African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
268 p., In an examination of the fiction of contemporary women writers of the African Diaspora, these writers engage important texts from writers in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, largely ignored by mainstream literary scholars. They employ fresh and poignant critical perspectives accessible to both scholars and students. Includes Carolyn Cooper's
"Sense make befoh book": Grenadian popular culture and the rhetoric of revolution in Merle Collins's Angel and the Colour of forgetting," Paula C. Barnes "Meditations on her/story: Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem and the slave narrative tradition," and Erna Brodber's "Guyana's historical sociology and the novels of Beryl Gilroy and Grace Nichols."
The purpose of this study was to examine ethnic variation in the relationship between individual socio-demographic factors, parental educational level, and late-life depressive symptoms in older African Americans and Caribbean Blacks.
A systematic review and synthesis of quantitative and qualitative research were undertaken to examine attitudes to deceased donation and registration as an organ donor among ethnic minorities in the UK and North America. In all countries, knowledge of organ donation and registration remained low despite public campaigns, with African-Americans and Black African and Black Caribbean populations in the U.K. often regarding organ donation as a 'white' issue.
251 p., Argues that there is a difference between biological essentialism and racial authenticity. Essentialism is reactionary, whereas racial authenticity is thoughtful, constructed and aimed at countering common beliefs. Once authenticity is positioned as a means to an end and not an end itself, authenticity can be used as a way of reading social situations, questioning how authentic arguments are used in culture, and understanding why their use is sometimes necessary. Also, using authenticity as a way of reading social situations takes the focus off of the authentic representation of race and places attention on American society by examining how the authentic representation works in dialogue with other arguments about race. This study uses the Harlem Renaissance as a backdrop to view how Afro-Caribbeans inserted themselves into African American discourses on race. The dark skinned immigrants blended in visually, but were far removed from many of the formative racial experiences of their American peers. These people may have come to align with African Americans and fight white racism, but they were in fact taking up new identity positions and learning to perform forms of blackness on the fly. The works that are examined in the various chapters of this dissertation show Black writers as critical agents of change who work hard to balance their own personal needs with the needs of their race and position themselves within a racist society.
[Rosa Guy]'s personal life odyssey has been a major influence on the scope and tone of her writing. Upon arriving in the United States with her parents in the early 1930's and moving to Harlem at the age of eight, Rosa became a prolific observer of African-American culture and the forces that shape its existence in American society. Guy's novels have explored the stifling consequences of poverty in settings as far away as the Caribbean, or as near as New York's Harlem. Once it is published, her newest novel from Dutton Press, The Sun, The Sea, A Touch of the Wind will join an impressive body of literary material authored by Ms. Guy that include: Bird At My Window; A Measure of Time; And Then She Heard A Bird Sing; Edith Jackson; Ruby; Children of the Longing; and Music of Summer.
Randall Robinson, founder and president of TransAfrica will speak at 12:30 p.m. at the Black Business and Professional Association's (BBPA) 4th Annual African American Economic Summit to be held Saturday, May 20 at the Renaissance Long Beach Hotel from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Robinson is a noted activist and author of Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America. He is best known for his leadership in spearheading the movement to influence United States policies toward Africa and the Caribbean. Robinson played a significant role in the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and the restoration of Democracy in Haiti.
With the rainy season creating additional strife in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, BET founder and business mogul Bob Johnson is bringing new hope to the Caribbean nation. Johnson's investment company, RLJ Companies, partnered with Global Building Solutions following the January natural disaster to develop mass housing and now has new plans to bring work and financial assistance to Haiti.
Brock,Lisa (Editor) and Castaneda Fuertes,Digna (Editor)
Format:
Book, Whole
Publication Date:
1998
Published:
Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
298 p, The relationship between two peoples of color, their similar experiences with slavery, their struggles for political power, and their parallel race consciousness.
335 p., A central premise of this project is that individuals and communities perceive the significance of history differently depending on their historical conditions. Indeed, much of the emphasis on memory studies in the last two decades has been informed by an awareness of changing perspectives on the past. Thus, given its focus on black peoples in the United States and the Caribbean, this dissertation aims to illuminate an emergent historical consciousness in the African Diaspora in the late 20th century. This dissertation is divided into two sections. In Part I, "Ancestors: Exploring Historical Inheritances," I analyze Maryse Conde's Les derniers rois mages (1993) and Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco (1993) as they interrogate the concept of familial lineage and query the significance of the past imagined as an inheritance. Whereas Chamoiseau questions the ability of written history to represent memory and experience, Conde empties the idea of heritage of all significance as new relationships to the past come to the fore. In Part II, "New Birth: Exploring Discourses of Reproduction," I focus on Gayl Jones' Corregidora (1975) and Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) as they reveal the limitations of genealogical discourse. By creating their pasts and imagining their heritage, the characters in these texts challenge the primacy of lineage as they point toward other, more viable networks of community and belonging.
