Explored is the history of Calypso music, which though originating in Trinidad, most likely has its roots among the many African cultural retentions that were transported with the ancestors to the west via the slave trade
Proposes that civilizational analysis has yet to fully address the colonial legacy and, to clarify the stakes at play, compares and contrasts the historical sociology of CLR James with the mytho-poetics of Derek Walcott. Both authors, in different ways, have attempted to endow that quintessentially un-civilizable body -- the New World slave -- with subjecthood.
Addresses the place of Carnival in the creation of a national cultural narrative in Trinidad and Tobago and examines the role that such a narrative plays in the formation of a coherent national cultural identity
Examines three ‘cosmopolitan’ traditions in the Caribbean. While the first tradition derives from the universalist intellectual tradition of the European Enlightenment, the other two are linked to vernacular, local Caribbean traditions.
"While plotting out the journeys that paved the way for their creative and innovative work in Afro-Cuban and African American ethnography, this study will address their bifocal vision as insider-outsiders within the minority cultures they represent in folktales and within the 'foreign' cultures to which they traveled. Cabrera's and Hurston's roles as 'native ethnographers' will also be considered. In creating alternatives to traditional ethnographies, such as Franz Boas's Bella Bella Tales (1932), their collections can be understood as early examples of experimental and feminist ethnography." (author)
Reviews several books. A Place in the Sun? Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba, by Catherine Davis; Afro-Cuban Literature: Critical Junctures,'by Edward J. Mullen; My Own Private Cuba: Essays on Cuban Literature and Culture, by Gustavo Pérez Firmat.;
