Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
This article discusses the concept of ole negar, which is considered as a racial stereotype in the culture of Jamaica that is incomprehensible to foreigners and even to the people of the country. It explores how the term "ole negar" is being used by the Jamaicans. It cites the possibility of the term to be used in referring to the poorest class of black people in the country.
Discusses words from Jamaican dread talk that are integrated into the Spanish spoken by Rastas in Cuba. Existence of international dread talk words in lists of Rasta words; Translation of the term Cabeza Creadora as head of family; Categories of Cuban Rastafarian community.;
Van Kempen discusses the songs and traditions of the Saramaccan peoples of the Upper Suriname. The music and lyrics of the Saramaccans depicts the troubles the ethnic groups have experienced in the 1990s from transmigration ordered by the government, typically lamenting or singing the praises of their old African villages, and cursing Western engineers for the uprooting of their cultures.;
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
191 p., The essays in this volume consider various literary and linguistic aspects of the Francophone Caribbean at the beginning of the twenty-first century, focusing particularly on the French Overseas Departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the independent islands of Haiti and Dominica. The literary chapters are devoted to new voices in the region and the Caribbean diaspora, or to recent works by established authors. Contributors offer fresh interpretations of Caribbean literary movements, and explore relevant non-literary issues such as socio-political developments which have influenced the writers of today. The linguistic chapters examine the dynamics of the respective roles of Creole and the European standard language, and consider the present viability of Creole as a literary medium. This collection will be of interest to specialists in Caribbean culture, to university students of Francophone literature, cultural studies and Creole, and to the general reader with some knowledge of the Caribbean.
