Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora
Artists, Performers, and Black Masculinity in the Haitian Diaspora

Author: Jana Evans Braziel

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2008-06-27

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0253219787

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Jana Evans Braziel examines how Haitian diaspora writers, performance artists, and musicians address black masculinity through the Haitian Creole concept of gwo nègs, or "big men." She focuses on six artists and their work: writer Dany Laferrière, director Raoul Peck, rap artist Wyclef Jean, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, drag queen performer and poet Assotto Saint, and queer drag king performer Dréd (a.k.a. Mildréd Gerestant). For Braziel, these individuals confront the gendered, sexualized, and racialized boundaries of America's diaspora communities and openly resist "domestic" imperialism that targets immigrants, minorities, women, gays, and queers. This is a groundbreaking study at the intersections of gender and sexuality with race, ethnicity, nationality, and diaspora.

Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck

Author: Toni Pressley-Sanon

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-12-03

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0739198793

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This comprehensive collection of essays dedicated to the work of filmmaker Raoul Peck is the first of its kind. The essays, interview, and keynote addresses collected in Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination focus on the ways in which power and politics traverse the work of Peck and are central to his cinematic vision. At the heart of this project is the wish to gather diverse interpretations of Raoul Peck’s films in a single volume. The essays included herein are written by scholars from different disciplines and are placed alongside Peck’s own articulations around the nature of power and politics. Raoul Peck: Power, Politics, and the Cinematic Imagination provides an introduction to Peck’s better-known films, interpretations of his rarely seen and recently released early films, and original analyses of his more recent films. It endeavors to explore the ways in which the dual themes of power and politics inform the work of Peck by taking a multidisciplinary approach to contextualizing his filmography. It culls contributions from scholars who write from a wide range of disciplines including history, film studies, literary studies, postcolonial studies, French and Francophone studies and African studies. The result is a volume that offers divergent perspectives and frames of expertise by which to understand Peck’s oeuvre that continues to expand and deepen.

Gold Coast Diasporas
Gold Coast Diasporas

Author: Walter C. Rucker

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-09-28

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0253017017

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“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

Bay Lodyans
Bay Lodyans

Author: Cécile Accilien

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2023-08-01

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 143849386X

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In Haitian Creole, bay lodyans means to tell stories to an audience, and more generally, to entertain. This book is the first to analyze popular contemporary Haitian films, looking especially at how they respond to the needs and desires of Haitian audiences in and beyond Haiti. Produced between 2000 and 2018 and largely shot with digital cameras and sometimes cellphones, these films focus on the complexities of community, nostalgia, belonging, identity, and the emotional landscapes of exile and diaspora. They reflect sociopolitical and cultural issues related to family, language, im/migration, religion, gender, sexuality, and economic hardship. Using storytelling and other less traditionally "academic" techniques, Cécile Accilien advances Haitian epistemological frameworks. Bay Lodyans integrates terms and concepts from Haitian culture, such as jerans and kafou (derived from the French words for "to manage" and "crossroads," respectively) and includes interviews with Haitian filmmakers, actors, and scholars in order to challenge the dominance of Western theoretical approaches and perspectives.

Duvalier's Ghosts
Duvalier's Ghosts

Author: Jana Evans Braziel

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2017-05-24

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0813063132

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"Urgently pursues those nameless ghosts of Haitians lost in the liminal space of the Black Atlantic."--New West Indian Guide "Foregrounds the experiences of refugees (particularly those refused asylum and detained in camps), the political mobilization of the diaspora in the United States, the ramifications of the policies and adjustment programmes imposed on Haiti by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and USAID."--Bulletin of Latin American Research "Theoretically sound and well researched. Braziel has written a compelling book on the literatures of post-Duvalier Haiti."--Millery Polyne, New York University "A very original study, a tour-de-force that crisscrosses the disciplinary boundaries typically separating the social sciences and the humanities. It is richly researched, beautifully written, and will surely attract much critical attention and praise."--Valerie Kaussen, University of Missouri From a position of urgent political engagement, this provocative book offers novel and compelling interpretations of several well-known Haitian-born authors, particularly regarding U.S. intervention in their homeland. Drawing on the diasporic cultural texts of several authors, such as Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière, Jana Evans Braziel examines how writers participate in transnational movements for global social justice. In their fictional works they discuss the United States’ many interventionist methods in Haiti, including surveillance, foreign aid, and military assistance. Through their work, they reveal that the majority of Haitians do not welcome these intrusions and actively criticize U.S. treatment of Haitians in both countries. Braziel encourages us to analyze the instability and violence of small nations like Haiti within the larger frame of international financial and military institutions and forms of imperialism. She forcefully argues that by reading these works as anti-imperialist, much can be learned about why Haitians and Haitian exiles often have negative perceptions of the U.S.

Rites of Return
Rites of Return

Author: Marianne Hirsch

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011-11-29

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0231521790

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The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a passionate engagement with the losses of the past. Rites of Return examines the effects of this legacy of historical injustice and documented suffering on the politics of the present. Twenty-four writers, historians, literary and cultural critics, anthropologists and sociologists, visual artists, legal scholars, and curators grapple with our contemporary ethical endeavor to redress enduring inequities and retrieve lost histories. Mapping bold and broad-based responses to past injury across Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East, and the United States, Rites of Return examines new technologies of genetic and genealogical research, memoirs about lost family histories, the popularity of roots-seeking journeys, organized trauma tourism at sites of atrocity and new Museums of Conscience, and profound connections between social rites and political and legal rights of return. Contributors include: Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University; Nadia Abu El-Haj, Barnard College; Elazar Barkan, Columbia University; Svetlana Boym, Harvard University; Saidiya Hartman, Columbia University; Amira Hass, journalist; Jarrod Hayes, University of Michigan; Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University; Eva Hoffman, writer; Margaret Homans, Yale University; Rosanne Kennedy, Australian National University; Daniel Mendelsohn, writer; Susan Meiselas, photographer; Nancy K. Miller, CUNY Graduate Center; Alondra Nelson, Columbia University; Jay Prosser, University of Leeds; Liz Sevchenko, Coalition of Museums of Conscience; Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College; Marita Sturken New York University; Diana Taylor, New York University; Patricia J. Williams, Columbia University

The Culture of Migration
The Culture of Migration

Author: Sten Pultz Mosland

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-06-30

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0857738372

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Migration has been a phenomenon throughout human history but today, as a result of economic hardship, conflict and globalization, a higher percentage of people than ever before live outside their country of birth. Increased international migration has resulted in more movement of information, traditions and cultures. Migration acts as a catalyst: not only for social change, but also for the generation of new aesthetic phenomena. The Culture of Migration explores the ways in which culture and the arts have been transformed by migration in recent decades--and, in turn, how these cultural and aesthetic transformations have contributed to shaping our identities, politics and societies.Making an important contribution to the emerging cross-disciplinary field of migration studies, this book examines contemporary cultural and artistic representations of migration and gathers new perspectives on the subject from across the disciplines of the arts and humanities. Renowned and emerging scholars in the field of migration, culture and aesthetics--among them the distinguished theorists Mieke Bal, Nikos Papastergiadis, Roger Bromley and Edward Casey--address the broader themes and underlying discourses of recent studies in migration and culture.

Cuba's Racial Crucible
Cuba's Racial Crucible

Author: Karen Y. Morrison

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0253016606

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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

Historical Dictionary of Haiti
Historical Dictionary of Haiti

Author: Fequiere Vilsaint

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-08-01

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 1538127539

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This book covers the history of Haiti starting in 1492 with the initial European landing of the island to the present day. Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. Haiti proclaimed its independence from France on January 1, 1804 following the only successful slave evolution in the Americas. As a result of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), Haiti became the first independent Latin American nation and the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. Throughout its history it has suffered political violence, and a devastating earthquake which killed over 300,000 people. Historical Dictionary of Haiti, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Haiti.

Riding with Death
Riding with Death

Author: Jana Evans Braziel

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2017-06-22

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 1496812751

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On the southern end of the Grand Rue, a major thoroughfare that runs through the center of Port-au-Prince, waits the Haitian capital's automobile repair district. This veritable junkyard of steel and rubber, recycled parts, old tires, and scrap metal might seem an unlikely foundry for art. Yet, on the street's opposite end thrives the Grand Rue Galerie, a working studio of assembled art and sculptures wrought from the refuse. Established by artists André Eugène and Jean Hérard Celeur in the late 1990s, the Grand Rue's urban environmental aesthetics--defined by motifs of machinic urbanism, Vodou bricolage, the postprimitivist altermodern, and performative politics--radically challenge ideas about consumption, waste, and environmental hazards, as well as consider innovative solutions to these problems in the midst of poverty, insufficient social welfare, lack of access to arts, education, and basic needs. In Riding with Death, Jana Evans Braziel explores the urban environmental aesthetics of the Grand Rue sculptors and the beautifully constructed sculptures they have designed from salvaged automobile parts, rubber tires, carved wood, and other recycled materials. Through first-person accounts and fieldwork, Braziel constructs an urban ecological framework for understanding these sculptures amid environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Above all, Braziel presents Haitian artists who live on the most challenged Caribbean island, yet who thrive as creators reinventing refuse as art and resisting the abjection of their circumstances.