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Entra en un mundo infinito de historias

Escuchar y leer

Lesley Larkin

What effect has the black literary imagination attempted to have on, in Toni Morrison's words, "a race of readers that understands itself to be 'universal' or race-free"? How has black literature challenged the notion that reading is a race-neutral act? Race and the Literary Encounter takes as its focus several modern and contemporary African American narratives that not only narrate scenes of reading but also attempt to intervene in them. The texts interrupt, manage, and manipulate, employing thematic, formal, and performative strategies in order to multiply meanings for multiple readers, teach new ways of reading, and enable the emergence of antiracist reading subjects. Analyzing works by James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Jamaica Kincaid, Percival Everett, Sapphire, and Toni Morrison, Lesley Larkin covers a century of African American literature in search of the concepts and strategies that black writers have developed in order to address and theorize a diverse audience, and outlines the special contributions modern and contemporary African American literature makes to the fields of reader ethics and antiracist literary pedagogy.

Indiana University Press

Blacks in the Diaspora

Race and the Literary Encounter: Black Literature from James Weldon Johnson to Percival Everett

Walter C. Rucker

“Provocative and well written . . . a must-read for any scholar interested in African identity, the transatlantic slave trade, and resistance.” —American Historical Review

Although they came from distinct polities and peoples who spoke different languages, slaves from the African Gold Coast were collectively identified by Europeans as “Coromantee” or “Mina.” Why these ethnic labels were embraced and how they were utilized by enslaved Africans to develop new group identities is the subject of Walter C. Rucker’s absorbing study.

Rucker examines the social and political factors that contributed to the creation of New World ethnic identities and assesses the ways displaced Gold Coast Africans used familiar ideas about power as a means of understanding, defining, and resisting oppression. He explains how performing Coromantee and Mina identity involved a common set of concerns and the creation of the ideological weapons necessary to resist the slavocracy. These weapons included obeah powders, charms, and potions; the evolution of “peasant” consciousness and the ennoblement of common people; increasingly aggressive displays of masculinity; and the empowerment of women as leaders, spiritualists, and warriors, all of which marked sharp breaks or reformulations of patterns in their Gold Coast past.

“One of the book’s greatest strengths is the ways in which Rucker painstakingly traces how ethnic labels were appropriated, recast, and ultimately employed as a means to establish community bonds and resist oppression . . . Chapters that focus on the creation of the Gold Coast diaspora, religion, and women make for a captivating text that will be of interest to graduate students and specialist readers. Recommended.” —Choice

Gold Coast Diasporas: Identity, Culture, and Power

Gerard Aching

“Delves into the life and work of Juan Francisco Manzano, the enslaved Cuban poet and author of Spanish America’s only known slave narrative . . . Valuable.” —Choice

By exploring the complexities of enslavement in the autobiography of Cuban slave-poet Juan Francisco Manzano (1797–1854), Gerard Aching complicates the universally recognized assumption that a slave’s foremost desire is to be freed from bondage. As the only slave narrative in Spanish that has surfaced to date, Manzano’s autobiography details the daily grind of the vast majority of slaves who sought relief from the burden of living under slavery. Aching combines historical narrative and literary criticism to take the reader beyond Manzano’s text to examine the motivations behind anticolonial and antislavery activism in pre-revolution Cuba, when Cuba’s Creole bourgeoisie sought their own form of freedom from the colonial arm of Spain.

Freedom from Liberation: Slavery, Sentiment, and Literature in Cuba

Karen Y. Morrison

This prize-winning study examines the historical interplay of racial identity, nationality, and family formation in Cuba from the 18th century to today.

Since the 19th century, there have been two opposing perspectives on Cuban racial identity: one that frames Cubans as white, and one that sees them as racially mixed based on acceptance of African descent. For the past two centuries, these competing views of have remained in continuous tension, while Cuban women and men make their own racially oriented decisions about choosing partners and family formation.

Cuba’s Racial Crucible explores the historical dynamics of Cuban race relations by highlighting the role race has played in reproductive practices and genealogical memories associated with family formation. Karen Y. Morrison reads archival, oral-history, and literary sources to demonstrate the ideological centrality and inseparability of "race, " "nation, " and "family, " in definitions of Cuban identity. Morrison also analyzes the conditions that supported the social advance and decline of notions of white racial superiority, nationalist projections of racial hybridity, and pride in African descent.

Winner, NECLAS Marissa Navarro Best Book Prize

Cuba's Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750–2000

Zachary R. Morgan

A history of corporal punishment in the Brazilian navy and the four-day mutiny that took Rio hostage and put an end to the violent practice.

Legacy of the Lash is a compelling social and cultural history of the Brazilian navy in the decades preceding and immediately following the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil. Focusing on non-elite, mostly black enlisted men and the oppressive labor regimes under which they struggled, the book is an examination of the four-day Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash) of November 1910, during which nearly half of Rio de Janeiro’s enlisted men rebelled against the use of corporal punishment in the navy. These men seized four new, powerful warships, turned their guns on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s capital city, and held its population hostage until the government abolished the use of the lash as a means of military discipline. Although the revolt succeeded, the men involved paid dearly for their actions. This event provides a clear lens through which to examine racial identity, violence, masculinity, citizenship, modernity, and the construction of the Brazilian nation.

“Offering new insights into the spectacular sailors’ revolt of 1910, Zachary R. Morgan treats the “deep structure” of Brazilian naval discipline, one based primarily on flogging. Slavery was only abolished in 1888, and the mutineers, largely of African descent, saw flogging as an intolerable holdover from the slave era. Morgan also shows the incompatibility of the old labor regime and modern naval technology. Trained on the new battleships in the English shipyards where they were built, Brazilian sailors increasingly viewed themselves as citizens in uniform.” —Joseph L. Love, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“Legacy of the Lash is a stellar contribution to the growing global scholarship on mutiny and maritime radicalism. Zachary R. Morgan brings back to vibrant life the history-making powers of Brazil’s motley crews in the early twentieth century.” —Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

Legacy of the Lash: Race and Corporal Punishment in the Brazilian Navy and the Atlantic World

Essays exploring contemporary black fiction and examining important issues in current African American literary studies.

In this volume, Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner have compiled a collection of essays that offer access to some of the most innovative contemporary black fiction while addressing important issues in current African American literary studies. Distinguished scholars Houston Baker, Trudier Harris, Darryl Dickson-Carr, and Maryemma Graham join writers and younger scholars to explore the work of Toni Morrison, Edward P. Jones, Trey Ellis, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Kyle Baker, Danzy Senna, Nikki Turner, and many others. The collection is bracketed by a foreword by novelist and graphic artist Mat Johnson, one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary African American writers, and an afterword by Alice Randall, author of the controversial parody The Wind Done Gone. Together, King and Moody-Turner make the case that diversity, innovation, and canon expansion are essential to maintaining the vitality of African American literary studies.

“A compelling collection of essays on the ongoing relevance of African American literature to our collective understanding of American history, society, and culture. Featuring a wide array of writers from all corners of the literary academy, the book will have national appeal and offer strategies for teaching African American literature in colleges and universities across the country.” —Gene Jarrett, Boston University

“[This book describes] a fruitful tension that brings scholars of major reputation together with newly emerging critics to explore the full range of literary activities that have flourished in the post-Civil Rights era. Notable are such popular influences as hip-hop music and Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.” —American Literary Scholarship, 2013

Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon

John Patrick Walsh

“All the ingredients to become the next important book in the field of postcolonial studies with the emphasis on French Caribbean culture and literature.”—Daniel Desormeaux, University of Chicago
 
In Free and French in the Caribbean, John Patrick Walsh studies the writings of Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire to examine how they conceived of and narrated two defining events in the decolonializing of the French Caribbean: the revolution that freed the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1803 and the departmentalization of Martinique and other French colonies in 1946. Walsh emphasizes the connections between these events and the distinct legacies of emancipation in the narratives of revolution and nationhood passed on to successive generations. By reexamining Louverture and Césaire in light of their multilayered narratives, the book offers a deeper understanding of the historical and contemporary phenomenon of “free and French” in the Caribbean.
 “A fruitful intervention in a growing body of literature and increasingly lively debate on the Haitian Revolution and the figure of Toussaint Louverture, the book also contributes to the emerging scholarship on Césaire, Francophone literature, and postcolonial theory.”—Gary Wilder, CUNY Graduate Center
 “A valuable contribution to both the rapidly proliferating literature on the Haitian Revolution and the emerging revisionist appreciation of Césaire’s intellectual and political project.”—Small Axe
 
 “J.P. Walsh has produced for the nonspecialist reader an excellent analysis of the historiographical discourse on Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire with a focus on the meaning(s) of decolonization in the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.”—New West Indian Guide
 
 “That Free and French inspires so many questions is testament to its ambition, the provocative parallel at its heart, and the richness of Walsh’s analysis.”—H-Empire

Free and French in the Caribbean: Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire, and Narratives of Loyal Opposition

David H. Ikard

Martell Lee Teasley

An argument for intense and organized activism from the African American community to generate discussion on race in the United States.

In a speech from which Nation of Cowards derives its title, Attorney General Eric Holder argued forcefully that Americans today need to talk more—not less—about racism. This appeal for candid talk about race exposes the paradox of Barack Obama’s historic rise to the US presidency and the ever-increasing social and economic instability of African American communities. David H. Ikard and Martell Lee Teasley maintain that such a conversation can take place only with passionate and organized pressure from Black Americans, and that neither Obama nor any political figure is likely to be in the forefront of addressing issues of racial inequality and injustice. The authors caution Blacks not to slip into an accommodating and self-defeating “post-racial” political posture, settling for the symbolic capital of a Black president instead of demanding structural change. They urge the Black community to challenge the social terms on which it copes with oppression, including acts of self-imposed victimization.

“A clarion call to our nation’s conscience. Free from overly academic jargon, but full of powerful wordplay and brilliant juxtapositions, this book is a fascinating tour de force from start to finish. Those seeking a clear and concise explanation of the state of African America and the ongoing need for a “black agenda” during—and even after—the administration of the first African American president need look no further.” —Reiland Rabaka, author of The Hip Hop Movement and Du Bois: A Critical Introduction

“Nation of Cowards offers an analysis of the Obama administration is as thorough as it is compact. Here are the hard questions that must be asked of the first black presidency and an insightful draft of how history may regard it. Ikard and Teasley are well ahead of that curve.” —Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope:Barack Obama & the Paradox of Progress

Nation of Cowards: Black Activism in Barack Obama's Post-Racial America

Christopher Robert Reed

“Incorporate[s] microhistories and multiple biographies into a broader understanding of a community as complex and iconic as black Chicago.” —Journal of American Studies

In the 1920s, the South Side of Chicago was looked on as the new Black Metropolis, but by the turn of the decade that vision was already in decline—a victim of the Depression. In this timely book, Christopher Robert Reed explores early Depression-era politics on the city’s South Side.

The economic crisis caused diverse responses from groups in the black community, distinguished by their political ideologies and stated goals. Some favored government intervention, others reform of social services. Some found expression in mass street demonstrations, militant advocacy of expanded civil rights, or revolutionary calls for a complete overhaul of the capitalist economic system. Reed examines the complex interactions among these various groups as they played out within the community as it sought to find common ground to address the economic stresses that threatened to tear the Black Metropolis apart.

The Depression Comes to the South Side: Protest and Politics in the Black Metropolis, 1930–1933

Wilma King

An updated edition of the classic study that took “an enormous step toward filling some of the voids in the literature of slavery” (The Washington Post Book World).

One of the most important books published on slave society, Stolen Childhood focuses on the millions of children and youth enslaved in 19th-century America. This enlarged and revised edition reflects the abundance of new scholarship on slavery that has emerged.

Wilma King has expanded its scope to include the international dimension with a new chapter on the transatlantic trade in African children, and the book’s geographic boundaries now embrace slave-born children in the North. She includes data about children owned by Native Americans and African Americans, and presents new information about children’s knowledge of and participation in the abolitionist movement and the interactions between enslaved and free children.
 “A jarring snapshot of children living in bondage. This compellingly written work is a testament to the strength and resilience of the children and their parents.”—Booklist on the first edition