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.
263 p., Focuses on the writing and thinking of W.E.B. Du Bois and Zora Neale Hurston in order to explore the continuing effects of the legacy of enslavement as well as question the need for entre nous black spaces in the twenty-first century. In pairing Du Bois with Hurston, the author considers the difficulties of entre nous speaking along generational lines, gender differences, and regional affiliations. Though their writing and speaking differed, as scholars and artists they resisted the demands of the minstrel mask to produce a body of work that subverted dominant culture's devaluation of black folk responses to ongoing racial terror and dehumanization. Hurston and Du Bois did this while trying to conceptualize what a black "us" in the United States and in the black diaspora in the Americas entailed and what, if anything, exists between the "us."
Zora Neale Hurston's 1938 book of Caribbean folklore, 'Tell My Horse,' indicates her cross-cultural interest in identity politics, Caribbean history and religion
"The 'spy-glass of Anthropology,' Zora Neale Hurston's telling metaphor for anthropological training under Franz Boaz during her Barnard years, is the most quoted and least interpreted image in a body of work remarkable for its rich configuration." --The Author
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
1001 p, Contents include: TELL MY HORSE -- Part 1. Jamaica -- The rooster’s nest -- Curry goat -- Hunting a wild hog -- Night song after death -- Women in the Caribbean -- Part 2. Politics and personalities of Haiti -- Rebirth of a nation -- The next hundred years -- The black Joan of Arc -- Death of Leconte -- Part 3. Voodoo in Haiti -- Voodoo and the voodoo gods -- The Isle of La Gonave -- Archahaie and what it means -- Zombies -- Sect rouge -- Parlay cheval ou (Tell my horse) -- Graveyard dirt and other poisons -- Doctor Reser -- God and the Pintards -- Songs of worship to voodoo gods: Maitresse Ersulie ; Férailke ; Rada ; Janvalo (Jean Valdo) -- Saint Jacques ; Petro ; Ibo ; Damballa ; Ogoun ; Salongo ; Loco ; Mambo Isan ; Dambala ; Agoë (Agoué te royo) ; Sobo ; Ogoun -- Miscellaneous songs: Sect rouge ; Chant beginning all rada ceremonies ; La mystérieuse méringue / A.L. Duroseau ; Etonnement, méringue caractéristique / A. Herandez ; Bonne humeur, méringue Haitïenne / Arthur L. Duroseau ; Olga, méringue par / Arthur Lyncíe Duroseau ; Chanson de Calicot ; La douceur --
