164 p., Traces the journey of blacks from the Middle Passage through urban migration northward in black fiction. Argues that the historical use of religious rhetoric is transcended in black writing of the 20th century in order to recast black victimization during slavery, counter the progress of turn-of-the-century white supremacy, and chronicle the rise of economic racism which created the 20th century black ghetto. The religious doctrines discussed in this study include Puritan missionizing and heretical purges in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem , the social work of the Catholic church in Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South , and the cultural intensity of the Pentecostal/Apostolic church in Go Tell It on the Mountain.
"A change in attitudes toward nature and "natural persons" during the 1920's-30's in the United States led in part to a revision in North American attitudes toward Latin Americans. Insofar as the peoples of Latin America, including Indians, blacks, women, children, and the poor, symbolized natural folk - that is, those individuals not participating in mainstream capitalist culture - they became the substance of a stereotype made popular by a countercultural revolution in the 1920's-30's." (author)
Explores the multiple ways in which diverse individuals negotiate the nature of U.S. racial and ethnic categories in terms of self-descriptive labels. Draws from narratives of 100 individuals who participated in 13 different focus groups over a 9-month period (September 2006 to May 2007). Through their everyday rhetoric, individuals who were born primarily in the Caribbean or Central and South America and then immigrated to the US were most likely to resist essentialist racial and ethnic labels.
211 p., Explores the similarities and differences which characterize the depiction of people of color in certain representative 19th century Cuban and Brazilian slavery novels as a function of the authorial approach of each territory's literary tradition toward the issues of slavery, racial prejudice, and people of color. The selected texts, derived from the peak periods in slavery literature of each territory, include Francisco , by Anselmo Snárez y Romero; Sab , by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda; Cecilia Valdés , by Cirilo Villaverde; A escrava Isaura , by Bernardo Guimarães; O mulato , by Aluísio Azevedo; and Bom-Crioulo , by Adolfo Caminha. While the present study explores the enslavement, abuse, and discrimination of people of color as a consequence of a deep-seated discourse of power, privilege and racial superiority, it focuses more extensively on the representation of people of color, particularly in their capacity to constructively appropriate the cultural values of the white dominant group and recognize their identity as ambiguous.
Discusses aspects of violence in Jamaica and the efforts to improve the life of women in the country. Cites that the country has one of the highest per capita homicide rates in the world and that gender stereotyping is extensive and pronounced.
