African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
302 p, Illuminates the profound role sports play in the political and cultural processes of an identity that developed within a political tradition of autonomy rather than traditional political independence. Significantly, it was precisely in the Olympic arena that Puerto Ricans found ways to participate and show their national pride, often by using familiar colonial strictures--and the United States' claim to democratic values--to their advantage. Drawing on extensive archival research, both on the island and in the United States, Sotomayor uncovers a story of a people struggling to escape the colonial periphery through sport and nationhood yet balancing the benefits and restraints of that same colonial status.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
257 p., Argues that in Jamaica and Haiti, creolization represented a tremendous creative art by enslaved peoples. Creolization was not a passive mixing of cultures, but an effort to create new hybrid institutions and cultural meanings to replace those that had been demolished by enslavement.
