225 p., This dissertation is a cultural history of Barbados since its 1966 independence. As a pivotal point in the Transatlantic Slave Trade of the 17th and 18th centuries, one of Britain's most prized colonies well into the mid 20th century, and, since 1966, one of the most stable postcolonial nation-states in the Western hemisphere, Barbados offers an extremely important and, yet, understudied site of world history. Barbadian identity stands at a crossroads where ideals of British respectability, African cultural retentions, U.S. commodity markets, and global economic flows meet. Focusing on the rise of Barbadian popular music, performance, and visual culture this dissertation demonstrates how the unique history of Barbados has contributed to complex relations of national, gendered, and sexual identities, and how these identities are represented and interpreted on a global stage. This project examines the relation between the global pop culture market, the Barbadian artists within it, and the goals and desires of Barbadian people over the past fifty years, ultimately positing that the popular culture market is a site for postcolonial identity formation.
Can we talk of a collective, diasporic memory? Argues that in the case of the African-Caribbean community, there are distinctive features - such as the need to tell and the need to connect - which suggest that this diasporic memory is framed through identifiable cultural templates, which distinguish it from the memories of migrants.
The irony of the black man with his top off - such as almost any black music star you care to mention - is that it doesn't say to me: "Look at this wonderful black man with his six-pack." We were never wanted for our minds, which was why it was illegal to teach slaves to read. We were flesh, a commodity, labour. As today's black man shows off his pride and joy, the modern billboard becomes the equivalent of yesteryear's slave stocks. The tragedy with the flesh doesn't end there. Too many of us are impressed by a black fascism which fails to question the oppressive power structures of idealised family structures or the obsession with genes, blood and national pride.
159 p., Metamorphic literatures is both the identification of a cohesive group of texts, as well as the assertion that these particular texts are part of a global literary movement. The literatures coming out of this movement fundamentally seek to (1) resist colonization and enslavement, (2) re-vision history and resurface figures of redress, and (3) reimagine gender, sexualities, and the queer diasporic body. The tropes of this new literary movement that are expanded upon in the following work will organize the language, characteristics, and outlines of this movement of contemporary diasporic writers.
Obviously, Haitians in the country and the Haitian Diaspora must play the leading roles in rebuilding the nation. Therefore, it is not surprising that there was a flurry of meetings and conferences leading up to the major UN Donor's Conference where Haiti presented its Development Plan. The OAS convened a major meeting in Washington March 21-23 to secure the input of the Haitian Diaspora and Haiti experts. March 26-27, I was privileged to attend the conference convened by the Trotter Institute, the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON) and the Haitian Studies Project at the University of Massachusetts/ Boston. Organized ground the theme: Haitians Building Haiti: Towards Transparent and Accountable Development, it was an incredibly well designed and facilitated conference. I was very impressed by the genuine effort to create an environment where views of the community and the conferees could be heard on the critical issues of the principles and strategies which should guide the reconstruction process. In that regard, the sessions were profoundly enriched by the participation of leading organizations from civil society who traveled to the conference from Haiti. A recurrent refrain from these organizations was deep concern that their voices and those of grassroots organizations on the ground were not part of the process when the Government formulated the Plan that was presented at the Donor's conference. There was a sense of anger and frustration that the Plan appears to be a fait accompli without widespread engagement of the Haitian people. To his credit President [Preval] has shown a remarkable capacity to bring people from divergent political parties into his Government; indeed it is one of the unheralded achievements of his second tenure in office. Now his Government has the opportunity to utilize that attitude and posture of inclusion to conduct a National Dialogue that could become the hallmark of his presidency. The Donor Conference concluded with a pledge of $10 billion over the next four years to rebuild Haiti. If there is to be a new Haiti, however, no dollar amount will be sufficient to achieve that goal. What is required is a new way of tapping the energy of Haiti's greatest resource, its people. A National Dialogue on Building the New Haiti could give new meaning to L'Union Fait La Force in the 21st Century!
"Jamaicans are too rich to be so poor, too blessed to be so stressed, too anointed to be so disappointed" Jamaica's fonner Prime Minister Bruce Golding said after outlining some of the issues which plague the population of 2.5 million he once governed. The reputed orator in candor thanked the protestors for taking time to show up on his behalf. Perhaps, PM Golding's refusal to extradite Christopher "Dudus" Coke and later his approval to adhere to requests from the USA might have resulted in his decision to retire from politics. "Government cannot mobilize the diaspora," PM Golding added, "and cannot operate primarily around patriotism" but must be businesslike.
Discusses perspectives in Africana feminist thought. While, not an exhaustive review of the entire diaspora, three regions are discussed: Africa, North America, and the Caribbean.
She said Jamaica is determined to become the model for economic revitalization of the hemisphere and for securing the country's well-being. During the ceremony, [Audrey Marks] was recognized by Martin O'Malley, governor of Maryland, with a citation honoring her as Jamaica's first female ambassador to Washington. The citation was presented by Jamaican-born Shirley Natham-Pulliam, the Maryland House of Assembly delegate.
For women writers of the Caribbean as well as for larger marginalized communities, the relationship between oral traditions and written texts is a part of the defining thread of Caribbean historiography. This article draws on Waugh and Hutcheon to examine the use of such texts by women writers of the Hispanophone Caribbean in order to highlight narrative strategies of historically marginalized groups to contest hegemonic constructions of the nation.
In characterizing the desperate journeys undertaken by African and Haitian refugees as today's "middle passages," Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore and Edwidge Danticat's "Children of the Sea" complicate the idea of a single origin to a transatlantic black Diaspora. The term 'middle passage' is more recently used to describe multiple crossings that transform the meaning of Diaspora into a vital and ongoing process.
