The Mulatto Republic

The Mulatto Republic PDF Author: April J. Mayes
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813072581
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
“Impels the reader to not lean solely on the crutch of Dominican anti-Haitianism in order to understand Dominican identity and state formation. Mayes proves that there was a multitude of factors that sharpen our knowledge of the development of race and nation in the Dominican Republic.”—Millery Polyné, author of From Douglass to Duvalier “A fascinating book. Mayes discusses the roots of anti-Haitianism, the Dominican elite, and the ways in which race and nation have been intertwined in the history of the Dominican Republic. What emerges is a very interesting and engaging social history.”—Kimberly Eison Simmons, author of Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past in the Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic was once celebrated as a mulatto racial paradise. Now the island nation is idealized as a white, Hispanic nation, having abandoned its many Haitian and black influences. The possible causes of this shift in ideologies between popular expressions of Dominican identity and official nationalism has long been debated by historians, political scientists, and journalists. In The Mulatto Republic, April Mayes looks at the many ways Dominicans define themselves through race, skin color, and culture. She explores significant historical factors and events that have led the nation, for much of the twentieth century, to favor privileged European ancestry and Hispanic cultural norms such as the Spanish language and Catholicism. Mayes seeks to discern whether contemporary Dominican identity is a product of the Trujillo regime—and, therefore, only a legacy of authoritarian rule—or is representative of a nationalism unique to an island divided into two countries long engaged with each other in ways that are sometimes cooperative and at other times conflicted. Her answers enrich and enliven an ongoing debate. Publication of this digital edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Blacks, Mulattos, and the Dominican Nation

Blacks, Mulattos, and the Dominican Nation PDF Author: Franklin Franco
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317665295
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 131

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Book Description
Blacks, Mulattos, and the Dominican Nation is the first English translation of the classic text Los negros, los mulatos y la nación dominicana by esteemed Dominican scholar Franklin J. Franco. Published in 1969, this book was the first systematic work on the role of Afro-descendants in Dominican society, the first society of the modern Americas where a Black-Mulatto population majority developed during the 16th century. Franco’s work, a foundational text for Dominican ethnic studies, constituted a paradigm shift, breaking with the distortions of traditional histories that focused on the colonial elite to place Afro-descendants, slavery, and race relations at the center of Dominican history. This translation includes a new introduction by Silvio Torres-Saillant (Syracuse University) which contextualizes Franco's work, explaining the milieu in which he was writing, and bringing the historiography of race, slavery, and the Dominican Republic up to the present. Making this pioneering work accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time, this is a must-have for anyone interested in the lasting effects of African slavery on the Dominican population and Caribbean societies.

Transnational Hispaniola

Transnational Hispaniola PDF Author: April J. Mayes
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683403169
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
In addition to sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share a complicated and at times painful history. Yet Transnational Hispaniola shows that there is much more to the two nations’ relationship than their perceived antagonism. Rejecting dominant narratives that reinforce opposition between the two sides of the island, contributors to this volume highlight the connections and commonalities that extend across the border, mapping new directions in Haitianist and Dominicanist scholarship. Exploring a variety of topics including European colonialism, migration, citizenship, sex tourism, music, literature, political economy, and art, contributors demonstrate that alternate views of Haitian and Dominican history and identity have existed long before the present day. From a moving section on passport petitions that reveals the familial, friendship, and communal networks across Hispaniola in the nineteenth century to a discussion of the shared music traditions that unite the island today, this volume speaks of an island and people bound together in a myriad of ways. Complete with reflections and advice on teaching a transnational approach to Haitian and Dominican studies, this agenda-setting volume argues that the island of Hispaniola and its inhabitants should be studied in a way that contextualizes differences, historicizes borders, and recognizes cross-island links. Contributors: Paul Austerlitz | Nathalie Bragadir | Raj Chetty | Anne Eller | Kaiama L. Glover | Maja Horn | Regine Jean-Charles | Kiran C. Jayaram | Elizabeth Manley | April Mayes | Elizabeth Russ | Fidel J. Tavárez | Elena Valdez 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. 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.

Black Behind the Ears

Black Behind the Ears PDF Author: Ginetta E. B. Candelario
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822340379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
An innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past in the Dominican Republic

Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past in the Dominican Republic PDF Author: Kimberly Eison Simmons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
In Latin America and the Caribbean, racial issues are extremely complex and fluid, particularly the nature of 'blackness.' What it means to be called black is still very different for an African American living in the United States than it is for an individual in the Dominican Republic with an African ancestry. Racial categories were far from concrete as the Dominican populace grew, altered, and solidified around the present notions of identity. Kimberly Simmons explores the fascinating socio-cultural shifts in Dominicans' racial categories, concluding that Dominicans are slowly embracing blackness and ideas of African ancestry. Simmons also examines the movement of individuals between the Dominican Republic and the United States, where traditional notions of indio are challenged, debated, and called into question. How and why Dominicans define their racial identities reveal shifting coalitions between Caribbean peoples and African Americans, and proves intrinsic to understanding identities in the African diaspora.

The Imagined Island

The Imagined Island PDF Author: Pedro L. San Miguel
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
In a landmark study of history, power, and identity in the Caribbean, Pedro L. San Miguel examines the historiography of Hispaniola, the West Indian island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. He argues that the national identities of (and often the tense relations between) citizens of these two nations are the result of imaginary contrasts between the two nations drawn by historians, intellectuals, and writers. Covering five centuries and key intellectual figures from each country, San Miguel bridges literature, history, and ethnography to locate the origins of racial, ethnic, and national identity on the island. He finds that Haiti was often portrayed by Dominicans as "the other--first as a utopian slave society, then as a barbaric state and enemy to the Dominican Republic. Although most of the Dominican population is mulatto and black, Dominican citizens tended to emphasize their Spanish (white) roots, essentially silencing the political voice of the Dominican majority, San Miguel argues. This pioneering work in Caribbean and Latin American historiography, originally published in Puerto Rico in 1997, is now available in English for the first time.

Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom

Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom PDF Author: A. B. Wilkinson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146965900X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The history of race in North America is still often conceived of in black and white terms. In this book, A. B. Wilkinson complicates that history by investigating how people of mixed African, European, and Native American heritage—commonly referred to as "Mulattoes," "Mustees," and "mixed bloods"—were integral to the construction of colonial racial ideologies. Thousands of mixed-heritage people appear in the records of English colonies, largely in the Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Caribbean, and this book provides a clear and compelling picture of their lives before the advent of the so-called one-drop rule. Wilkinson explores the ways mixed-heritage people viewed themselves and explains how they—along with their African and Indigenous American forebears—resisted the formation of a rigid racial order and fought for freedom in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century societies shaped by colonial labor and legal systems. As contemporary U.S. society continues to grapple with institutional racism rooted in a settler colonial past, this book illuminates the earliest ideas of racial mixture in British America well before the founding of the United States.

Why the Cocks Fight

Why the Cocks Fight PDF Author: Michele Wucker
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1466867884
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Like two roosters in a fighting arena, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are encircled by barriers of geography and poverty. They co-inhabit the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but their histories are as deeply divided as their cultures: one French-speaking and black, one Spanish-speaking and mulatto. Yet, despite their antagonism, the two countries share a national symbol in the rooster--and a fundamental activity and favorite sport in the cockfight. In this book, Michele Wucker asks: "If the symbols that dominate a culture accurately express a nation's character, what kind of a country draws so heavily on images of cockfighting and roosters, birds bred to be aggressive? What does it mean when not one but two countries that are neighbors choose these symbols? Why do the cocks fight, and why do humans watch and glorify them?" Wucker studies the cockfight ritual in considerable detail, focusing as much on the customs and histories of these two nations as on their contemporary lifestyles and politics. Her well-cited and comprehensive volume also explores the relations of each nation toward the United States, which twice invaded both Haiti (in 1915 and 1994) and the Dominican Republic (in 1916 and 1965) during the twentieth century. Just as the owners of gamecocks contrive battles between their birds as a way of playing out human conflicts, Wucker argues, Haitian and Dominican leaders often stir up nationalist disputes and exaggerate their cultural and racial differences as a way of deflecting other kinds of turmoil. Thus Why the Cocks Fight highlights the factors in Caribbean history that still affect Hispaniola today, including the often contradictory policies of the U.S.

Introduction to Dominican Blackness

Introduction to Dominican Blackness PDF Author: Silvio Torres-Saillant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Blacks
Languages : en
Pages : 71

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Book Description
This study is a reflection on the complexity of racial thinking and racial discourse in Dominican society.

Being La Dominicana

Being La Dominicana PDF Author: Rachel Afi Quinn
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252052714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Rachel Afi Quinn investigates how visual media portray Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response to existing stereotypes. Delving into the dynamic realities and uniquely racialized gendered experiences of women in Santo Domingo, Quinn reveals the way racial ambiguity and color hierarchy work to shape experiences of identity and subjectivity in the Dominican Republic. She merges analyses of context and interviews with young Dominican women to offer rare insights into a Caribbean society in which the tourist industry and popular media reward, and rely upon, the ability of Dominican women to transform themselves to perform gender, race, and class. Engaging and astute, Being La Dominicana reveals the little-studied world of today's young Dominican women and what their personal stories and transnational experiences can tell us about the larger neoliberal world.