Focuses on African American and Afro-Hispanic literature and folklore. Employs Fernando Ortiz's theory of transculturation. Ortiz makes the case that a new Afro-Cuban identity is created with the intermingling of African, Spanish and native inhabitants of Cuba. Using Ortiz's critical framework as the foundation of this study, critiques of Zora Neale Hurston's portrayal of African American identity. Examines the parallel between her work and that of Lydia Cabrera, a Cuban ethnographer whose work represents Afro-Cuban identity as a transcultural one.
[Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce] burst on to the scene as a fresh-faced youngster in 2008, winning the local national trials before going on to shock the nation and the crown by claiming the title at the Beijing Olympic Games. Fraser-Pryce clocked an impressive 10.78 seconds to lead a Jamaican sweep of the event finishing ahead of compatriots Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
208 p., Illustrates the way enslaved Africans lived and helped to shape Jamaican society in the three decades before British abolition of the slave trade. Audra Diptee's in-depth investigations reveal unexpected insights into the demographics of those captured in Africa and legally transported on British slave ships.
"We do it in the rural areas more than we do it in Kingston and I think events such as Kingston Pon Di River really need to happen more. It's a way of giving people a voice. I really congratulate the organisers, and it's one of those events that people should put on their calendar," she said. "I thought the audience reception was very positive. It's encouraging me to write some more stories. Kingston Pon Di River buss me as a creative writer, so mi haffi go through," she told The Gleaner.
448 p., This applied anthropology study, guided by a feminist perspective and in particular, Black Feminist Thought is an outgrowth of an evaluation study of the Partnership for Peace Program (PFP) in Grenada, West Indies. The PFP is a Caribbean-specific model that was built into a sixteen-week cycle program by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UNWomen). Since 2005, the PFP has been geared towards Grenadian men, who have used violence against women to express their masculine identities. PFP focuses exclusively on rehabilitating male perpetrators with a goal to protect the human rights of women. This research evaluated the PFP program, using qualitative and quantitative methods to measure the program's impact based on the behavioral changes that male participants adopted to avoid violence against women.
320 p., Examines the place of difference in black women's writing of the African diaspora. The works of well-known and canonical writers Toni Morrison, Buchi Emecheta, Jamaica Kincaid, and Audre Lorde illustrate key functions of the poetics of difference. The author reads these writers alongside important but underexplored figures, including Ghanaian-born poet Ama Ata Aidoo, Cuban-born novelist Achy Obejas, Trinidadian-born writer Dionne Brand, and South African/Botswanan writer Bessie Head, as well as younger writers such as U.S.-born playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, Nigerian-born fiction writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and St. Thomas-born writer Tiphanie Yanique. These writers reframe identity around radical models of difference by: (1) developing and naming hybrid genres; and (2) destabilizing formal conventions of recognizable genres through multiplicities of voice. By highlighting difference as a core component of black female identity, these writers make crucial interventions in several areas, including Afrodiasporic cultural, feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity, as well as feminist, Afrodiasporic cultural, formalist, and narratological conceptions of voice.
Amidst the shrill of excitement, Olympic athleticism, and national pride, Jamaica, recently celebrated fifty years of independence. Stringers for the Informer, on the ground in London , have eagerly shared photos of the simultaneous celebrations - Independence and medals for superior athleticism won by Jamaican nationals around the globe. Here, we gladly share those photos with our readers, as well as a message prepared especially for the Informer from the Ambassador of Jamaica to the United States, [Stephen C. Vasciannie]. Congratulations!
274 p., Argues that colonialism, or its impact, as a relation of power is threaded through the related themes of gender/sexuality, the environment, and global capitalism in Jamaica Kincaid's work. The author is interested in how the intersection of these themes enhance Kincaid's critique of the impact of colonialism on the people of Antigua and the Anglophone African Caribbean.
Dessalines became a lieutenant in Papillon's army and followed him to Santo Domingo, where at first he enlisted to serve Spain's military forces against the French then he joined the "real" slave rebellion that was inspired by Dutty Boukman, a voodoo priest, and led by Toussaint.
Can musical sounds reveal history, or collective identity, or new notions of geography, in different ways than texts or migrating people themselves? This essay offers the idea that the sounds of music, with their capacity to index memories and associations, become sonic points on a cognitive compass that orients diasporic people in time and space. Explores grassroots religious musical productions to show that Afro-Caribbean groups can stake out multiple diasporic identities in overlapping diasporic spaces through the various political registers of tribe, kingdom, and nation.
