321 p., Locates contemporary articulations of afrofeminismo in manifold modes of cultural production including literature, music, visual displays of the body, and digital media. Examines the development of afrofeminismo in relation to colonial sexual violence in sugar-based economies to explain how colonial dynamics inflect ideologies of blanqueamiento/embranquecimento (racial whitening) and pseudo-scientific racial determinism. In this context, the author addresses representations of the mujer negra (black woman) and the mulata (mulatto woman) in Caribbean and Brazilian cultural discourse.
Reviews several books. Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico, by Jay Kinsbruner; From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity, by Juan Flores; Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures, by Frances R. Aparicio.;
147 p., Discusses how blackness, femaleness and Puerto Ricanness (national identity) is presented in commercial media in Puerto Rico. National identity, no matter how differently defined, is often constructed through claims to heritage, "roots," tradition, and descent. In the western world, these claims, almost inevitably allude to questions of "race." In Puerto Rico, it is the mixture of the Spanish, the Taino Indian, and the African, which come to epitomize the racial/traditional stock out of which "the nation" is constructed, defended, and naturalized. This mixture is often represented by images, statues, murals across the island that display the three racialized representatives, as the predecessors of the modern, racially mixed Puerto Rican people. In their portrayals of black women, figures as Mama Ines (the mammy) and fritoleras (women who cook and sell codfish fritters), Caribbean Negras (Black Caribbean women) contemporary media draw upon familiar representations to make black women bodies intelligible to Puerto Rican audiences.
Landale,Nancy S. (Author), Oropesa,R. S. (Author), and Davila,Ana Luisa (Author)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
University Park, PA: Penn State, Population Research Institute
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1 microfiche, "The Puerto Rican Maternal and Infant Health Study (PRMIHS) is a cross-sectional study designed to provide information on the determinants of poor infant health among Puerto Ricans. The PRMIHS entailed collection of personal interview data from 2,763 mothers of Puerto Rican infants sampled from the 1994 and 1995 birth and infant death records of six U.S. vital statistics reporting areas (Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York City, Pennsylvania) and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The included U.S. states are those with the greatest number of births to Puerto Rican women each year. In 1994 and 1995, 72.3% of all births to mainland Puerto Rican women occurred in the included states.";