Explores the way writers address the formation and fate of the contemporary American working class in an age of neoliberal globalization. Specifically, the essay examines Russell Banks's 1985 novel Continental Drift, which interweaves the stories of two characters who pull up stakes and head to Florida in search of a better life: an oil furnace repair man from New Hampshire and a young, single mother from Haiti.
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.
480 p., By the end of 1825, 6,000 African Americans had left the United States to settle in the free black Republic of Haiti. After arriving on the island, 200 immigrants formed an enclave in what is now Samaná, Dominican Republic. The Americans in Samaná continued to speak English, remained Protestant (in a country of devout Catholics), and retained American cultural practices for over 150 years. Relying on historical archaeological methods, this dissertation explores the processes of community formation, maintenance, and dissolution, while paying particular attention to intersections of race and nation.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
322 p., Kweh-kweh is an African Guyanese pre-wedding ritual system that emerged among African slaves in Guyana and historically functioned as a medium for music-centered matrimonial instruction for soon-to-be-married couples. The ritual is executed on the eve of a wedding ceremony and encompasses music, dance, proverbial speech, and a plethora of ritual practices that allow participants to chide, praise, and instruct the bride and groom and their nations (relatives, friends, and representatives) on matters of marriage. However, kweh-kweh performances also reveal embedded values of the Guyanese community, such as what it means to be a "real man" or a "proper woman." African Guyanese hold conflicting views on kweh-kweh, but at the onset of a wedding, they devise ways to celebrate kweh-kweh, a "pagan" ritual they also regard "our culture." This work demonstrates how African Guyanese manipulate the kweh-kweh ritual, their religious values, and themselves to articulate the complex of their identities, particularly racial and gendered identities.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p., A study of the interchange between Cuba and Africa of Yoruban people and culture during the 19th century, with special emphasis on the Aguda community.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
310 p., Relates current theoretical debates about hospitality and cosmopolitanism to the actual conditions of refugees. Examines literary works by such writers as Edwidge Danticat, Nikl Payen, Kamau Brathwaite, Francisco Goldman, Julia Alvarez, Ivonne Lamazares, and Cecilia Rodriguez Milans, Jacques Derrida, Edouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris.
Washington, DC: Latin American Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
33 p, One of several essays published in a series of pamphlets entitled "Focus:
Caribbean." Three other essays dealing with particular Caribbean nations and with migrations to the United States are available from the Wilson Center. These are: Washington. Wayne S. Smith, former U.S. ambassador to Cuba, "Castro's Cuba: Soviet Power or Nonaligned?"; Michel-Rolph Trouillet on "Nation, State, and Society in Haiti, 1804—1984"; and Evelyne Hubert Stephens and John D. Stephens on "Jamaica's Democratic Socialist Experience."
Cervantes-Rodriguez,Ana Margarita (Editor), Grosfoguel,Ramón (Editor), and Mielants,Eric (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
261 p., Examines the experiences of Caribbean immigrants to Spain, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as well as the United States. They show the demographic, socioeconomic, political and cultural impact migrants have, as well as their role in the development of transnational social fields. Also examines how contrasting discourses of democracy and racism, xenophobia and globalization shape issues pertaining to citizenship and identity.
Adekunle,Julius (Editor) and Williams,Hettie V. (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2013
Published:
Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
334 p., A volume of 16 essays analyzing the issues of blackness and identity of the African Diaspora in global perspective. Focuses on the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
391 p., A comparative study of postwar West Indian migration to the former colonial capitals of Paris and London. It studies the effects of this population shift on national and cultural identity and traces the postcolonial Caribbean experience through analyses of the concepts of identity and diaspora. Through close readings of selected literary works and film, H. Adlai Murdoch explores the ways in which these immigrants and their descendants represented their metropolitan identities.
Throughout the 19th century, political migration within the Caribbean coincided with large-scale labor migration. This essay reconstructs the long-overlooked experience of political refugees who fled from Cuba to Jamaica during the Wars for Independence, focusing on their early reception and their eventual assimilation. Despite the official position of neutrality, white and brown elites, anxious to increase the number of Europeans, welcomed the Cubans who were mainly white.
Examines differences in disability among eight black subgroups distinguished by place of birth and Hispanic ethnicity. We found that all foreign-born subgroups reported lower levels of physical activity limitations and personal care limitations than native-born blacks. Immigrants from Africa reported lowest levels of disability, followed by non-Hispanic immigrants from the Caribbean.
This paper reports on projections of the United Kingdom's ethnic group populations for 2001-2051. For the years 2001-2007 estimated fertility rates, survival probabilities, internal migration probabilities and international migration flows for 16 ethnic groups continue to change: the White British, White Irish and Black Caribbean groups experience the slowest growth and lose population share; the Other White and Mixed groups to experience relative increases in share; South Asian groups grow strongly as do the Chinese and Other Ethnic groups.
Examines the ethnic identity adaptations of recently arrived immigrant children from China, Haiti and Mexico. Overall, three main types of ethnic identity categories emerged: country of origin (e.g. Chinese), hyphenated (e.g. Chinese American), and pan-ethnic (e.g. Asian or Asian American). These three ethnic identities were examined to assess their relationships with various social and structural variables.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
317 p., Includes descriptive ethnographies of Haitians in 19th century Jamaica, eastern Cuba, Detroit, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Paris, and Boston, and innovative scholarly work on non-geographic sites of Haitian community building.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
143 p, Uses U.S. and Haitian interview data, coupled with a broader analysis of Haitian rural conditions and the effects of foreign and domestic policy on their movement, to underscore the need for a comprehensive rural strategy for economic development in Haiti.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p., Explores the literary tradition of Caribbean Latino literature written in the U.S. beginning with José Martí and concluding with 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Junot Díaz. The contributors consider the way that spatial migration in literature serves as a metaphor for gender, sexuality, racial, identity, linguistic, and national migrations. The essays in this collection reveal the multiple ways that writers of this tradition use their unique positioning as both insiders and outsides to critique U.S. hegemonic discourses while simultaneously interrogating national discourses in their home countries.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
248 p., Case studies dealing with a variety of black British and ethnic American writers, Home, identity, and mobility in contemporary diasporic fiction shows how new identities and homes are constructed in the migrants' new homelands. Includes chapter on Black British perspectives. From black Britain to the Caribbean : the return of the (im)migrant in Caryl Phillips's A state of independence.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
256 p, Examines the situational determinants which influenced migration from the West Indies and the adaptation process and identification of two groups of immigrants from Jamaica who arrived in the United States (a) between 1920 and 1940 (early immigrants) and (b) between 1960 and 1975 (recent immigrants).
Looks at Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of colonization in the Chiriquí region of Colombia (now Panamá), conventionally known as one of just two places that he seriously considered with respect to his policy of relocating African Americans. Challenging the standard account of the scheme's demise around October 1862 due to vehement Central American protest, this piece questions whether such a development really took the president by surprise.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
229 p, Incorporating postcolonial theory, West Indian literature, feminist theory, and African American literary criticism, Making Men carves out a particular relationship between the Caribbean canon--as represented by C. L. R. James and V. S. Naipaul, among others--and contemporary Caribbean women writers such as Jean Rhys, and Jamaica Kincaid, Paule Marshall, and Michelle Cliff, who now live in the United States.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
221 p, Contents:
1. Toward a theoretical framework for analysing Caribbean migration -- 2. The historical context: Caribbean migration from Emancipation to the Second World War -- 3. The organisation of un-recruited migration from the Caribbean to Britain -- 4. Britain as post-war migrant destination: the national scale and the Leicester locality -- 5. The occupation experience: change and continuity for Nevisian migrants in Leicester -- 6. The housing question: Caribbean migrants and the British housing market -- 7. Return to Nevis: myth and reality -- 8. Conclusion.
Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
153 p, Analyzes "the social and economic characteristics of ... persons who have returned to Puerto Rico ---the return migrants" (p. 8). Thus, it approaches
the study of migration from a perspective not usually taken in migration
studies. The author uses three sources of data: (1) a survey of arrivals and
departures at the San Juan International Airport, (2) special census tabula-
tions, and (3) a "motive" study of 307 return migrants. --John W. Prehn, Social Forces (1968) 47 (1), p. 97.
Evaluates the extent to which the relationship between black immigrants' individual-level socioeconomic status characteristics and suburban outcomes conforms to the tenets of the spatial assimilation model. Results reveal that black immigrants' suburban outcomes vary depending upon the racial/ethnic background and nativity status of the reference group. While both black Caribbean and African immigrants are less likely to reside in the suburbs than native-born white households, they are more likely to do so than native-born black Americans, even when controlling for differences in income, education, and homeownership.
Hill,Robert A. (Author) and Garvey,Marcus (Author)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2011
Published:
Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
845 p., "Though not an exhaustive compilation of documents from the period, the historical commentaries, chronologies, and primary documents in this volume serve as a thorough introduction to this important period in history and successfully integrates the history of Garvey and his impact on the global African diaspora into world history." -- Glenn A. Chambers, Journal of World History
Okpewho,Isidore (Editor) and Nzegwu,Nkiru (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
531 p., Traces the immigrants' progress from expatriation to arrival and covers the successes as well as problems they have encountered as they establish their lives in a new country. Includes Georges E. Fouron's "I, too, want to be a big man" : the making of a Haitian "boat people"; John A. Arthur's "Immigrants and the American system of justice: perspectives of African and Caribbean Blacks"; and Perry Mars' "The Guyana diaspora and homeland conflict resolution."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
208 p., Examines the representation of violence in the work of contemporary writers and artists of the Hispanic Caribbean and its diaspora in the United States.
