The African diaspora has been a key concept adopted by artists, activists, educators, and scholars committed to challenging the specific ways in which the marginalization of blackness has operated and continues to operate among Spanish-speaking Caribbeans and their descendants. This essay focuses on a relatively small network of New York roots musicians of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent who nevertheless have a strong impact on the way the concept of the African diaspora is argued for in local musical, educational, activist, and scholarly circles. They constitute a key component of what Rogers Brubaker has termed the “actively diasporan fraction” who seek “not so much to] describe the world as seek to remake it.” This article documents and analyzes these musicians' reliance on the concept of urban maroonage as a politicized permutation of the concept of the African diaspora and a central component of a liberation mythology and pedagogy. I propose that though this mythology and pedagogy often falls into what Brubaker has criticized as a “non-territorial form of essentialized belonging” it is at the same time a mythology that takes into account what Earl Lewis has termed “overlapping diasporas” as well as the shifting borders of diasporic identity that Juan Flores and others have explored—two key factors in the way diaspora is enacted, but that Brubaker himself fails to address properly.
351 p., Explores the racial and gender decolonization of New York and Curaçaoan women in a select group of novels, paintings and performance text by women from Curaçao and New York City. The Curaçaoan novels are: Aliefka Bijlsma's Gezandstraald [Sandblasted] (2007); Loeki Morales' Bloedlijn Overzee: Een Familiezoektocht [Overseas Bloodline: A Family Search] (2002); Myra Römer's Het Geheim van Gracia [The Secret of Gracia] (2008). The Curaçaoan painters are: Jean Girigori (1948), Minerva Lauffer (1957) and Viviana (1972). The New York novels and performance text are: Black Artemis' Picture Me Rollin' (2005), Angie Cruz's Soledad (2003) and Nelly Rosario's Song of the Water Saints (2002) and Josefina Báez's Dominicanish (2000). The ways the women characters, figures, images and voices align to subvert gendered delineations as well as the stifling cultural and colonial imprints on their bodies and their selves in Curaçao and New York are central to the decolonizing project explored here.
According to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, several companies in Brooklyn, New York, including Chay Pa Lou Community Center, Inc., Delegue Tax Consultant, Inc., and their owner and operator Jean Michel; as well as Rinchef s Multi-Service, a/k/a Rincher Bookstore, a/k/a Rincher Associates, a/k/a Haitian American Entrepreneur's Group, LLC, and their owners and operators Deslande Seixas-Rincher and Sharlene Seixas-Rincher, targeted the Haitian community with fraudulent immigration services. "In light of the recent devastating earthquake in Port-auPrince, New York's Haitian residents have sadly been a target for immigration scams, bringing further pain to a community that has already suffered so much," said Cuomo. "These cases are a part of my office's ongoing crackdown on immigration scams throughout New York and I urge anyone who has been affected by this type of fraud to contact my office."
-, Jamaica, in 2007, led the call for the UN to erect a permanent memorial, which UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said would acknowledge the struggles of the millions of Africans who, over more than three centuries, 'were violently removed from their homelands, ruthlessly abused and robbed of their dignity'. As was the case in 2007, Jamaica took centre stage on Day One of the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. The country's permanent representative to the UN and chair of the Permanent Memorial Committee, Ambassador Courtenay Rattray, was the one who announced the Ark of No Return', done by Roger Leon, as the winning design.
* Friday, June 10 - The Rhythms of the Caribbean Ball, 7 p.m. to midnight at The Plaza Hotel New York. Hosted by NBC anchor Jenna Wolfe. A "barefoot" black tie affair. Tickets start at $350 and a portion of the proceeds go to finance scholarships to Caribbean nationals pursuing careers in tourism. The Caribbean Travel & Cultural Fair will take place 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 8 at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal. Admission is free. It will feature Caribbean performers and entertainers, as well as a Caribbean wedding organized in collaboration with the Global Bridal Group.
Essence co-founder Edward Lewis welcomes Benedita da Silva, vice-governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, to Essence Communications, Inc., headquarters. Da Silva, one of the most-powerful politicians in Brazil, was in New York recently to meet with African-American business leaders to discuss economic and political partnerships between Black Americans and Afro-Brazilians.
Mayor [Rudolph Giuliani] proclaimed Monday, August 4, "Jamaica Independence Day" in the city. He presented Jamaica's consul general to New York - Fay Baxter-Collins - and Jamaica's permanent representative to the United Nations - Ambassador Patricia Durrant - with a written proclamation of "Jamaica Independence Day".
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
386 p., Boggs presents a history of salsa, showing how Afro-Cuban music was embraced in New York City, how it has undergone cycles of popularity, and how it has been replicated abroad. The text contains interviews with such key figures as Palladium Mambero and Ernie Ensley
Etu Evans is founder of The Etu Evans Foundation and Solesville, Inc. The Etu Evans Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the academic and creative endeavors of individuals by providing them with quality footwear to help enhance their professional attire.
One Hundred Black Men, Inc. of New York City (OHBM) First Vice-President Fitzgerald Miller led a nine-member delegation of officers, members of the organization and the executive director to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for the ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the completed construction of a classroom sponsored by OHBM at École Bon Samaritain on Sunday,...
Vivian S. Sessions (author / City Planning and Housing Librarian) and Municipal Reference Library (monthly publication by the New York Public Library for "officials and employees of the City of New York.")
Format:
Article
Publication Date:
November 1963
Location:
City Planning & Landscape Architecture Reference and Resource Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 31; Folder: 8
