Download or read book The Contemporary Caribbean written by Olwyn M. Blouet and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2007-04-16 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Americans seek an escape from the worries and dilemmas of everyday life, the crystal blue waters and white sands of the Caribbean islands seem like the answer to a prayer. Yet this image of a tourist’s paradise hides a tumultuous history marked by strife and division over race, political power, and economic inequality. Olwyn Blouet explores the story of “the Caribbean” over the last 50 years, revealing it to be a region positioned at the heart of some the most prominent geopolitical issues of modern times. Navigating a rich mélange of cultures and histories, Blouet unearths a complex narrative that is frequently overlooked in histories of the Americas. In stark contrast to widely-read guidebooks, this chronicle unflinchingly probes two strikingly different worlds in the Caribbean islands—those of the haves and the have-nots—created by the volatile mixture of colonial politics, racial segregation, and economic upheaval. The strategic political relations between Caribbean nations, Cuba in particular, and the world powers during the Cold War; the economic transformations instigated by tourism; and the modernizing efforts of Caribbean nations in order to meet the demands of a globalizing twenty-first century market are among the numerous issues explored by Blouet in her efforts to redress the historical record’s imbalance. The Contemporary Caribbean also explores the proud histories of the region's many nations in sports such as cricket and baseball, as well as their famed cuisines, and the uneasy balance today between local traditions and the vestiges of colonial influence.
Download or read book Social Life in the Caribbean 1838 1938 written by Bridget Brereton and published by Heinemann. This book was released on 1985 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a clear and readable account ofa formative period in the history of the region. The text is divided into two halves: the first half looks at the structure of society and covers issues of race, class and wealth, while the second half looks at four particular aspects of community life - religion, the family, education and festivals...
Download or read book Lionheart Gal written by Sistren (Organization) and published by University of West Indies Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The re-publication of Lionheart Gal marks an event unique in contemporary literature. It is the distillation of the Jamaican woman's experience in fifteen compelling life stories from the internationally known Sistren Theatre Collective. Since 1977 the women of Sistren have been exploring the lives of Caribbean women, from which they create plays, workshops and screen prints for presentation throughout the Caribbean and elsewhere. This book is based on testimonies from Sistren collected and edited by Honor Ford-Smith into a vivid record of women's lives. The stories retain all the emotional depth of works of the imagination; yet they are at the same time invaluable records of oral history. Scholars of language, culture, politics and literature will need this book; the general reader will revel in it. "These `sistren' dare to present themselves just as they are - the sounds of their days and their souls intact." - Alice Walker
Download or read book Resisting Paradise written by Angelique V. Nixon and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Caribbean Studies Association's 2016 Barbara T. Christian Award for Best Book in the Humanities Tourists flock to the Caribbean for its beaches and spread more than just blankets and dollars. Indeed, tourism has overly affected the culture there. Resisting Paradise explores the import of both tourism and diaspora in shaping Caribbean identity. It examines Caribbean writers and others who confront the region's overdependence on the tourist industry and the many ways that tourism continues the legacy of colonialism. Angelique V. Nixon interrogates the relationship between culture and sex within the production of “paradise” and investigates the ways in which Caribbean writers, artists, and activists respond to and powerfully resist this production. Forms of resistance include critiquing exploitation, challenging dominant historical narratives, exposing tourism's influence on cultural and sexual identity in the Caribbean and its diaspora, and offering alternative models of tourism and travel. Resisting Paradise places emphasis on the Caribbean people and its diasporic subjects as travelers and as cultural workers contributing to alternate and defiant understandings of tourism in the region. Through a unique multidisciplinary approach to comparative literary analysis, interviews, and participant observation, Nixon analyzes the ways Caribbean cultural producers are taking control of representation. While focused mainly on the Anglophone Caribbean, the study covers a range of territories including Antigua, the Bahamas, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, as well as Trinidad and Tobago, to deliver a potent critique.
Download or read book The Cultures of the Hispanic Caribbean written by Conrad James and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Hispanic Caribbean is not easy to define or locate, and such processes of naming are fraught with tension: where is the Hispanic Caribbean? What is distinctive about this region? What challenges face those who attempt to define and locate it?" "The essays collected in this volume individually and collectively expose some of these tensions. The use of the term 'culture' in the plural is meant to register the dialectic of homogeneity and diversity which Antonio Benitez Rojo reminds us characterizes the Caribbean as a whole."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Caribbean New Orleans written by Cécile Vidal and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining Atlantic and imperial perspectives, Caribbean New Orleans offers a lively portrait of the city and a probing investigation of the French colonists who established racial slavery there as well as the African slaves who were forced to toil for them. Casting early New Orleans as a Caribbean outpost of the French Empire rather than as a North American frontier town, Cecile Vidal reveals the persistent influence of the Antilles, especially Saint-Domingue, which shaped the city's development through the eighteenth century. In so doing, she urges us to rethink our usual divisions of racial systems into mainland and Caribbean categories. Drawing on New Orleans's rich court records as a way to capture the words and actions of its inhabitants, Vidal takes us into the city's streets, market, taverns, church, hospitals, barracks, and households. She explores the challenges that slow economic development, Native American proximity, imperial rivalry, and the urban environment posed to a social order that was predicated on slave labor and racial hierarchy. White domination, Vidal demonstrates, was woven into the fabric of New Orleans from its founding. This comprehensive history of urban slavery locates Louisiana's capital on a spectrum of slave societies that stretched across the Americas and provides a magisterial overview of racial discourses and practices during the formative years of North America's most intriguing city.
Download or read book High Mas written by Kevin Adonis Browne and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-09-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overall Winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature High Mas: Carnival and the Poetics of Caribbean Culture explores Caribbean identity through photography, criticism, and personal narrative. Taking a sophisticated and unapologetically subjective Caribbean point of view, the author delves into Mas—a key feature of Trinidad performance—as an emancipatory practice. The photographs and essays here immerse the viewer in carnival experience as never before. Kevin Adonis Browne divulges how performers are or wish to be perceived, along with how, as the photographer, he is implicated in that dynamic. The resulting interplay encourages an informed, nuanced approach to the imaging of contemporary Caribbeanness. The first series, “Seeing Blue,” features Blue Devils from the village of Paramin, whose performances signify an important revision of the post-emancipation tradition of Jab Molassie (Molasses Devil) in Trinidad. The second series, “La Femme des Revenants,” chronicles the debut performance of Tracey Sankar’s La Diablesse, which reintroduced the “Caribbean femme fatale” to a new audience. The third series, “Moko Jumbies of the South,” looks at Stephanie Kanhai and Jonadiah Gonzales, a pair of stilt-walkers from the performance group Touch de Sky from San Fernando in southern Trinidad. “Jouvay Reprised,” the fourth series, follows the political activist group Jouvay Ayiti performing a Mas in the streets of Port of Spain on Emancipation Day in 2015. Troubling the borders that persist between performer and audience, embodiment and spirituality, culture and self-consciousness, the book interrogates what audiences understand about the role of the participant-observer in public contexts. Representing the uneasy embrace of tradition in Trinidad and the Caribbean at large, the book probes the multiple dimensions of vernacular experience and their complementary cultural expressions. For Browne, Mas performance is an exquisite refusal to fully submit to the lingering traumas of slavery, the tyrannies of colonialism, and the myths of independence.
Download or read book The Caribbean Before Columbus written by William F. Keegan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Caribbean before Columbus is a new synthesis of the region's insular history based on the authors' 55 years of research in the Bahamas, Lesser and Greater Antilles. The presentation operates on multiple scales, and individual sites highlight specific issues. For the first time, complete histories are elucidated through an emphasis on cultural diversity.
Download or read book Cultural Conundrums written by Natasha Barnes and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006-08-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Conundrums investigates the passions of race, gender, and national identity that make culture a continually embattled public sphere in the Anglophone Caribbean today. Academics, journalists, and ordinary citizens have weighed in on the ideological meanings to be found in the minutiae of cultural life, from the use of skin-bleaching agents in the beauty rituals of working-class Jamaican women to the rise of sexually suggestive costumes in Trinidad’s Carnival. Natasha Barnes traces the use of cultural arguments in the making of Caribbean modernity, looking at the cultural performances of the Anglophone Caribbean—cricket, carnival, dancehall, calypso, and beauty pageants—and their major literary portrayals. Barnes historicizes the problematic linkage of culture and nation to argue that Caribbean anticolonialism has given expressive culture a critical place in the region’s identity politics. Her provocative readings of foundational thinkers C. L. R. James and Sylvia Winters will engender discussion and debate among the Caribbean intellectual community. This impressively interdisciplinary study will make important contributions to the fields of Afro-diaspora studies, postcolonial studies, literary studies, performance studies, and sociology. “Postcolonial cultural criticism is celebrated for its mastery of generalization and condemned for its inability to historicize. Cultural Conundrums is unique in its ability to find a middle ground. It touches on some of the most important and contentious issues in the field. This book will account for why it was in those small islands that what we now call cultural studies was invented.” --Simon Gikandi, Princeton University Natasha Barnes is Associate Professor of African American Studies and English at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Download or read book The Modern Caribbean written by Franklin W. Knight and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of thirteen original essays by experts in the field of Caribbean studies clarifies the diverse elements that have shaped the modern Caribbean. Through an interdisciplinary examination of the complexities of race, politics, language, and environment that mark the region, the authors offer readers a thorough understanding of the Caribbean's history and culture. The essays also comment thoughtfully on the problems that confront the Caribbean in today's world. The essays focus on the Caribbean island and the mainland enclaves of Belize and the Guianas. Topics examined include the Haitian Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; labor and society in the nineteenth-century Caribbean; society and culture in the British and French West Indies since 1870; identity, race, and black power in Jamaica; the "February Revolution" of 1970 in Trinidad; contemporary Puerto Rico; politics, economy, and society in twentieth-century Cuba; Spanish Caribbean politics and nationalism in the nineteenth century; Caribbean migrations; economic history of the British Caribbean; international relations; and nationalism, nation, and ideology in the evolution of Caribbean literature. The authors trace the historical roots of current Caribbean difficulties and analyze these problems in the light of economic, political, and social developments. Additionally, they explore these conditions in relation to United States interests and project what may lie ahead for the region. The challenges currently facing the Caribbean, note the editors, impose a heavy burden upon political leaders who must struggle "to eliminate the tensions when the people are so poor and their expectations so great." The contributors are Herman L. Bennett, Bridget Brereton, David Geggus, Franklin W. Knight, Anthony P. Maingot, Jay R. Mandle, Roberto Marquez, Teresita Martinez Vergne, Colin A. Palmer, Bonham C. Richardson, Franciso A. Scarano, and Blanca G. Silvestrini.
Download or read book Bibliophile Diverse Spines written by Jane Mount and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time to diversify your reading list. This richly illustrated and vastly inclusive collection uplifts the works of authors who are often underrepresented in the literary world. Using their keen knowledge and deep love for all things literary, coauthors Jamise Harper (founder of the Diverse Spines book community) and Jane Mount (author of Bibliophile) collaborated to create an essential volume filled with treasures for every reader: • Dozens of themed illustrated book stacks—like Classics, Contemporary Fiction, Mysteries, Cookbooks, and more—all with an emphasis on authors of color and own voices • A look inside beloved bookstores owned by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color • Reading recommendations from leading BIPOC literary influencers Diversify your reading list to expand your world and shift your perspective. Kickstart your next literary adventure now! EASY TO GIFT: This portable guide is packed with more than 150 colorful illustrations is a perfect gift for any booklover. The textured paper cover, gold foil, and ribbon marker make this book a special gift or self-purchase. DISCOVER UNSUNG LITERARY HEROES: The authors dive deep into a wide variety of genres, such as Contemporary Fiction, Classics, Young Adult, Sci-Fi, and more to bring the works of authors of color to the fore. ENDLESS READING INSPIRATION: Themed book stacks and reading suggestions from luminaries of the literary world provide curated book recommendations. Your to-read list will thank you. Perfect for: bookish people; literary lovers; book club members; Mother's Day shoppers; stocking stuffers; followers of #DiverseSpines; Jane Mount and Ideal Bookshelf fans; Reese's Book Club and Oprah's Book Club followers; people who use Goodreads.com; readers wanting to expand/decolonize their book collections; people interested in uplifting BIPOC voices; antiracist activists and educators; grads and students; librarians and library patrons wanting to expand/decolonize their book collections; people interested in uplifting BIPOC voices; antiracist activists and educators; grads and students; librarians and library patrons
Download or read book Crossing the Line written by Candace Ward and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2017-08-17 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crossing the Line examines a group of early nineteenth-century novels by white creoles, writers whose identities and perspectives were shaped by their experiences in Britain’s Caribbean colonies. Colonial subjects residing in the West Indian colonies "beyond the line," these writers were perceived by their metropolitan contemporaries as far removed—geographically and morally—from Britain and "true" Britons. Routinely portrayed as single-minded in their pursuit of money and irredeemably corrupted by their investment in slavery, white creoles faced a considerable challenge in showing they were driven by more than a desire for power and profit. Crossing the Line explores the integral role early creole novels played in this cultural labor. The emancipation-era novels that anchor this study of Britain's Caribbean colonies question categories of genre, historiography, politics, class, race, and identity. Revealing the contradictions embedded in the texts’ constructions of the Caribbean "realities" they seek to dramatize, Candace Ward shows how these white creole authors gave birth to characters and enlivened settings and situations in ways that shed light on the many sociopolitical fictions that shaped life in the anglophone Atlantic.
Download or read book Modern Political Culture in the Caribbean written by Holger Henke and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This contribution to the study and analysis of Caribbean politics explores the political culture of the Caribbean in order to understand the regional differences. The contributors, renowned internationally for their expertise in Caribbean studies, explore the topic from their varied cultural experiences and offer a new dimension to the study of political culture.
Download or read book On the Rim of the Caribbean written by Paul M. Pressly and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVHow did colonial Georgia, an economic backwater in its early days, make its way into the burgeoning Caribbean and Atlantic economies where trade spilled over national boundaries, merchants operated in multiple markets, and the transport of enslaved Africans bound together four continents? In On the Rim of the Caribbean, Paul M. Pressly interprets Georgia's place in the Atlantic world in light of recent work in transnational and economic history. He considers how a tiny elite of newly arrived merchants, adapting to local culture but loyal to a larger vision of the British empire, led the colony into overseas trade. From this perspective, Pressly examines the ways in which Georgia came to share many of the characteristics of the sugar islands, how Savannah developed as a "Caribbean" town, the dynamics of an emerging slave market, and the role of merchant-planters as leaders in forging a highly adaptive economic culture open to innovation. The colony's rapid growth holds a larger story: how a frontier where Carolinians played so large a role earned its own distinctive character. Georgia's slowness in responding to the revolutionary movement, Pressly maintains, had a larger context. During the colonial era, the lowcountry remained oriented to the West Indies and Atlantic and failed to develop close ties to the North American mainland as had South Carolina. He suggests that the American Revolution initiated the process of bringing the lowcountry into the orbit of the mainland, a process that would extend well beyond the Revolution./div
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology written by William F. Keegan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together examples of the best research to address the complexity of the Caribbean past.
Download or read book Caribbean Journeys written by Karen Fog Olwig and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-12 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caribbean Journeys is an ethnographic analysis of the cultural meaning of migration and home in three families of West Indian background that are now dispersed throughout the Caribbean, North America, and Great Britain. Moving migration studies beyond its current focus on sending and receiving societies, Karen Fog Olwig makes migratory family networks the locus of her analysis. For the people whose lives she traces, being “Caribbean” is not necessarily rooted in ongoing visits to their countries of origin, or in ethnic communities in the receiving countries, but rather in family narratives and the maintenance of family networks across vast geographical expanses. The migratory journeys of the families in this study began more than sixty years ago, when individuals in the three families left home in a British colonial town in Jamaica, a French Creole rural community in Dominica, and an African-Caribbean village of small farmers on Nevis. Olwig follows the three family networks forward in time, interviewing family members living under highly varied social and economic circumstances in locations ranging from California to Barbados, Nova Scotia to Florida, and New Jersey to England. Through her conversations with several generations of these far-flung families, she gives insight into each family’s educational, occupational, and socioeconomic trajectories. Olwig contends that terms such as “Caribbean diaspora” wrongly assume a culturally homogeneous homeland. As she demonstrates in Caribbean Journeys, anthropologists who want a nuanced understanding of how migrants and their descendants perceive their origins and identities must focus on interpersonal relations and intimate spheres as well as on collectivities and public expressions of belonging.
Download or read book Caribbean Spaces written by Carole Boyce Davies and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on both personal experience and critical theory, Carole Boyce Davies 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. She reflects on these movements to understand the interrelated dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality embedded in Caribbean spaces, as well as many Caribbean people's traumatic and transformative stories of displacement, migration, exile, and sometimes return. Ultimately, Boyce Davies reestablishes the connections between theory and practice, intellectual work and activism, and personal and private space.
