Explores ethno-political identity in the English-speaking Caribbean & its Diasporas. Although being black was non-problematic in the early days of decolonization when most of the population was black, immigrants to European & North American cities where whites were the majority often suffered discrimination, a decline in social status, & a life filled with resentment. Following independence, ex-dentured East Indians, Chinese, Syrians, & light-skinned creoles in the Caribbean began to reassess their "blackness" & lighter skinned people were granted privileges not available to darker-skinned citizens. Meanwhile, black leaders who accepted the logic of capitalism ignored class critiques of capitalist structures of exploitation.
The emergence of a modeling industry in Jamaica that valorizes idiosyncratic style has opened up a space in which black images of beauty take center stage. Caribbean Fashion Week is the major platform for displaying internationally acclaimed Jamaican models. Showcasing a high percentage of decidedly black male and female models wearing spectacular designer clothes, Caribbean Fashion Week enables multiple readings of the body as cultural text. The permissive modeling aesthetic engenders capricious images of beauty that contest the very conception of the 'model' as a mold into which a singular figure of beauty is impressed.
Special journal issue., 211 p., During the colonial era, after abolition of slavery in 1833, the British faced extreme shortage of labor for sugar plantation in their sugar producing colonies of the Caribbean. To overcome this problem, over half a million Indians were transported to the region as indentured workers (often called as Indian coolies) with false hopes and promises.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Papers presented at a conference held in 2011., 270 p., Illustrates the neglect of emotions and feelings in the historiography of the people of the Bhojpuri areas in India who migrated to the plantation colonies in the Caribbean; analyses assimilation, mainly in the form of Christian conversion of Hindu and Muslim migrants, which resulted in the absence of mandirs and mosques, and the virtual lack of traditional Indian festivals and ceremonies in Belize, Venezuela and St. Lucia; deals with the plurality of ethnic identities, which is in fact the opposite of assimilation; and discusses the social adaptations and reproductions in forms such as Islamic spaces in politics as well as Bollywood movies.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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250 p, Illuminates the dynamic complexity of Caribbean culture and traces its migratory patterns throughout the Americas. Both a memoir and a scholarly study, Caribbean Spaces: Escapes from Twilight Zones explores the multivalent meanings of Caribbean space and community in a cross-cultural and transdisciplinary perspective. From her childhood in Trinidad and Tobago to life and work in communities and universities in Nigeria, Brazil, England, and the United States, Carole Boyce Davies portrays a rich and fluid set of personal experiences.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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239 p., From 1791 to 1804, revolution on the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue sent thousands of free and enslaved people of African descent to the United States. Historians have largely viewed this migration as contributing to black community formation in cities like Philadelphia, and as evidence of revolutionary connections in an Atlantic World. This dissertation examines the experiences of these migrants as an example of competing identities among people of African descent, and argues that the emergence of an ethnic identity among black Saint-Dominguans, shaped by Roman Catholicism and French language, impeded assimilation into African-American communities.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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365 p, Discussion of the experience of blackness and cultural difference, black political mobilization, and state responses to Afro-Latin activism throughout Latin America. Its thematic organization and holistic approach set it apart as the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of these populations and the issues they face currently available.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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257 p, Part One: Engaging the Transnational, Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial in Afro-Hispanic Texts. Introduction to Part One / Antonio D. Tillis ; Roots and Routes: Transnational Blackness in Afro-Costa Rican Literature / Dorothy E. Mosby ; Los nietos de Felicidad Dolores (The Grandchildren of Felicidad Dolores) and the Contemporary Afro-Hispanic Historical Novel: A Postcolonial Reading / Sonja Stephenson Watson ; Cultural Transnationality and Cosmopolitanism in the Poetic Journeys of Nancy Morejón / Antonio D. Tillis. -- Part Two: Africa and African Cosmology and Literary Tradition in Hispanic (Con) Texts. Introduction to Part Two / Antonio D. Tillis ; Yoruba Cosmology as Technique in Malambo by Lucía Charún-Illescas / Aida L. Heredia ; Myth, Legend & Reality: Redesigning the Narrative Style in Manuel Zapata Olivella's Hemingway, the Death Stalker / Cristina Cabral ; Nicomedes Santa Cruz: A Clarion for Black Cultural Traditions in Peru / Martha Ojeda ; Bridging Literary Traditions in the Hispanic World: Equatorial Guinean Drama and the Dictatorial Cultural-Political Order / Elisa Rizo. -- Part Three: Defining and Redefining Identities in Latin American Literature. Introduction to Part Three / Antonio D. Tillis ; Black, Woman, Poor: The Many Identities of Conceição Evaristo / Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves ; The Triumph Within: Carolina Maria de Jesus and Strategies for Black Female Empowerment in Brazil / Dawn Duke ; Talking Back with Ana Lydia Vega: Identity, Gender and the Subversive Portrayal of Mestizaje / Emmanuel Harris, III ; Dialogically Redefining the Nation: Hip-hop and the Collective Identity / Lesley Feracho.; "After generations of being rendered virtually invisible by the US academy in critical anthologies and literary histories, writing by Latin Americans of African ancestry has become represented by a booming corpus of intellectual and critical investigation. This volume aims to provide an introduction to the literary worlds and perceptions of national culture and identity of authors from Spanish-America, Brazil, and uniquely, Equatorial Guinea, thus contextually connecting Africa to the history of Spanish colonization. The importance of Latin America literature to the discipline of African Diaspora studies is immeasurable, and this edited collection provides a ripe cultural context for critical comparative analysis among the vast geographies that encompass African and African Diaspora studies. Scholars in the area of African Diaspora Studies, Black Studies, Latin American Studies, and American literature will be able to utilize the eleven essays in this edition to enhance classroom instruction and further academic research."--Publisher's website.
Austin: University of Texas Press, Austin, Institute of Latin American Studies
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African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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330 p, Based on a decade the author spent among the African-Caribbean "Creole" people on Nicaragua's southern Caribbean coast, Disparate Diasporas is a study of identity formation and politics in that community. Shows how a particular Black community can evolve distinct types of diasporic consciousness, and, depending on the historical moment, how different types of memories, consciousness, and politics come to predominate. Focusing on the period of the 1970s and 1980s, explains the inability of the Sandinistas to come to terms with the racial and cultural challenge to the Nicaraguan nation posed by the Creole community.
Journal Article, This study utilized qualitative inquiry to investigate the role of ethnic-racial socialization messages on ethnic and racial identity development among second-generation Haitians. The data were reviewed for emergent themes, as well as themes present in the ethnic-racial socialization and identity literature. Participants reported receiving positive messages (i.e., Cultural Socialization, Mainstream Socialization, and Preparation for Bias messages) directed at their ethnic groups in the home context and negative messages (i.e., Promotion of Mistrust and discriminatory messages) about their racial group in the home, peer, and societal contexts.
