Discusses the oral and written life histories and other personal testimonies of African Americans. It clears up the realities behind invisible enclaves and spotlight of the immigrant's own history. Professor John H. McWhorter argues that modern America is the home to millions of immigrants who were born in Africa. He notes that their cultures and identities are separated between Africa and the U.S. However, his vision of an unencumbered, native-born black ownership of black is considered optimistic. Transnational identities of immigrants and their children are formed, negotiated and projected primarily within their experiences.
The annual cultural gala featured presentations of City Council proclamations to several persons of Jamaican heritage who have achieved success in various fields. Tribute paid to the national heroes who started the march for freedom and independence, as well as the heroics of the athletes at the Games of the 29th Olympiad in Beijing, China.
"There is evidence that religion and spirituality affect psychosocial adjustment to cancer. However, little is known about the perceptions and meanings of religion and spirituality among Black and minority ethnic groups living with cancer in the UK. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 Black Caribbean and 19 White British patients living in South London boroughs with advanced cancer to explore how religion and spirituality influenced their self-reported cancer experience. Twenty-five Black Caribbean patients and 13/19 White British patients volunteered views on the place of religion or God in their life. Spirituality was rarely mentioned." (authors)
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
[Unedited] Examines the 1948 Mexican film-musical Angelitos negros (Little Black angels) as an example of how racial otherness and its exploitation could be staged, both on the stage itself, and on the stage-within-a-stage of the Latin American melodrama, in which cabarets and other performance venues were common backdrops. In using Afro-Cuban or Afro-Caribbean music, dance, and cultural icons, the film exhibits the allure of Blackness within the frame of popular music and dramatic performances, and the ways in which the Blackness was more easily simulated than assimilated. Subsequent use of blackface for Black and mulatto characters in many Mexican or Cuban-Mexican films is coupled with blackface and Afro-Cuban musical performances. Parody and caricature result in a superficial rendering of Blackness in this and other film musicals. They should be viewed as ambivalent vehicles for the vindication of the Black role in Mexican or Latin-American history.
