Examines in the transnational conversation on the place of Afro-descendants in the republican nation-state that occurred in New-World historical literature during the 19th century. Tracing the evolution of republican thought in the Americas from the classical liberalism of the independence period to the more democratic forms of government that took hold in the late 1800s, the pages that follow will chart the circulation of ideas regarding race and republican citizenship in the Atlantic World during the long nineteenth century, the changes that those ideas undergo as they circulate, and the racialized tensions that surface as they move between and among Europe and various locations throughout the Americas. Focusing on a diverse group of writers--including the anonymous Cuban author of Jicoténcal; the North Americans Thomas Jefferson, James Fenimore Cooper, and Mary Mann; the Argentines Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Eduarda Mansilla de García; the Dominican Manuel de Jesús Galván; the Haitian Émile Nau; and the Brazilian Euclides da Cunha.
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.
