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Afro-Latinos in the U. S. Economy
by Michelle Holder Alan A. AjaAfro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy outlines the current position and status of Afro-Latinxs in the economy of the United States. Very little research has thus far been disseminated in the field of economics on the contributions of Afro-Latinxs regarding income and wealth, labor market status, occupational mobility, and educational attainment. On the other hand, cultural studies, literary criticism, and social science fields have produced more research on Afro-Latinxs; the discipline of economics is, thus, significantly behind the curve in exploring the economic dimensions of this group. <p><p>While the Afro-Latinx community constitutes a comparatively small segment of the U.S. population, and is often viewed as the nexus between two of the country’s largest minority groups—African Americans and Latinxs, who comprise 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of the U.S. population—Holder and Aja outline how the group’s unique economic position is different than non-black Latinxs. Despite possessing higher levels of education relative to the Latinx community as a whole, U.S. Afro-Latinxs do not experience expected returns in income and earnings, underscoring the role anti-Blackness plays in everyday life regardless of ancestral origin. <p><p>The goal of this book is to provide a foundation in the economic dimensions of Afro-Latinxs in the U.S. which can be used to both complement and supplement research conducted on this group in other major disciplines.
Afro-Latinx Digital Connections (Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America)
by Eduard Arriaga Andrés VillarHow Black Latinx communities are using digital technology to achieve visibility and social justice This volume presents examples of how digital technologies are being used by people of African descent in South America and the Caribbean, a topic that has been overlooked within the field of digital humanities. These case studies show that in the last few decades, Black Latinx communities have been making themselves visible and asserting long-standing claims and rights through digital tools and platforms, which have been essential for enacting discussions and creating new connections between diverse groups. Afro-Latinx Digital Connections includes both research articles and interviews with practitioners who are working to create opportunities for marginalized communities. Projects discussed in this volume range from an Afrodescendant digital archive in Argentina, blog networks in Cuba, an NGO dedicated to democratizing technology in Brazilian favelas, and the recruitment of digital media to fight racism in Peru. Contributors demonstrate that these tools need not be state of the art to be effective and that they are often most useful when employed to sustain a resilience that is deep and historically grounded. Digital connections are shown here as a means to achieve social justice and to create complex self-representations that challenge racist images of Afrodescendant peoples and monolithic conceptions of humanity. This volume expands the scope of digital humanities and challenges views of the field as a predominantly white discipline. Contributors: Sandra AbdAllah-Álvarez | Adebayo Adegbembo | Maya Anderson-González | Eduard Arriaga | Silvana Bahia | Yvonne Captain | Monica Carrillo | Yancy Castillo | Alí Majul | Maria Cecilia Martino | Andrés Villar A volume in the series Reframing Media, Technology, and Culture in Latin/o America, edited by Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste and Juan Carlos Rodríguez
Afro-Mexicans: Discourse of Race and Identity on the African Diaspora
by Chege GithoriaMy fascinating journey among Afro-Mexicans began when I was a student in Mexico City. My personal background had shaped in me a consciousness about African people dispersed in all continents, but because of the language barrier, my conceptualization of their journey of migration and survival, linguistic and sociocultural continuities was limited to African Diaspora experiences of Anglo-North America and the Caribbean, perhaps one or two translations from the French Caribbean experience, but nothing of the Hispanic Diaspora. This pervasive effect of the linguistic spheres carved by the different European powers in their colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas must, I con¬cluded, be appreciated in full.
Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth and Reality
by Anita GonzálezWhile Africans and their descendants have lived in Mexico for centuries, many Afro-Mexicans do not consider themselves to be either black or African. For almost a century, Mexico has promoted an ideal of its citizens as having a combination of indigenous and European ancestry. This obscures the presence of African, Asian, and other populations that have contributed to the growth of the nation. However, performance studies--of dance, music, and theatrical events--reveal the influence of African people and their cultural productions on Mexican society. In this work, Anita Gonzalez articulates African ethnicity and artistry within the broader panorama of Mexican culture by featuring dance events that are performed either by Afro-Mexicans or by other ethnic Mexican groups about Afro-Mexicans. She illustrates how dance reflects upon social histories and relationships and documents how residents of some sectors of Mexico construct their histories through performance. Festival dances and, sometimes, professional staged dances point to a continuing negotiation among Native American, Spanish, African, and other ethnic identities within the evolving nation of Mexico. These performances embody the mobile histories of ethnic encounters because each dance includes a spectrum of characters based upon local situations and historical memories.
The Afro-modernist Epic And Literary History
by Kathy Lou SchultzAnalyzing the poets Melvin B. Tolson, Langston Hughes, and Amiri Baraka, this study charts the Afro-Modernist epic. Within the context of Classical epic traditions, early 20th-century American modernist long poems, and the griot traditions of West Africa, Schultz reveals diasporic consciousness in the representation of African American identities.
Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe (Routledge Studies on African and Black Diaspora)
by Michael McEachraneAfro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe challenges a view of Nordic societies as homogenously white, and as human rights champions that are so progressive that even the concept of race is deemed irrelevant to their societies. The book places African Diasporas, race and legacies of imperialism squarely in a Nordic context. How has a nation as peripheral as Iceland been shaped by an identity of being white? How do Black Norwegians challenge racially conscribed views of Norwegian nationhood? What does the history of jazz in Denmark say about the relation between its national identity and race? What is it like to be a mixed-race black Swedish woman? How have African Diasporans in Finland navigated issues of race and belonging? And what does the widespread denial of everyday racism in Nordic societies mean to Afro-Nordics? This text is a must read for anyone interested in issues of race in the Nordic region and Europe writ large. As Paul Gilroy writes in his foreword, it is a book that "should be studied with care and profit inside the Nordic countries and also outside them by the broader international readership that has been established around the study of racism and 'critical race theory'."
Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture (New Black Studies Series #1)
by Badia Ahad-LegardyThe past as a building block of a more affirming and hopeful future As early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, Ahad-Legardy reveals nostalgia’s capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments. Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remedy to contend with the disillusionment of the present and the traumas of the past.
Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil
by Christen A SmithTourists exult in Bahia, Brazil as a tropical paradise infused with the black population's one-of-a-kind vitality. But the alluring images of smiling black faces and dancing black bodies masks an ugly reality of anti-black authoritarian violence. Christen A. Smith argues that the dialectic of glorified representations of black bodies and subsequent state repression reinforces Brazil's racially hierarchal society. Interpreting the violence as both institutional and performative, Smith follows a grassroots movement and social protest theater troupe in their campaigns against racial violence. As Smith reveals, economies of black pain and suffering form the backdrop for the staged, scripted, and choreographed afro-paradise that dazzles visitors. The work of grassroots organizers exposes this relationship, exploding illusions and asking unwelcome questions about the impact of state violence performed against the still-marginalized mass of Afro-Brazilians.
Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity #16)
by Amos Yong Estrelda Y AlexanderThis &“well researched, illuminating, and highly informative" volume presents a comprehensive, scholarly overview of Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity (Choice). Since the American Pentecostal movement began in the early twentieth century, its African American sector has been markedly influential. Black Christians have been integrally involved in every aspect of the Pentecostal movement, making significant contributions to its founding as well as the evolution of Pentecostal/charismatic styles of worship, preaching, music, engagement of social issues, and theology. Yet despite its being one of the fastest growing segments of the Black Church, Afro-Pentecostalism has not received the kind of critical attention it deserves. Afro-Pentecostalism brings together fourteen interdisciplinary scholars to examine different facets of the movement, including its early history, issues of gender, relations with other black denominations, intersections with popular culture, and missionary activities, as well as the movement&’s distinctive theology. Bolstered by editorial introductions to each section, the chapters reflect on the state of the movement, chart its trajectories, discuss pertinent issues, and anticipate future developments. Contributors: Estrelda Y. Alexander, Valerie C. Cooper, David D. Daniels III, Louis B. Gallien, Jr., Clarence E. Hardy III, Dale T. Irvin, Ogbu U. Kalu, Leonard Lovett, Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., Cheryl J. Sanders, Craig Scandrett-Leatherman, William C. Turner, Jr., Frederick L. Ware, and Amos Yong
Afro-Politics and Civil Society in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
by Kwame Dixon"Powerfully illustrates that Bahia has a vibrant black political history worthy of documentation, re-centering the scholarship on race and politics to the northeast where the black population is the majority."—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil "English-language work has rarely paid such attention to discourses in Afro-Brazilian communities on civil society inclusion and the process of democratization. This book is a significant contribution to understanding that movement for change and social justice."—Clarence Lusane, author of The Black History of the White House Brazil’s black population, one of the oldest and largest in the Americas, mobilized a vibrant antiracism movement from grassroots origins when the country transitioned from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s. Campaigning for political equality after centuries of deeply engrained racial hierarchies, African-descended groups have been working to unlock democratic spaces that were previously closed to them. Using the city of Salvador as a case study, Kwame Dixon tracks the emergence of black civil society groups and their political projects: claiming new citizenship rights, testing new anti-discrimination and affirmative action measures, reclaiming rural and urban land, and increasing political representation. This book is one of the first to explore how Afro-Brazilians have influenced politics and democratic institutions in the contemporary period. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking Blackness in the African American Novel
by Melissa Daniels-RauterkusFrom the 1880s to the early 1900s, a particularly turbulent period of U.S. race relations, the African American novel provided a powerful counternarrative to dominant and pejorative ideas about blackness. In Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race, Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus uncovers how black and white writers experimented with innovative narrative strategies to revise static and stereotypical views of black identity and experience. In this provocative and challenging book, Daniels-Rauterkus contests the long-standing idea that African Americans did not write literary realism, along with the inverse misconception that white writers did not make important contributions to African American literature. Taking up key works by Charles W. Chesnutt, Frances E. W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain, Daniels-Rauterkus argues that authors blended realism with romance, often merging mimetic and melodramatic conventions to advocate on behalf of African Americans, challenge popular theories of racial identity, disrupt the expectations of the literary marketplace, and widen the possibilities for black representation in fiction. Combining literary history with close textual analysis, Daniels-Rauterkus reads black and white writers alongside each other to demonstrate the reciprocal nature of literary production. Moving beyond discourses of racial authenticity and cultural property, Daniels-Rauterkus stresses the need to organize African American literature around black writers and their meditations on blackness, but she also proposes leaving space for nonblack writers whose use of comparable narrative strategies can facilitate reconsiderations of the complex social order that constitutes race in America. With Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race, Daniels-Rauterkus expands critical understandings of American literary realism and African American literature by destabilizing the rigid binaries that too often define discussions of race, genre, and periodization.
Afro Sheen: How I Revolutionized an Industry with the Golden Rule, from Soul Train to Wall Street
by George E JohnsonThe inspiring and resilient story of George E. Johnson, creator of the iconic Afro Sheen and the first Black-owned company to be traded on Wall Street You might already be familiar with Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen, but have you heard of the man behind the company that produced these products? In Afro Sheen, George Ellis Johnson, the acclaimed self-made businessman, reveals his inspiring and captivating rise from humble beginnings to the top of the haircare industry. At just twenty-seven years old, Johnson created the Johnson Products Company. JPC was the first Black-owned company to trade on a major stock exchange, became the financial sponsor of Soul Train, and was once considered the largest Black-owned manufacturing company in the world. At the height of its success, JPC was worth $37 million (over $225 million today). In this coming-of-age story, Johnson uses the life skills and strong character built from working odd jobs as a teenager and practicing the Golden Rule to create a business that both nurtures and advances the Black community. Without a formal education, he filled a gap in the Black haircare industry and created a high-quality formula for straightening hair and the iconic Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen products that supported Black people in expressing their authentic beauty. For decades, Johnson has been an inspiration to Black entrepreneurs, setting an example of Black wealth and providing a safe space for Black people to work. Afro Sheen is a timely, impassioned look at both an industry and cultural moment. Johnson&’s impact is finally on full display, as he brilliantly highlights how having perseverance and a daring vision can create both change and a lasting legacy.
Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country
by Ryan Thomas SkinnerA compelling examination of Sweden&’s African and Black diasporaContemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of this contradiction of culture and history, Afro-Swedes have emerged as a vibrant demographic presence, from generations of diasporic movement, migration, and homemaking. In Afro-Sweden, Ryan Thomas Skinner uses oral histories, archival research, ethnography, and textual analysis to explore the history and culture of this diverse and growing Afro-European community.Skinner employs the conceptual themes of &“remembering&” and &“renaissance&” to illuminate the history and culture of the Afro-Swedish community, drawing on the rich theoretical traditions of the African and Black diaspora. Remembering fosters a sustained meditation on Afro-Swedish social history, while Renaissance indexes a thriving Afro-Swedish public culture. Together, these concepts illuminate significant existential modes of Afro-Swedish being and becoming, invested in and contributing to the work of global Black studies.The first scholarly monograph in English to focus specifically on the African and Black diaspora in Sweden, Afro-Sweden emphasizes the voices, experiences, practices, knowledge, and ideas of these communities. Its rigorously interdisciplinary approach to understanding diasporic communities is essential to contemporary conversations around such issues as the status and identity of racialized populations in Europe and the international impact of Black Lives Matter.
Afro Unicorn: A Magical Parade (Step into Reading)
by April ShowersThe Afro Unicorns are on parade! Magical, Unique, and Divine celebrate inclusivity and friendship as they bring all the Afro Unicorns together to celebrate the annual Festival of Crowns.The Festival of Crowns is one of the biggest gatherings of the year in Afronia, and everyone is excited to march in the big parade to celebrate.But when a last-minute problem puts the parade in jeopardy, the three best friends work together to find a solution. When Afro Unicorn creator April Showers realized that her favorite emoji—the unicorn!—was only available in white, she was inspired to create a more inclusive brand for children of color to celebrate how magical, unique, and divine they truly are. Don&’t miss the other books in the Afro Unicorn series—The Most Magical Time of the Year!Divine Makes a SplashWe Are Afro UnicornsYou Are a Unicorn! A Magical DayStep 1 Readers feature big type and easy words for children who know the alphabet and are eager to begin reading. Rhyme and rhythmic text paired picture clues help children decode the story.
Afro-Vegan: Farm-Fresh African, Caribbean, and Southern Flavors Remixed
by Bryant TerryAfrican, Caribbean, and southern food are all known and loved as vibrant and flavor-packed cuisines. In Afro-Vegan, renowned chef and food justice activist Bryant Terry reworks and remixes the favorite staples, ingredients, and classic dishes of the African Diaspora to present wholly new, creative culinary combinations that will amaze vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike. Blending these colorful cuisines results in delicious recipes like Smashed Potatoes, Peas, and Corn with Chile-Garlic Oil, a recipe inspired by the Kenyan dish irio, and Cinnamon-Soaked Wheat Berry Salad with dried apricots, carrots, and almonds, which is based on a Moroccan tagine. Creamy Coconut-Cashew Soup with Okra, Corn, and Tomatoes pays homage to a popular Brazilian dish while incorporating classic Southern ingredients, and Crispy Teff and Grit Cakes with Eggplant, Tomatoes, and Peanuts combines the Ethiopian grain teff with stone-ground corn grits from the Deep South and North African zalook dip. There's perfect potluck fare, such as the simple, warming, and intensely flavored Collard Greens and Cabbage with Lots of Garlic, and the Caribbean-inspired Cocoa Spice Cake with Crystallized Ginger and Coconut-Chocolate Ganache, plus a refreshing Roselle-Rooibos Drink that will satisfy any sweet tooth. With more than 100 modern and delicious dishes that draw on Terry's personal memories as well as the history of food that has traveled from the African continent, Afro-Vegan takes you on an international food journey. Accompanying the recipes are Terry's insights about building community around food, along with suggested music tracks from around the world and book recommendations. For anyone interested in improving their well-being, Afro-Vegan's groundbreaking recipes offer innovative, plant-based global cuisine that is fresh, healthy, and forges a new direction in vegan cooking.
Afro-Virginian History and Culture (Crosscurrents in African American History #5)
by John SaillantThe essays in this collection offer new evidence and new conclusions on topics in the history of African Americans in Virginia such as the demography of early slave imports, the means used to regulate slave labor, the situation of female hired slaves in the backcountry, African American women in the Civil War era, and the Garveyite grassroots organizations of the 1920s.
AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics
by Paul SemoninWith a Foreword by Vijay Prashad and an Afterword by Gary OkihiroHow might we understand yellowface performances by African Americans in 1930s swing adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, Paul Robeson's support of Asian and Asian American struggles, or the absorption of hip hop by Asian American youth culture?AfroAsian Encounters is the first anthology to look at the mutual influence of and relationships between members of the African and Asian diasporas. While these two groups have often been thought of as occupying incommensurate, if not opposing, cultural and political positions, scholars from history, literature, media, and the visual arts here trace their interconnections and interactions, as well as the tensions between the two groups that sometimes arise. AfroAsian Encounters probes beyond popular culture to trace the historical lineage of these coalitions from the late nineteenth century to the present.A foreword by Vijay Prashad sets the volume in the context of the Bandung conference half a century ago, and an afterword by Gary Okihiro charts the contours of a “Black Pacific.” From the history of Japanese jazz composers to the current popularity of black/Asian “buddy films” like Rush Hour, AfroAsian Encounters is a groundbreaking intervention into studies of race and ethnicity and a crucial look at the shifting meaning of race in the twenty-first century.
The Afroasiatic Languages
by Zygmunt Frajzyngier Erin ShayAfroasiatic languages are spoken by some 300 million people in Northern, Central and Eastern Africa and the Middle East. This book is the first typological study of these languages, which are comprised of around 375 living and extinct varieties. They are an important object of study because of their typological diversity in the areas of phonology (some have tone; others do not), morphology (some have extensive inflectional systems; others do not), position of the verb in the clause (some are verb-initial, some are verb-medial, and some are verb-final) and in the semantic functions they encode. This book documents this typological diversity and the typological similarities across the languages and includes information on endangered and little-known languages. Requiring no previous knowledge of the specific language families, it will be welcomed by linguists interested in linguistic theory, typology, historical linguistics and endangered languages, as well as scholars of Africa and the Middle East.
The Afrocentric Praxis of Teaching for Freedom: Connecting Culture to Learning
by Joyce E. King Ellen E. SwartzThe Afrocentric Praxis of Teaching for Freedom explains and illustrates how an African worldview, as a platform for culture-based teaching and learning, helps educators to retrieve African heritage and cultural knowledge which have been historically discounted and decoupled from teaching and learning. The book has three objectives: To exemplify how each of the emancipatory pedagogies it delineates and demonstrates is supported by African worldview concepts and parallel knowledge, general understandings, values, and claims that are produced by that worldview To make African Diasporan cultural connections visible in the curriculum through numerous examples of cultural continuities––seen in the actions of Diasporan groups and individuals––that consistently exhibit an African worldview or cultural framework To provide teachers with content drawn from Africa’s legacy to humanity as a model for locating all students––and the cultures and groups they represent––as subjects in the curriculum and pedagogy of schooling This book expands the Afrocentric praxis presented in the authors’ "Re-membering" History in Teacher and Student Learning by combining "re-membered" (democratized) historical content with emancipatory pedagogies that are connected to an African cultural platform.
Afrocentric Traditions
by James L. Conyers Jr.Ever since the first contacts between Europe and Africa, African people have operated from the fringes of Eurocentric experience in the Western mind. Much of what we have studied in African history and culture, or literature and linguistics, or politics and economics, has been orchestrated from the standpoint of Europe's interests. Whether it is a matter of economics, history, politics, geographical concepts, or art, Africans have been seen as peripheral. This volume reviews the past in order to evaluate the present and move ahead with appropriate policies for the future. The articles in this volume, the first in a new serial publication in Africana studies, cover a broad range of subject matter and methodology. Topics range from the W.E.B. DuBois-Booker T. Washington schism that led to the formation of the Niagara movement, to the popular dissemination of black hip-hop culture. It opens with a description of Afrocentricity by Molefi K. Asante. Kobi K.K. Kambon and Reginald Rackley discuss the construct, that produces European cultural "misidentification" among Africans. Nell Irvin Painter, in discussing the Shoah and Southern history, parallels the rhetoric of hate that permeated the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German diatribes against Jews with that of the Southern white supremacists against blacks. Anthony B. Pinn notes similarities that tie together slavery and colonialism in a bond of existential and ontological destruction. Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr., examines critical issues about black masculinity. James B. Stewart elaborates on the development of Africana studies. Julius E. Thompson explores the historical importance of the African-American writer in Mississippi history. Cary DeCordova Wintz the basis of the conflict between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington in an effort to expose its underlying causes. James L. Conyers, Jr. summarizes social and cultural movements, in particular the popular black hip-hop culture. Rounding out the pres
Afrocentricity in AfroFuturism: Toward Afrocentric Futurism
by Aaron X. SmithContributions by Taharka Adé, Molefi Kete Asante, Alonge O. Clarkson, John P. Craig, Ifetayo M. Flannery, Kofi Kubatanna, Lehasa Moloi, M. Ndiika Mutere, and Aaron X. SmithIn the twenty-first century, AfroFuturism—a historical and philosophical concept of the future imagined through a Black cultural lens—has been interpreted through a myriad of writers, artists, scientists, and other visionary creatives. In Afrocentricity in AfroFuturism: Toward Afrocentric Futurism, editor Aaron X. Smith curates a collection of interdisciplinary essays that critiques existing scholarship on Black futurity. In contrast to much previous work, these essays ground their explorations in African agency, centering the African within historical and cultural reality. Situating Afrocentricity as the field’s foundational root and springboard for an expansive future, contributors detail potential new modes of existence and expression for African people throughout the diaspora.Divided into two parts—Representations and Transformations—this book examines the tensions created by historical and cultural dislocation of African peoples and consciousness. Contributors cover varied topics such as the intersections of culture and design; techno culture; neuroscience; and the multiplicity of African cultural influences in aesthetics, oratory, visual art, hip hop, and more. Essays range from theoretical analyses to close readings of history and popular culture, from the Haitian Revolution to Sun Ra, Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, and Black Panther. Afrocentricity in AfroFuturism offers an expansive vision of AfroFuturism and its ranging significance to contemporary culture and discourse.
Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia: Massacre at Bellavista-Bojayá-Chocó
by Aurora Vergara-FigueroaThis book provides a socio-historical analysis of the 2002 massacre at Bellavista-Bojay#65533;-Choc#65533;, Colombia. The author examines how the concepts of forced displacement and migration could be formulas for historical erasure. These concepts are used to name populations, such as the survivors of this massacre, and are limited in their ability to contribute to the demands for reparation of the affected populations. Instead, based on an ethnographic study of the pain and suffering generated in the survivors, the book proposes the concept of deracination as a tool to study land dispossession. It captures both the complex local specificities, the global linkages of this phenomenon and the strategies of resistance used by the people of this community to channel what seems as an impossible mourning.
Afrodescendants, Identity, And The Struggle For Development In The Americas (Ruth Simms Hamilton African Diaspora Ser.)
by Bernd Reiter Kimberly Eison SimmonsIndigenous people and African descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean have long been affected by a social hierarchy established by elites, through which some groups were racialized and others were normalized. Far from being 'racial paradises' populated by an amalgamated 'cosmic race' of mulattos and mestizos, Latin America and the Caribbean have long been sites of shifting exploitative strategies and ideologies, ranging from scientific racism and eugenics to the more sophisticated official denial of racism and ethnic difference. This book, among the first to focus on African descendants in the region, brings together diverse reflections from scholars, activists, and funding agency representatives working to end racism and promote human rights in the Americas. By focusing on the ways racism inhibits agency among African descendants and the ways African-descendant groups position themselves in order to overcome obstacles, this interdisciplinary book provides a multi-faceted analysis of one of the gravest contemporary problems in the Americas.
Afrodiasporic Forms: Slavery in Literature and Culture of the African Diaspora
by Raquel KennonAfrodiasporic Forms explores the epistemological possibilities of the “Black world” paradigm and traces a literary and cultural cartography of the monde noir and its constitutive African diasporas across multiple poetic, visual, and cultural permutations. Examining the transatlantic slave trade and modern racial slavery, Raquel Kennon challenges the US-centric focus of slavery studies and draws on a transnational, eclectic archive of materials from Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Anglophone sources in the Americas to inspect evolving, multitudinous, and disparate forms of Afrodiasporic cultural expression.Spanning the 1830s to the twenty-first century, Afrodiasporic Forms traverses national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries as it investigates how cultural products of slavery’s afterlife—including poetry, prose, painting, television, sculpture, and song—shape understandings of the African diaspora. Each chapter uncovers multidirectional pathways for exploring representations of slavery, considering works such as a Brazilian telenovela based on Bernardo Guimarães’s novel A Escrava Isaura, Robert Hayden’s poem “Middle Passage,” Kara Walker’s sculpture A Subtlety, and Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo. Kennon’s expansive method of comparative reading across the diaspora uses eclectic pairings of canonical and popular textual and artistic sources to stretch beyond disciplinary and national borders, promoting expansive diasporic literacies.
Afrodiasporic Identities in Australia: Articulations of Blackness and Africanness
by Kathomi Gatwiri Leticia AndersonThis book explores the Afro-diasporic experiences of African skilled migrants in Australia. It explores research participants' experiences of migration and how these experiences inform their lives and the lives of their family. It provides theory-based arguments examining how mainstream immigration attitudes in Australia impact upon Black African migrants through the mediums of mediatised moral panics about Black criminality and acts of everyday racism that construct and enforce their 'strangerhood'. The book presents theoretical writing on alternate African diasporic experiences and identities and the changing nature of such identities. The qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews to investigate multiple aspects of the migrant experience including employment, parenting, family dynamics and overall sense of belonging. This book advances our understanding of the resilience exercised by skilled Black African migrants as they adjust to a new life in Australia, with particular implications for social work, public health and community development practices.