaching workforce and the percentage Black population in the city.
An essay is presented on the relationship between black U.S. feminist literature celebrating author Zora Neale Hurston and U.S.-Caribbean cultural linkages, and the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean during the 1980s. According to the author, black feminists' attempts to reclaim the Caribbean through Hurston contributed to a neoliberal vision of the Caribbean which excluded Grenadian revolutionaries. Grenadian government debt and depictions of the Caribbean in popular culture are discussed.
In her book Louisiana, Erma Brodber reflects on the alliances that should exist between the African American and Afro Caribbean peoples, symbolically repairing the fissures that exist between the two, while addressing an uncommon subject in Caribbean migrant literature. Brodber's literary themes toward the unification of the relationships shared amongst the black diaspora articulate the legal tensions and national differences that can impede these alliances. Although Brodber's novel approaches this by creating a reconnection of the African diaspora in a borderless and nationless transmigration, and sometimes through a spaceless spirit world, Page argues that in reality this reunification is affected by the rules of the state that simply cannot be ignored.;
Watson investigates the emigration of indigenous Amerindians in the West Indies during the period 1834-1900 and their replacement with enslaved Africans. After the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, the poor whites, who used to perform militia service on plantations in the West Indies, were forced to emigrate due to lack of employment opportunities.;
Explores the way writers address the formation and fate of the contemporary American working class in an age of neoliberal globalization. Specifically, the essay examines Russell Banks's 1985 novel Continental Drift, which interweaves the stories of two characters who pull up stakes and head to Florida in search of a better life: an oil furnace repair man from New Hampshire and a young, single mother from Haiti.
Examines the women who became involved in Cuba's slave resistance movements of 1843 and 1844, drawing attention to those who molded that resistance in visible and public ways and those whose involvement has often been obscured or unnoticed. The narratives created around Fermina and Carlota Lucumf, two leading figures in the 1843 insurgencies, both rupture and complicate the masculine discourse around slave-movement leadership that has been central to historiographies of slave rebellion.
Reads Carnival-related performances in relationship to the colonial and national histories of the circulation of Indian and black women's bodies in Trinidad and Tobago, asking what is at stake in these occupations of genre, form, and performative presence in the latest global scenes of late capitalism (where image and sound, as cultural productions, are always in circulation beyond the scope of the nation, and their own "original" referents).
Personal reactions of women to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Discusses the psychic trauma of living in the Haiti's displacement camps after the earthquake regarding poor access to water, violence against women and instances of forced eviction.
Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
"There is evidence that religion and spirituality affect psychosocial adjustment to cancer. However, little is known about the perceptions and meanings of religion and spirituality among Black and minority ethnic groups living with cancer in the UK. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 Black Caribbean and 19 White British patients living in South London boroughs with advanced cancer to explore how religion and spirituality influenced their self-reported cancer experience. Twenty-five Black Caribbean patients and 13/19 White British patients volunteered views on the place of religion or God in their life. Spirituality was rarely mentioned." (authors)
