Fischer reviews the two-volume work Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean: social dynamics and cultural transformations, by Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Arlene Torres>
"F. S. J. Ledgister observed that in writing about British racism in the nineteenth--century Caribbean, 'Williams presents establishment figures such as Carlyle and Trollope as demonic, but he fails to mention comparable figures on the other side. Williams's objective in assaulting Carlyle in British Historians and the West Indies is clearly political rather than historiographical'." (Selwyn Cudjoe, 11/12/2006 review of Colin Palmer's book on Eric Williams)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
192 p, Book Description Using a multifaceted approach, this study explores questions of identity in novels by Dany Bbel-Gisler, Maryse Cond, and Emile Ollivier. As signs, narrators and characters are connected to each other dialogically and produce multilayered narratives that problematize the concept of a cohesive and static collective identity. In revealing identity to be a constantly fluctuating semiotic process, the study shows that Caribbean Francophone narrative is creating a new literary space where the dialogic underpinnings of the self are called upon to express the difficulties, the heterogeneity, and the opacity of meaning associated with any definition of a cultural or national identity. (Amazon);
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
xxvi, 264 : ill., map ; 24 cm, Festive rituals, religious associations, and ethnic reaffirmation of Black Andalusians / Isidoro Moreno -- Presence of Blackness and representation of Jewishness in the Afro-Esmeraldian celebrations of the Semana Santa (Eduador).
Argues that although evangelical Christianity involves a variety of beliefs that are incompatible with a strong ethnic identity, this religion also includes a range of ideas and practices that nourish rather than corrode black identity.
To assess the relative roles of race and ethnicity in shaping patterns of residential segregation, this article utilizes indices of segregation and a geographic mapping strategy to examine the residential patterns of West Indian blacks in the greater New York City area. The socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods occupied by West Indian blacks are also examined and compared to those of areas occupied by African Americans. The results indicate that, on one hand, West Indians are largely denied access to residential areas occupied predominantly by whites and are confined to areas of large black concentrations. On the other hand, West Indians appear to have carved out somewhat separate residential enclaves within these largely black areas, and there is evidence to indicate that these areas are of somewhat higher quality than areas occupied by similar concentrations of African Americans. The discussion of these results focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the formation of these distinct residential enclaves and the maintenance of a distinct West Indian ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
