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2. Mediating Blackness Afro Puerto Rican women and popular culture
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Quinones Rivera,Maritza (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2011
- Published:
- Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- 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.
3. Skin bleaching in Jamaica: A colonial legacy
- Collection:
- Black Caribbean Literature (BCL)
- Contributers:
- Robinson,Petra Alaine (Author)
- Format:
- Dissertation/Thesis
- Publication Date:
- 2011
- Published:
- Texas: Texas A&M University
- Location:
- African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Journal Title:
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
- Notes:
- 319 p., Examines the psychological and socio-cultural factors that influence the practice of skin bleaching in the postcolonial society of Jamaica. Additionally, the study outlined the nation's efforts to combat the skin-bleaching phenomenon. The naturalistic paradigm of inquiry was used to frame the study and to collect and analyze data. The sample consisted of fifteen participants--twelve participants (six males and six females) with a history of skin bleaching; a retailer of skin lightening products; a local dermatologist who has written and published in local newspapers on the practice; and a representative from the Ministry of Health who was integrally involved in the national educational efforts to ban the practice. The overall findings show that there is a bias in Jamaica for light skin over dark skin and these values are taught in non-formal and informal ways from very early in life.