Reviews the book "Women's Activism in Latin America and the Caribbean: Engendering Social Justice, Democratizing Citizenship," edited by Elizabeth Maier and Nathalie Lebon.
Dionne Brand's memoir, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, touches on the author's childhood in Trinidad and adulthood in Canada but is equally concerned with understanding and intervening in the larger histories among which Brand situates her identity. Her sources are rich and varied, and they can be broken down into three general types: the historical archives written during the 'age of exploration' and the slave trade; the contemporary archives of newspapers and journals; and the creative archive of postcolonial writers, or the neo-archive.
Looks at Barbados's experience of abortion law reform undertaken in the 1980s. The movement was led by then Cabinet Minister and lawyer Billie Miller. Documents the nuances, important moments, key strategies and major players in the reform movement, and highlights the critical role that Miller played in getting the Medical Termination Act passed in 1983. Background information on the situation of Barbadian women and the nature of parliamentary governance at that time is also addressed in order to give context to the politics surrounding the issue.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
174 p., Reading the fiction of Jamaica Kincaid, Dionne Brand, Jean Rhys, Erna Brodber, and Michelle Cliff alongside British texts such as Dickens's Great Expectations and Bronte's Jane Eyre, Renk demonstrates how contemporary Anglophone Caribbean women's writing radically subverts the myth of the family as it is constructed in 19th century British and colonial texts. These women writers reconfigure Caribbean identity, family, and nation according to cross-cultural, trans-national and transtemporal paradigms.
Discusses the popular notions of sexuality that lay behind the women's bodily displays during Trinidad Carnival, the iconic Carnival experience in the region, and contrasts these to some Christian notions of the body and sexuality, which see the body ('the flesh') and sexuality, as problematic even sinful.
Place of publication not identified: CayStreet Publications
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
164 p., Topics include George Town In the 50's and 60's, The Wights and McTaggarts as the owners of Cayman’s First Supermarket who were pioneers of keeping Caymanian young people employed, Miss Kippy School in George Town, Cayman Prep and Rev.George Hicks, Cayman High and Rev. John R. Gray, Aunt Ione's Fried Fish, Church Girls, Ghosts and Rolling Calf, Dating in the 60's,The Flag Carrier, Cayman Bruce Lee, C.H. Goring and Barbadians in Cayman, A Cayman Summer, and 50’s Christmas in Cayman.
Tempe: Center for Latin American Studies Arizona State University
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Papers presented at a conference, October 31, 1986, Arizona State University; sponsored by Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona Council for the Social Studies, Arizona Humanities Council., 133 p., Contents: Caribbean and Central American literature and art / Emil Volek -- Caribbean alternatives, Cuba and Puerto Rico / Juan M. Garcia Passalacqua -- The novel of the Cuban revolution, phase five, 1975-1986 / Seymor Menton -- The role of women in Cuba / K. Lynn Stoner -- Central American alternatives, Nicaragua and Costa Rica / Jennie K. Lincoln -- United States relations with Central America and the Caribbean / Thomas L. Karnes.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
213 p., A ollection of stories about the lives of 10 remarkable people in the region. From Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic to Columbia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico, readers will come to know individuals whose lives reflect the history and immense changes underway in these countries.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
346 p., A comparative feminist work that starts with a substantial historical account of the different ways that freedom, race and gender were intertwined in Jamaica and Haiti after the end of slavery.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
326 p., Shows how gender shaped urban routes to freedom for the enslaved during the process of gradual emancipation in Cuba and Brazil, which occurred only after the rest of Latin America had abolished slavery and even after the American Civil War. Focusing on late nineteenth-century Havana and Rio de Janeiro, Cowling argues that enslaved women played a dominant role in carving out freedom for themselves and their children through the courts.
