Explores Caribbean oral tradition in youth literature. Amerindian and African influences are discussed alongside representation of oral culture in Jamaican texts. Also explains the connection between African-Amerindian oral tradition in Guyanese stories.
During the early 1970s the U.S. songwriter, musician, and producer Van Dyke Parks completed work on a series of albums exploring the musical contours of the circum-Caribbean region and, through them, broader patterns and issues in 20th-century relations between the U.S. and the Caribbean.
The findings of a questionnaire survey distributed to 153 female university students in Barbados and Jamaica in 2008 reveal the attitudes to diverse female sexualities in the Caribbean. The participants in the survey discussed changing beliefs about sexuality in Caribbean society. The findings show that slowly, as a consequence of globalization and the mass media, people are increasingly open-minded about sex. Women are confidently expressing and increasingly asserting themselves as equal partners. There is greater debate in Caribbean society about female same-sex relationships, and deeper awareness of sexual harassment is evident. Nevertheless, for some respondents, the same degrading notions of women as sex objects and promiscuous beings continue to exist.
The Caribbean space is characterized by its cultural pluralism and is the scene of one of the most complex processes of syncretism and transculturation in America. Music, as an element of integration and at the same time of regional differentiation, is deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of the people of the Caribbean and is strongly associated with the identity that defines the region.
"This essay makes what may seem an obvious case: that authentic Black British God-talk needs to urgently engage with the diverse religious landscape of which it is a part. In the process, the essay seeks briefly to scrutinize past and present Black British theological discourse, explore the overtures with regard to engagement with multi-faith and interfaith issues and offer some tentative observations and practical suggestions on the way forward." (author)