Digital Commons Network^™

Rafael Cortijo’S Space Music: Sounds Of Caribbean Blackness, Marissel Hernandez-Romero

Third Stone

Black Puerto Rican musician Rafael Cortijo (1928-1982) is a key feature in Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latin American music. He is one of the few musicians celebrated internationally for his skills as a percussionist, orchestra leader, and composer. Despite this, his music is often described as as ‘noise’, or at least that was my memory growing up in a predominantly white community in Puerto Rico. This article proposes and theorizes the existence of a Hispanic Caribbean Space Music emerging at the same time of the Afrofuturist movement and to which Rafael Cortijo makes a great contribution. By doing this, I …

Knowledge Networks: Contested Geographies In The History Of Mary Prince, Leah M. Thomas

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

The History of Mary Prince, a West-Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) is the first published woman’s slave narrative. In her History, Prince describes horrendous physical violence to which she and other enslaved peoples of African descent are subjected as well as the corresponding psychological and sexual abuse they endure. While Prince “speaks” the sexual abuse to some extent, how she knows what she knows goes unspoken. She expresses her knowledge of reading and writing and, at times, of the law, but she does not explain how she obtains this knowledge or knows what she knows. Her optimism to …

Chinese Cubans: Transnational Origins And Revolutionary Integration, Kevin J. Morris

The Corinthian

The Chinese legacy in Cuba exists in a dual state, at once both a fundamental aspect of the Cuban people and the Cuban nationality while also an oft-overlooked strand in the fabric of Cuban society and culture. While today the official number of Chinese-born Cubans in Cuba is low, the number of Chinese-descendants in Cuba may well number in the hundreds of thousands. This duality merits exploration, as it sheds light on the unique experiences of Chinese Cubans and Chinese-descendants through several eras of Cuban history. Most interestingly, the role and presence of Chinese Cubans in the Cuban Revolution provides …

Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots For The Diaspora: Ghosts In The Family Tree. Ann Arbor: U Of Michigan P, 2016., Annie De Saussure

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Review of Jarrod Hayes. Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the family tree. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. 325 pp.

(Re)Imagining Haiti Through The Eyes Of A Seven-Year-Old Girl, Iliana Rosales Figueroa

Journal of International Women's Studies

Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat’s new novel Claire of the Sea Light (2013) explores themes of love, loss, and death. The first character that is presented to us is Claire of the Sea Light, a seven-year-old girl, whose mother died giving birth to her and who is missing. It is at the intersection of this little girl’s loss that all the other characters and topics unfold. Madame Gaëlle, an upper class woman who has a fabric shop in Ville Rose, decides to adopt Claire in order to give her a better life. In this essay I demonstrate that Edwidge Danticat articulates …

Reassessing Caribbean Migration: Love, Power And (Re) Building In The Diaspora, Andrea Natasha Baldwin, Natasha K. Mortley

Journal of International Women's Studies

Traditional research has framed Caribbean migration as a socio-economic issue including discourses on limited resources, brain drain, remittances, and diaspora/transnational connection to, or longing for home. This narrative usually presents migration as having a destabilizing effect on Caribbean families, households and communities, more specifically the impacts on the relationships of working class women who migrate leaving behind children, spouses and other dependents because of a lack of opportunities in Caribbean. This paper proposes an alternative view of migration as a source/manifestation of women’s power, where women, as active agents within the migration process, in fact contribute to re building relationships, …

A Subtlety By Kara Walker: Teaching Vulnerable Art, Marika Preziuso

Journal of International Women's Studies

In late Spring 2014, the nonprofit organization Creative Time commissioned artist Kara Walker to create her first large-scale public installation. Hosted in the industrial relics of the legendary Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, Walker’s A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby was as controversial as it was revered. The powerful presence of the installation, coupled with its immersion in historical consciousness, makes A Subtlety rich in educational value. This article engages in a comparative reading of A Subtlety in the light of female writers and thinkers from the Caribbean, but also incorporates some of the generative questions Walker’s installation has …

L’Envol (En)Chanteur Du Colibri Ou La Poétique Environnementale Du Vivant Dans Les Neuf Consciences Du Malfini De Patrick Chamoiseau, Gwenola Caradec

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article considers Patrick Chamoiseau’s recent work, which has focused increasingly on ecological themes, expressed particularly in one of his latest novels, Les neuf consciences du Malfini (2009). Strongly influenced by his “Master” Édouard Glissant and the latter’s concept of the “Tout-M-Monde” (“Whole-World”), C hamoiseau offers a paradigm shift for the very notion of Nature, revealed to be inseparable from a certain Poetics of Life.

« Banlieue Noire » : La Question Noire Dans La Littérature Urbaine Contemporaine, Stève Puig

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Just as the “beur” movement started to flourish in France in the 80’s and the 90’s, a new question has emerged in French society in the last decade: the “black question”, which deals with the place of Africans and Antilleans in French society today. At the same time, a new literary genre has emerged: urban literature, which largely tackles themes related to the presence of Afro-caribbean people in metropolitan France. This article seeks to analyze three urban novels which take place in France, and more specifically how characters situate themselves regarding their Frenchness as the French government attempted to redefine …

Les Fondements Littéraires De La Réception D’Aimé Césaire Au Bénin, Guy Ossito Midiohouan

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Aime Cesaire is a popular writer in Benin. Evidence lies in the increasing number of writers and scholars who have been supporting his ideas since the 60s. His books are on secondary school as well as university curricula. He has enjoyed more attention in the 1990s with the advent of democracy and the notable influence of then Head of State N. D. Soglo who is a keen admirer of his political career. Cesaire is held in such an esteem in Benin because he is capable of going beyond his natal Caribbean and willingly express the sad destiny of Africa ever …

L’Imaginaire Du Poisson Amoureux Chez Les Romancières Francophones De La Caraïbe, Christiane Ndiaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The criticism has rarely studied the Caribbean sentimental novel. This article examines some of the terms of the writing of love among some writers of the Caribbean (Thérèse Herpin, Irmine Romanette, Marie Berté, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Gisèle Pineau, Marie Chauvet, Marie-Célie Agnant, Kettly Mars, etc.) in order to identify significant configurations. Indeed, while novelists incorporate several characteristics of the canonical sentimental novel, we can also detect in these texts miscegenation semiotics which link them both to the sentimental novel as a genre, to the realistic classic novel, and to the conventions of exotic literature and tales. Thus emerges in this corpus …

Idéal Romantique Et Projet Social Dans C’Est Vole Que Je Vole De Nicole Cage-Florentiny, Hanétha Vété-Congolo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this novel, first published in 1998 and then in 2006, martinican female writer Nicole Cage-Florentiny portrays a young woman, Malaïka, who seeks refuge in madness to escape the turmoil of her life. She is under the yoke of harsh living conditions including societal conformism which, according to Fanon, provokes the « existential deviation » (1953 : 31) of the individual. Despite all, Malaïka advocates a society that would integrate all its members and promote equality. C’est vole que je vole aims at brushing Martinique’s ability to display a sound socialization. The author aims at offering a criticism of her …

Rhétorique De La Réception Des Oeuvres Francophones Dans Présence Africaine, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyses the Reception discourse towards African and Caribbean Literatures in French. We will analyse some articles published in Présence africaine to show how this journal played a leading part in the promotion of African and Caribbean Literatures in French since its beginning in 1947 to now.

Variations Sur La Langue De Molière; L’Enseignementdu Français Aux États-Unis, Thomas C. Spear

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

French has always been among the top foreign languages taught in the American university, even if Spanish occupies the first place. As a result of the social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s and the development of new fields of learning, changes were also introduced gradually into French department programs to include francophone literatures, although in a manner that some have deemed disturbing.

This openness, which is not found in France, has brought about the creation of new faculty positions, some of which are occupied by teachers and writers from Africa and the Caribbean who are making a significant contribution …

La « Littérature Francophone » En Question, Roberta Hatcher

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

While literatures from Africa, the Caribbean and Québec have been taught in U.S French programs since at least the 1970s, the widespread incorporation of «francophone» literature and culture into all levels of the curriculum is a relatively recent phenomenon. Yet the organization of these heterogeneous fields under the umbrella of Francophone Studies has generated little discussion concerning the field’s definition and its relation to French Studies as a whole. This essay examines the category of Francophone Literature, arguing that it is no longer adequate for understanding today’s complex literary and cultural terrain.