Author : Lilas Desquiron
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 24,73 MB
Release : 1998
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780813917535
A novel on Haiti during the regime of Francois Duvalier. The protagonists are a group of women in the countryside who bear the brunt of reprisals against revolutionaries by the Tontons Macoutes.
Author : B. Mehta
Publisher : Springer
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 19,30 MB
Release : 2009-09-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0230100503
Notions of Identity, Diaspora, and Gender in Caribbean Women's Writing uses a unique four-dimensional lens to frame questions of diaspora and gender in the writings of women from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti. These divergent and interconnected perspectives include violence, trauma, resistance, and expanded notions of Caribbean identity. In these writings, diaspora represents both a wound created by slavery and Indian indenture and the discursive praxis of defining new identities and cultural possibilities. These framings of identity provide inclusive and complex readings of transcultural Caribbean diasporas, especially in terms of gender and minority cultures.
Author : African Literature Association. Meeting
Publisher : Africa World Press
Page : 580 pages
File Size : 30,30 MB
Release : 2005
Category : African literature
ISBN : 9781592211579
This volume collects some of the best lectures at the African Literature Association's 25th annual conference held in 1999. The conference brought together for the first time a large number of scholars, creative writers and artists from Northern Africa and their counterparts from Sub- Saharan Africa. The conference and this collection highlight the inspiring and stimulating dialogue between two literary and cultural areas that have often been artificially compartmentalised. The essays draw suprising connections and illustrate the breadth and dynamism of African literature.
Author : Celucien L. Joseph
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 17,76 MB
Release : 2016-05-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1498508324
One glaring lacuna in studies of Haitian Vodou is the scarcity of works exploring the connection between the religion and its main roots, traditional Yoruba religion. Discussions of Vodou very often seem to present the religion in vacuo, as a sui generis phenomenon that arose in Saint-Domingue and evolved in Haiti, with no antecedents. What is sorely needed then is more comparative studies of Haitian Vodou that would examine its connections to traditional Yoruba religion and thus illuminate certain aspects of its mythology, belief system, practices, and rituals. This book seeks to bridge these gaps. Vodou in the Haitian Experience studies comparatively the connections and relationships between Vodou and African traditional religions such as Yoruba religion and Egyptian religion. Such studies might enhance our understanding of the religion, and the connections between Africa and its Diaspora through shared religious patterns and practices. The general reader should be mindful of the transnational and transcultural perspectives of Vodou, as well as the cultural, socio-economic, and political context which gave birth to different visions and ideas of Vodou. The chapters in this collection tell a story about the dynamics of the Vodou faith and the rich ways Vodou has molded the Haitian narrative and psyche. The contributors of this book examine this constructed narrative from a multicultural voice that engages critically the discipline of ethnomusicology, drama, performance, art, anthropology, ethnography, economics, literature, intellectual history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, and theology. Vodou is also studied from multiple theoretical approaches including queer, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, postcolonial criticism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis.
Author : Tegan Zimmerman
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 48,73 MB
Release : 2023-06-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1496846362
In Matria Redux: Caribbean Women Novelize the Past, author Tegan Zimmerman contends that there is a need for reading Caribbean women’s texts relationally. This comprehensive study argues that the writer’s turn to maternal histories constitutes the definitive feature of this transcultural and transnational genre. Through an array of Caribbean women’s historical novels published roughly between 1980 and 2010, this book formulates the theory of matria—an imagined maternal space and time—as a postcolonial-psychoanalytic feminist framework for reading fictions of maternal history written by and about Caribbean women. Tracing the development of the historical novel in four periods of the Caribbean past—slavery, colonialism, revolution, and decolonization—this study argues that a pan-Caribbean generation of women writers, of varying discursive racial(ized) realities, has depicted similar matria constructs and maternal motifs. A politicized concept, matria functions in the historical novel as a counternarrative to traditional historical and literary discourses. Through close readings of the mother/daughter plots in contemporary Caribbean women’s historical fiction, such as Andrea Levy’s The Long Song, Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, and Marie-Elena John’s Unburnable, Matria Redux considers the concept of matria an important vehicle for postcolonial-psychoanalytic feminist literary resistance and political intervention. Matria as a psychoanalytic, postcolonial strategy therefore envisions, by returning to history, alternative feminist fictions, futures, and Caribbeans.
Author : Jana Evans Braziel
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 17,15 MB
Release : 2017-05-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0813063132
"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.
Author : C. Michel
Publisher : Springer
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 24,28 MB
Release : 2006-11-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0312376200
This collection introduces readers to the history and practice of the Vodou religion, and corrects many misconceptions. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, where it has its strongest following, examining its influence on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art.
Author : Toni Pressley-Sanon
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 32,59 MB
Release : 2022-01-03
Category : History
ISBN : 0813072204
Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Association Haiti-Dominican Republic Section Isis Duarte Book Prize Gathering oral stories and visual art from Haiti and two of its "motherlands" in Africa, Istwa across the Water recovers the submerged histories of the island through methods drawn from its deep spiritual and cultural traditions. Toni Pressley-Sanon employs three theoretical anchors to bring together parts of the African diaspora that are profoundly fractured because of the slave trade. The first is the Vodou concept of marasa, or twinned entities, which she uses to identify parts of Dahomey (the present-day Benin Republic) and the Kongo region as Haiti's twinned sites of cultural production. Second, she draws on poet Kamau Brathwaite's idea of tidalectics—the back-and-forth movement of ocean waves—as a way to look at the cultural exchange set in motion by the transatlantic movement of captives. Finally, Pressley-Sanon searches out the places where history and memory intersect in story, expressed by the Kreyòl term istwa. Challenging the tendency to read history linearly, this volume offers a bold new approach for understanding Haitian histories and imagining Haitian futures.
Author : Martin Munro
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 31,90 MB
Release : 2010-10-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0813930731
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
Author : Lucy Swanson
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 14,7 MB
Release : 2023-02-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1802076514
Believed to have emerged in the French Caribbean based on African spirit beliefs, the zombie represents not merely the walking dead, but also a walking embodiment of the region’s history and culture. In Haiti today, the zombie serves as an enduring memory of enslavement: it is defined as a reanimated body robbed of part of its soul, forced to work in sugarcane fields. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, the zombie takes the form of a shape-shifting evil spirit, and represents the dangers posed to the maroon or “freedom runner.” The Zombie in Contemporary French Caribbean Fiction is the first book-length study of the literary zombie in recent fiction from the region. It examines how this symbol of the enslaved (and of the evil spirits that threaten them) is used to represent and critique new socio-political situations in the Caribbean. It also offers a comprehensive and focused examination of the ways contemporary authors from Haiti and the French Antilles contribute to the global zombie imaginary, identifying four “avatars” of the zombie—the slave, the trauma victim, the horde, and the popular zombie—that appear frequently in fiction and anthropology, exploring how works by celebrated and popular authors reimagine these archetypes.
