scholarly journals Book reviews

2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 309-407
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Short Story ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Cane Sugar ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Spiritual Baptists

A World Among these Islands: Essays on Literature, Race, and National Identity in Antillean America, by Roberto Márquez (reviewed by Peter Hulme) Caribbean Reasonings: The Thought of New World, The Quest for Decolonisation, edited by Brian Meeks & Norman Girvan (reviewed by Cary Fraser) Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination, by Paul B. Miller (reviewed by Kerstin Oloff) Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa’s Gaze, by Maria Cristina Fumagalli (reviewed by Maureen Shay) Who Abolished Slavery: Slave Revolts and Abolitionism: A Debate with João Pedro Marques, edited by Seymour Drescher & Pieter C. Emmer, and Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, edited by Derek R . Peterson (reviewed by Claudius Fergus) The Mediterranean Apprenticeship of British Slavery, by Gustav Ungerer (reviewed by James Walvin) Children in Slavery through the Ages, edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers & Joseph C. Miller (reviewed by Indrani Chatterjee) The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson (reviewed by Kris Lane) Theorizing a Colonial Caribbean-Atlantic Imaginary: Sugar and Obeah, by Keith Sandiford (reviewed by Elaine Savory) Created in the West Indies: Caribbean Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul, edited by Jennifer Rahim & Barbara Lalla (reviewed by Supriya M. Nair) Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature, by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley (reviewed by Lyndon K. Gill) Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, by Kaiama L. Glover (reviewed by Asselin Charles) Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature, by Néstor E. Rodríguez (reviewed by Dawn F. Stinchcomb) The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives, edited by Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt & Emma Smith (reviewed by Leah Rosenberg) Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba, by Todd Ramón Ochoa (reviewed by Brian Brazeal) El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader, by Araceli Tinajero (reviewed by Juan José Baldrich) Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959, by Gillian McGillivray (reviewed by Consuelo Naranjo Orovio) The Purposes of Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai’i, by Christine Skwiot (reviewed by Amalia L. Cabezas) A History of the Cuban Revolution, by Aviva Chomsky (reviewed by Michelle Chase) The Cubalogues: Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana, by Todd F. Tietchen (reviewed by Stephen Fay) The Devil in the Details: Cuban Antislavery Narrative in the Postmodern Age, by Claudette M. Williams (reviewed by Gera Burton) Screening Cuba: Film Criticism as Political Performance during the Cold War, by Hector Amaya (reviewed by Ann Marie Stock) Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective, by Lana Wylie (reviewed by Julia Sagebien) Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow, by Frank Andre Guridy (reviewed by Susan Greenbaum) The Irish in the Atlantic World, edited by David T. Gleeson (reviewed by Donald Harman Akenson) The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Walton Look Lai & Tan Chee-Beng (reviewed by John Kuo Wei Tchen) The Island of One People: An Account of the History of the Jews of Jamaica, by Marilyn Delevante & Anthony Alberga (reviewed by Barry Stiefel) Creole Jews: Negotiating Community in Colonial Suriname, by Wieke Vink (reviewed by Aviva Ben-Ur) Only West Indians: Creole Nationalism in the British West Indies, by F.S.J. Ledgister (reviewed by Jerome Teelucksingh) Cultural DNA: Gender at the Root of Everyday Life in Rural Jamaica, by Diana J. Fox (reviewed by Jean Besson) Women in Grenadian History, 1783-1983, by Nicole Laurine Phillip (reviewed by Bernard Moitt) British-Controlled Trinidad and Venezuela: A History of Economic Interests and Subversions, 1830-1962, by Kelvin Singh (reviewed by Stephen G. Rabe) Export/Import Trends and Economic Development in Trinidad, 1919-1939, by Doddridge H.N. Alleyne (reviewed by Rita Pemberton) Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal, by Colin Clarke & Gillian Clarke (reviewed by Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy) Poverty in Haiti: Essays on Underdevelopment and Post Disaster Prospects, by Mats Lundahl (reviewed by Robert Fatton Jr.) From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964, by Millery Polyné (reviewed by Brenda Gayle Plummer) Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, edited by Martin Munro (reviewed by Jonna Knappenberger) Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora, by Margarita A. Mooney (reviewed by Rose-Marie Chierici) This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto, by Carol B. Duncan (reviewed by James Houk) Interroger les morts: Essai sur le dynamique politique des Noirs marrons ndjuka du Surinam et de la Guyane, by Jean-Yves Parris (reviewed by H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen & W. van Wetering)

Monumental Constructions: Statues, Identity, and Gabrielle Roy’s “L’arbre”

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Holly Collins
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Live Oak ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Significant Attention

Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans garnered significant attention for his book In the Shadow of Statues (2018), observing that many Confederate monuments were erected to buttress Jim Crow laws and serve as a warning to those who supported the civil rights movement. Likewise, there are a number of monuments in Québec that serve a particular political or religious purpose, seeking to reinforce a pure laine ideology. In this article, I explore the parallels between the literal and figurative construction and deconstruction of monuments that have fortified invented ideas on identity in francophone North America. Further, Gabrielle Roy’s short story “L’arbre,” which describes a “living monument,” tells the story of a racialized past in North America and unveils the falsities that have been preserved through the construction of statues that perpetuate racial myth. “L’arbre” examines the natural, unconstructed monument of the Live Oak: a tree that witnessed and holds the visible scars of the many terrible realities that took place in its shadows. I use Roy’s short story to show how she sought to deconstruct a whitewashed history of the post-Civil War American South and suggest that her broader corpus rejects determinism wholesale.

scholarly journals Have we passed the last post-? Theorizing post/colonial literature

2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
A. James Arnold
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Aime Cesaire ◽  
Indian Literature ◽  
Colonial Literature ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Practical Criticism ◽  
History Of Literature

[First paragraph]Aime Cesaire. GREGSON DAVIS. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xvi + 208 pp. (Cloth US$ 59.95)Caribbean Poetics: Toward an Aesthetic of West Indian Literature. SILVIO TORRES-SAILLANT. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiv + 353 pp. (Cloth £45.00)Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature. CHRIS BONGIE. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. xi + 543 pp. (Cloth US$ 65.00, Paper US$ 24.95)The three books under review here all make important claims for a Caribbean poetics, but they do so from perspectives that range from practical criticism (Davis), through comparative poetics (Torres-Saillant), to what is sometimes called high theory (Bongie). With the exception of Davis's book, which is a detailed treatment of a single seminal figure, they range widely and seek grounds for broad comparative assessments. The need to establish such grounds for comparison is witnessed by the volume History of Literature in the Caribbean, which Bongie and Torres-Saillant both reference. To find one's way in this potentially dizzying display of critical and theoretical acumen, it will be most helpful to proceed from the general to the particular, from high theory to practical criticism.

scholarly journals Ragtime Country

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-62
Author(s):  
Wayne Marshall
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Common Root ◽  
Music Scenes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Rock N Roll

In 1955, Elvis Presley and Ray Charles each stormed the pop charts with songs employing the same propulsive rhythm. Both would soon be hailed as rock 'n' roll stars, but today the two songs would likely be described as quintessential examples, respectively, of rockabilly and soul. While seeming by the mid-50s to issue from different cultural universes mapping neatly onto Jim Crow apartheid, their parallel polyrhythms point to a revealing common root: ragtime. Coming to prominence via Maple Leaf Rag (1899) and other ragtime best-sellers, the rhythm in question is exceedingly rare in the Caribbean compared to variations on its triple-duple cousins, such as the Cuban clave. Instead, it offers a distinctive, U.S.-based instantiation of Afrodiasporic aesthetics—one which, for all its remarkable presence across myriad music scenes and eras, has received little attention as an African-American “rhythmic key” that has proven utterly key to the history of American popular music, not least for the sound and story of country. Tracing this particular rhythm reveals how musical figures once clearly heard and marketed as African-American inventions have been absorbed by, foregrounded in, and whitened by country music while they persist in myriad forms of black music in the century since ragtime reigned.

I’ll Make Me a World

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Imani Perry
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal History ◽  
James Weldon Johnson ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter describes the personal history of the author and composer of Lift Every Voice and Sing: James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson. It situates the composition of the song in the context of the social and political movements of African Americans in the midst of the development of Jim Crow in the post-Reconstruction South, with a particular focus on Associational Life and the development of formal rituals. It traces how Lift Every Voice and Sing became known as the Negro National Anthem.

Freedom Claims

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-55
Author(s):  
Lynn M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Codes ◽  
A Site

This chapter examines the history of California’s commitment to Jim Crow, a history that begins during the state’s earliest years. African Americans loomed large in the minds of California’s earliest legislators and politicians. Black codes became a prominent feature of the state’s legal system and developed in tandem with scientific racism. Black bodies as a site of difference became a staple of the public discourse of citizenship. Resistance to the state’s color line took place at parades, in court, in schools, on streetcars, and on stage, all places African Americans were discouraged or prohibited from occupying. Gendered politics infused this first western campaign for civil rights and women’s participation would be pivotal in the ongoing struggle for racial justice.

scholarly journals Book Reviews

1996 ◽  
Vol 70 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 309-381
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
West Indies ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
University Of Pittsburgh ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

-Bridget Brereton, Emilia Viotti Da Costa, Crowns of glory, tears of blood: The Demerara slave rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xix + 378 pp.-Grant D. Jones, Assad Shoman, 13 Chapters of a history of Belize. Belize city: Angelus, 1994. xviii + 344 pp.-Donald Wood, K.O. Laurence, Tobago in wartime 1793-1815. Kingston: The Press, University of the West Indies, 1995. viii + 280 pp.-Trevor Burnard, Howard A. Fergus, Montserrat: History of a Caribbean colony. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1994. x + 294 pp.-John L. Offner, Joseph Smith, The Spanish-American War: Conflict in the Caribbean and the Pacific, 1895-1902. London: Longman, 1994. ix + 262 pp.-Louis Allaire, John M. Weeks ,Ancient Caribbean. New York: Garland, 1994. lxxi + 325 pp., Peter J. Ferbel (eds)-Aaron Segal, Hilbourne A. Watson, The Caribbean in the global political economy. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. ix + 261 pp.-Aaron Segal, Anthony P. Maingot, The United States and the Caribbean. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1994. xi + 260 pp.-Bill Maurer, Helen I. Safa, The myth of the male breadwinner: Women and industrialization in the Caribbean. Boulder CO: Westview, 1995. xvi + 208 pp.-Peter Meel, Edward M. Dew, The trouble in Suriname, 1975-1993. Westport CT: Praeger, 1994. xv + 243 pp.-Henry Wells, Jorge Heine, The last Cacique: Leadership and politics in a Puerto Rican city. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. ix + 310 pp.-Susan Eckstein, Jorge F. Pérez-López, Cuba at a crossroads: Politics and economics after the fourth party congress. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. xviii + 282 pp.-David A.B. Murray, Marvin Leiner, Sexual politics in Cuba: Machismo, homosexuality, and AIDS. Boulder CO: Westview, 1994. xv + 184 pp.-Kevin A. Yelvington, Selwyn Ryan ,Sharks and sardines: Blacks in business in Trinidad and Tobago. St. Augustine, Trinidad: Institute of social and economic studies, University of the West Indies, 1992. xiv + 217 pp., Lou Anne Barclay (eds)-Catherine Levesque, Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch world: The evolution of racial imagery in a modern society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. xix + 327 pp.-Dennis J. Gayle, Frank Fonda Taylor, 'To hell with paradise': A history of the Jamaican tourist industry. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993. ix + 239 pp.-John P. Homiak, Frank Jan van Dijk, Jahmaica: Rastafari and Jamaican society, 1930-1990. Utrecht: ISOR, 1993. 483 pp.-Peter Mason, Arthur MacGregor, Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, scientist, antiquary, founding Father of the British Museum. London: British Museum Press, 1994.-Philip Morgan, James Walvin, The life and times of Henry Clarke of Jamaica, 1828-1907. London: Frank Cass, 1994. xvi + 155 pp.-Werner Zips, E. Kofi Agorsah, Maroon heritage: Archaeological, ethnographic and historical perspectives. Kingston: Canoe Press, 1994. xx + 210 pp.-Michael Hoenisch, Werner Zips, Schwarze Rebellen: Afrikanisch-karibischer Freiheitskampf in Jamaica. Vienna Promedia, 1993. 301 pp.-Elizabeth McAlister, Paul Farmer, The uses of Haiti. Monroe ME: Common Courage Press, 1994. 432 pp.-Robert Lawless, James Ridgeway, The Haiti files: Decoding the crisis. Washington DC: Essential Books, 1994. 243 pp.-Bernadette Cailler, Michael Dash, Edouard Glissant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xii + 202 pp.-Peter Hulme, Veronica Marie Gregg, Jean Rhys's historical imagination: Reading and writing the Creole. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xi + 228 pp.-Silvia Kouwenberg, Francis Byrne ,Focus and grammatical relations in Creole languages. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1993. xvi + 329 pp., Donald Winford (eds)-John H. McWhorter, Ingo Plag, Sentential complementation in Sranan: On the formation of an English-based Creole language. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993. ix + 174 pp.-Percy C. Hintzen, Madan M. Gopal, Politics, race, and youth in Guyana. San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992. xvi + 289 pp.-W.C.J. Koot, Hans van Hulst ,Pan i rèspèt: Criminaliteit van geïmmigreerde Curacaose jongeren. Utrecht: OKU. 1994. 226 pp., Jeanette Bos (eds)-Han Jordaan, Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, Een zweem van weemoed: Verhalen uit de Antilliaanse slaventijd. Curacao: Caribbean Publishing, 1993. 175 pp.-Han Jordaan, Ingvar Kristensen, Plantage Savonet: Verleden en toekomst. Curacao: STINAPA, 1993, 73 pp.-Gerrit Noort, Hesdie Stuart Zamuel, Johannes King: Profeet en apostel in het Surinaamse bosland. Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1994. vi + 241 pp.

Race, Health, and the African Diaspora

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarence Spigner
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
African Americans ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
National Policy ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

Health inequalities exist throughout the African Diaspora and are viewed in this article as largely color-coded. In developed, developing, and undeveloped nations today, “racial” stratification is consistently reflected in an inability to provide adequate health regardless of national policy or ideology. For instance, African Americans experience less than adequate health care very similar to Blacks in Britain, in spite of each nations differing health systems. Latin America's Africana Negra communities experience poorer health similar to Blacks throughout the Caribbean. The African continent itself is arguably the poorest on earth. A common history of racism correlates with health disparities across the African Diaspora.

No Future in This Country

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre E. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Rhetorical History ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
African American Leaders

No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner is a rhetorical history of the public career of Bishop Turner during a critical point in American history—from 1896-1915—the “nadir of race relations.” It was during this period in history that African Americans lost many of the gains during Reconstruction. During this period, America adopted the “separate but equal doctrine,” lynching of African Americans went unabated, the convict leasing systems were on the rise, and the Jim Crow era had begun. In response to this, many African American leaders produced racial uplift narratives that focused on respectability politics. No Future argues that Turner opposed racial uplift and respectability politics as a panacea for what ailed African Americans. His answer was simple—emigration to Africa. While Turner did not see any bright and glorious future for African Americans during this time, he never gave up hope that African Americans would someday use their own agency to carve out a better future for subsequent generations. No Future argues that Turner does this within the African American Prophetic tradition by focusing in on Turner’s use of prophetic pessimism. In short, while many African American leaders were celebrating how far they had come from slavery, Turner reminded them and the nation that they had not come that far—indeed, in many instances, with conditions continuing to worsen, many felt they were still trapped, if not by slavery itself, then surely the lingering effects of slavery.

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