Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean

Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean PDF Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 9781902653297
Category : Caribbean literature
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
I then compare Cesaire's Caribbean "shape" to that of Rene Depestre, and a quite different model emerges. I find that Africa is relatively absent in Depestre's work: Europe is not presented as a threat; and that Depestre, unlike Cesaire, sees, in the Caribbean, an energy and a creativity brought about by the historical fusion of disparate cultures. I consider how the reality of Depestre's long exile from the Caribbean has affected his views of the islands.

Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean

Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean PDF Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 9781902653297
Category : Caribbean literature
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book

Book Description
I then compare Cesaire's Caribbean "shape" to that of Rene Depestre, and a quite different model emerges. I find that Africa is relatively absent in Depestre's work: Europe is not presented as a threat; and that Depestre, unlike Cesaire, sees, in the Caribbean, an energy and a creativity brought about by the historical fusion of disparate cultures. I consider how the reality of Depestre's long exile from the Caribbean has affected his views of the islands.

Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature

Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature PDF Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1846318548
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book

Book Description
Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature provides readers with an excellent introduction to recent Haitian literature, one of the richest literary traditions in the Americas. Martin Munro focuses on works written after 1946, a period in which exile has become the dominant theme in Haitian literature. Using this notion of Haitian writing as a literature of exile, Munro analyzes key novels by the most important figures of each generation of the past sixty years, including Jacques Stephen Alexis, René Depestre, Émile Ollivier, Dany Laferrière, and Edwidge Danticat.

Regional Discourses on Society and History

Regional Discourses on Society and History PDF Author: Jerome Teelucksingh
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9781433171109
Category : Caribbean Area
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book

Book Description
This book thematically analyses and surveys areas of Caribbean history and society. The work is divided into three parts: part one addresses migration and identity; part two explores policy and development; and part three explores music and literature. The volume places a fresh perspective on these topics. The essays depart from the usual broader themes of politics, economics and society and provide a deeper insight into forces that left a decisive legacy on aspects of the Caribbean region. Such contributions come at a time when some of the Caribbean territories are marking over 50 years as independent nation states and attempting to create, understand and forge ways of dealing with critical national and regional issues. The volume brings together a broad group of scholars writing on Caribbean issues including postgraduate students, lecturers, and researchers. Each chapter is thematically divided into the aforementioned areas. This book addresses areas much deeper than the linear historical and social science models, and it offers Caribbean academics and researchers a foundation for further research.

The Transatlantic Zombie

The Transatlantic Zombie PDF Author: Sarah J. Lauro
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813575648
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Get Book

Book Description
Our most modern monster and perhaps our most American, the zombie that is so prevalent in popular culture today has its roots in African soul capture mythologies. The Transatlantic Zombie provides a more complete history of the zombie than has ever been told, explaining how the myth’s migration to the New World was facilitated by the transatlantic slave trade, and reveals the real-world import of storytelling, reminding us of the power of myths and mythmaking, and the high stakes of appropriation and homage. Beginning with an account of a probable ancestor of the zombie found in the Kongolese and Angolan regions of seventeenth-century Africa and ending with a description of the way, in contemporary culture, new media are used to facilitate zombie-themed events, Sarah Juliet Lauro plots the zombie’s cultural significance through Caribbean literature, Haitian folklore, and American literature, film, and the visual arts. The zombie entered US consciousness through the American occupation of Haiti, the site of an eighteenth-century slave rebellion that became a war for independence, thus making the figuration of living death inseparable from its resonances with both slavery and rebellion. Lauro bridges African mythology and US mainstream culture by articulating the ethical complications of the zombie’s invocation as a cultural conquest that was rebranded for the American cinema. As The Transatlantic Zombie shows, the zombie is not merely a bogeyman representing the ills of modern society, but a battleground over which a cultural war has been fought between the imperial urge to absorb exotic, threatening elements, and the originary, Afro-disaporic culture’s preservation through a strategy of mythic combat.

The Sacred Act of Reading

The Sacred Act of Reading PDF Author: Anne Margaret Castro
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813943469
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
From Zora Neale Hurston to Derek Walcott to Toni Morrison, New World black authors have written about African-derived religious traditions and spiritual practices. The Sacred Act of Reading examines religion and sociopolitical power in modern and contemporary texts of a variety of genres from the black Americas. By engaging with spiritual traditions such as Vodou, Kumina, and Protestant Christianity while drawing on canonical Eurocentric literary theory, Anne Margaret Castro presents a novel, nuanced reading of power through the physical and metaphysical relationships portrayed in these great works of New World black literature. Castro examines prophecy in the dramas of Derek Walcott, preaching in the ethnography of Zora Neale Hurston, and liturgy in the novels of Toni Morrison, offering comparative readings alongside the works of Afro-Colombian anthropologist Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jamaican sociologist Erna Brodber, and Canadian fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson. The Sacred Act of Reading is the first book to bring together literary texts, historical and contemporary anthropological studies, theology, and critical theory to show how black authors in the Americas employ spiritual phenomena as theoretical frameworks for thinking within, against, and beyond structures of political dominance, dependence, and power.

Different Drummers

Different Drummers PDF Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520262832
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book

Book Description
"Munro argues in an informed and imaginative way that greater attention should be paid to the recurring sonic elements of black cultures in the new world. Different Drummers provides profound insights into the importance of rhythm as a marker of resistance and a dynamic facet of everyday life across Caribbean literatures and in African American music."—J. Michael Dash, New York University "Munro takes us on a fascinating journey through the music of poetry and the poetry of music, beautifully tying together the cultures and literary texts of a range of Caribbean societies."—Laurent Dubois, author of Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France

The Poetics of Ethnography in Martinican Narratives

The Poetics of Ethnography in Martinican Narratives PDF Author: Christina Kullberg
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813935148
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book

Book Description
Drawing on narratives from Martinique by Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, Ina Césaire, and Patrick Chamoiseau, among others, Christina Kullberg shows how these writers turn to ethnography—even as they critique it—as an exploration and expression of the self. They acknowledge its tradition as a colonial discourse and a study of others, but they also argue for ethnography’s advantage in connecting subjectivity to the outside world. Further, they find that ethnography offers the possibility of capturing within the hybrid culture of the Caribbean an emergent self that nonetheless remains attached to its collective history and environment. Rather than claiming to be able to represent the culture they also feel alienated from, these writers explore the relationships between themselves, the community, and the environment. Although Kullberg’s focus is on Martinique, her work opens up possibilities for intertextual readings and comparative studies of writers from every linguistic region in the Caribbean—not only francophone but also Hispanic and anglophone. In addition, her interdisciplinary approach extends the reach of her work beyond postcolonial and literary studies to anthropology and ecocriticism.

France and the Americas [3 volumes]

France and the Americas [3 volumes] PDF Author: Bill Marshall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1851094164
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1334

Get Book

Book Description
A unique, multidisciplinary encyclopedia covering the impacts that French and American politics, foreign policy, and culture have had on shaping each country's identity. From 17th-century fur traders in Canada to 21st-century peacekeepers in Haiti, from France's decisive role in the Revolutionary War leading to the creation of the United States to recent disagreements over Iraq, France and the Americas charts the history of the inextricable links between France and the nations of the Americas. This comprehensive survey features an incisive introduction and a chronology of key events, spanning 400 years of France's transatlantic relations. Students of many disciplines, as well as the lay reader, will appreciate this comprehensive survey, which traces the common themes of both French policy, language, and influence throughout the Americas and the wide-ranging transatlantic influences on contemporary France.

Caribbean New York

Caribbean New York PDF Author: Philip Kasinitz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801499517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
Since 1965, West Indians have been emigrating to the United States in record numbers, and to New York City in particular. Caribbean New York shows how the new immigration is reshaping American race relations and sheds much-needed light on factors that underlie some of the city's explosive racial confrontations. Philip Kasinitz examines how two forces--racial solidarity and ethnic distinctiveness--have helped to shape the identity of New York's West Indian community. He compares "new" (post-1965) immigrants with West Indians who arrived earlier in the century, and looks in detail at the economic, political, and cultural rules that Afro-Caribbean immigrants have played in the city during each period.

Edwidge Danticat

Edwidge Danticat PDF Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813930731
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Get Book

Book Description
Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), the novel born from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood in Haiti and immigration to New York City, was one of the great literary debuts of recent times, marking the emergence of an impressive talent in addition to opening up an entire culture to a broad general readership. This gifted author went on to win the American Book Award in 1999 for her novel, The Farming of Bones (1998), attracting further critical acclaim. Offering an accessible guide for readers and critics alike, this book is the first publication devoted entirely to Danticat’s unique and remarkable work. It is also distinctive in that it addresses all of her published writing up to The Dew Breaker (2004), including her writing for children, her travel writing, her short fiction, and her novels. The book contains an exclusive interview with Danticat, in which she discusses her recent memoir, Brother, I’m Dying (2007), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. It also includes an extensive bibliography. With contributions from Danticat’s fellow creative writers from both the Caribbean and the United States as well as leading scholars of Caribbean literature, this collection of essays aims to enrich readers’ understanding of the various geographical, literary, and cultural contexts of her work and to demonstrate how it both influences and is influenced by them. Contributors Madison Smartt Bell * Myriam J. A. Chancy * Maryse Condé * J. Michael Dash * Charles Forsdick * Mary Gallagher * Régine Michelle Jean-Charles * Carine Mardorossian * Nadève Ménard * Martin Munro * Nick Nesbitt * Mireille Rosello * Renee H. Shea * Évelyne Trouillot * Lyonel Trouillot * Kiera Vaclavik