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Through a comprehensive selection of classic and contemporary interdisciplinary readings, Perspectives on the Caribbean: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation presents a variety of viewpoints to further our understanding of life and culture in the Caribbean:

• Highlights the major concepts and debates in the anthropology and history of the Caribbean, including its unique Anglo, French, and Hispanic communities
• Provides  multidisciplinary perspectives on Caribbean society that show the connections between its vibrant cultural forms, political economy, and tumultuous history
• Features section introductions that put readings in context, with lists of additional suggested readings for further study
• Offers an overview of the strong traditions of art, literature, music, dance, and architecture in the Caribbean
• Outlines the key research in Caribbean studies from history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and folklore, examining classic ethnographies as well as new scholarship

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For more than a century Caribbean intellectuals have created a substantial body of work expressing their ideas about culture, identity and society in the region, ideas that have contributed to the development of a distinctive Caribbean civilisation. Many of them consciously contributed to the formation of their particular nation or, through forging links between their own national culture and others in the region, to the formation of a Caribbean nation.

Many made wider connections with Latin America and Africa, or the African diaspora, and have contributed to leading ideas in the world about Pan-Africanism, or negritude, nationalism and socialism. This collection of readings shows some of the variety, commonalities, contrasts and connections in the ideas of these intellectuals, from J.J. Thomas and Jose Marti in the late nineteenth century to the present day.

The book is edited to provide essential biographical and contextual introductions to each selection, and notes to clarify points and references in the texts that may not be clear to the average educated reader to whom the collection is addressed. There is a general Introduction that explains the purpose of the book and briefly discusses the general intellectual and cultural context of Caribbean ideas in the twentieth century. A broad range of selections has been made, including writings and speeches by famous and by less well-known political and literary people, women and men, of very different opinions, throughout the period and from most parts of the Caribbean. This unique book should appeal to a wide readership in the Caribbean and could serve as a useful text for courses on the Caribbean in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere. ... Read more

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Based on historical research and more than thirty years of anthropological fieldwork, this wide-ranging study underlines the importance of Caribbean cultures for anthropology, which has generally marginalized Europe's oldest colonial sphere.

Located at the gateway to the New World in the plantation heartlands of the Americas, the settlement of Martha Brae, Jamaica, has witnessed the unfolding of two distinct, yet interrelated histories. Exploring the significance of Martha Brae as a European-Caribbean slaving port in the eighteenth century, Jean Besson simultaneously uncovers the neglected tale of Martha Brae's gradual appropriation by ex-slaves and its transformation into an African-Caribbean free village, bringing the story right up into the present day.

Central to this transformation is the system of "family land", which interrelates with kinship, community, economy, cosmology, gender, oral tradition, and state law. Besson shows that this customary land tenure is not a passive survival from either Africa or Europe, as conventional theories contend, but a dynamic creole institution created by Caribbean people in response to European-American land monopoly and cultural dominance. This perspective advances debates on African-American cultural history and the anthropological study of culture. ... Read more

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The essays in this volume consider various literary and linguistic aspects of the Francophone Caribbean at the beginning of the twenty-first century, focusing particularly on the French Overseas Departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the independent islands of Haiti and Dominica. ... Read more

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** Music in the Hispanic Caribbean is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present. **

The Spanish-speaking islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic make up a relatively small region, but their musical and cultural traditions have had a dramatic, sweeping impact on the world. The first brief, stand-alone volume to explore the music of these three islands, Music in the Hispanic Caribbean provides a vibrant introduction to diverse musical styles including salsa, merengue, reggaeton, plena, Latin jazz, and the bolero.

Ethnomusicologist Robin Moore employs three themes in his survey of Hispanic Caribbean music: the cultural legacy of the slave trade, the creolization of Caribbean musical styles, and diaspora, migration, and movement. Each theme lends itself to a discussion of the region's traditional musical genres as well as its more contemporary forms. The author draws on his extensive regional fieldwork, offering accounts of local performances, interviews with key performers, and vivid illustrations.

A compelling, comprehensive review, Music in the Hispanic Caribbean is ideal for introductory undergraduate courses in world music or ethnomusicology and for upper-level courses on Caribbean and Latin American music and/or culture. Packaged with a 70-minute CD containing musical examples, the text features numerous listening activities that actively engage students with the music. The companion website includes supplementary materials for instructors. ... Read more

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"Creole America is a compelling and original work that makes a major contribution to the current critical effort to remap the cultural and literary terrain of America from a transnational perspective. Goudie argues persuasively for the need to rethink early U.S. culture in relation to the West Indies as both a locus for economic and political interaction and a site onto which U.S. Americans projected fantasies and fears that helped define their new sense of nation and national character. Goudie gives us many wonderfully rich readings and insights, which as a whole will make it impossible to think of early American culture separate from its Caribbean connections."--Amy Kaplan, author of The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture

"This startling book brings more fully to light the hold that the West Indies had on the American imagination in the era of the new republic and, as such, moves away from an idea of American exceptionalism to one of conflicted, trans-Caribbean notions of identity that affect the production of texts in a variety of genres: nonfiction prose, novel, poetry, and drama. By selecting relatively few texts to highlight, Goudie is able to provide rich and thick readings of those texts, fully contextualizing them in their literary, political, and historical registers, and in each case offers material that is refreshingly new and provocative."--Jeffrey H. Richards, author of Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic

Innovative in its scope and conceptual frameworks, Creole America reveals how literary culture in the New Republic period is formed not only by expansionist designs on the North American continent but also by a push for commercial empire in the hemisphere via the roots and routes of the West Indian trades.

As Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, the chief architect of the United States as an "empire for commerce," West Indian immigrant Alexander Hamilton came to embody the great uneasiness that many Americans expressed about the unpredictable, and potentially disastrous, effects on the nation and national character of extensive relations between the slave colonies of the West Indies and the putatively free and democratic states of the independent mainland. Sean X. Goudie examines such anxiety and ambivalence as characteristic of what he provocatively terms the New Republic's "creole complex."

Across an impressive array of genres and texts--state papers, empire tracts and political pamphlets, natural histories, autobiographies, lyric poetry, drama, and prose fiction--Goudie demonstrates how distinctions between U.S. and West Indian bodies and commodities blur amid ongoing U.S. participation in the treacherous West Indian trades. Creole America thus compels readers to come face-to-face with disturbing affiliations between U.S. and West Indian creole characters and cultures at the turn of the nineteenth century. ... Read more

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A serious, college-level scholarly dissection of cross-cultural dynamics
Creole America: The West Indies And The Formation Of Literature And Culture In The New Republic by Sean X. Goudie (English Department, Vanderbilt University) explores how literary culture in the New Republic era became framed amid a background of both expansionist desires of the North American continent and a push for commercial empire along the routes of West Indian trades. George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury and West Indian immigrant Alexander Hamilton came to personify the unease felt by Americans about the relations between the slave colonies of the West Indies and the supposedly free and democratic states of the independent mainland, a state of mind that Goudie terms the "creole complex". Chapters scrutinize the resulting repercussions on literary expression and daily culture in the annals of history. A serious, college-level scholarly dissection of cross-cultural dynamics.
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Philip Boucher analyzes the images -- and the realities -- of European relations with the people known as Island Caribs during the first three centuries after Columbus. Based on literary sources, travelers' observations, and missionary accounts, as well as on French and English colonial archives and administrative correspondence, Cannibal Encounters offers a vivid portrait of a troubled chapter in the history of European-Amerindian relations.

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This valuable collection assembles essays by leading experts on transnationalism, highlighting emerging trends in this newly developed field. The contributions focus on the construction of transnational identities and how these identities form and change in the context of processes of migration and displacement. The book addresses the ways in which nations and states frame identity formation through labels, politics of exception, and racialisation. A strength of this collection is its interdisciplinary and multi-methodological perspective, which permits the student of transnational processes to access diverse constructs through multiple angles. The volume includes concrete ethnographic examples of identities in the making, documentation of the effects of exile and displacement, reflexive accounts by writers who have direct experience with transnationalism, and incisive theoretical arguments that highlight the ways in which race, citizenship, nation-states, and neo-colonialism create images and actions of individuals and communities. The examples include discussions about Latinos in the United States, individuals and communities along international borders, indigenous peoples in migration, and identity construction in international workplaces. ... Read more

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The terms ‘creole’ and ‘creolization’ have witnessed a number of significant semantic changes in the course of their history. Originating in the vocabulary associated with colonial expansion in the Americas it had been successively narrowed down to the field of black American culture or of particular linguistic phenomena. Recently ‘creole’ has expanded again to cover the broad area of cultural contact and transformation characterizing the processes of globalization initiated by the colonial migrations of past centuries.

The present volume is intended to illustrate these various stages either by historical and/or theoretical discussion of the concept or through selected case studies. The authors are established scholars from the areas of literature, linguistics and cultural studies; they all share a lively and committed interest in the Caribbean area – certainly not the only or even oldest realm in which processes of creolization have shaped human societies, but one that offers, by virtue of its history of colonialization and cross-cultural contact, its most pertinent example. The collection, beyond its theoretical interest, thus also constitutes an important survey of Caribbean studies in Europe and the Americas.

As well as searching overview essays, there are

– sociolinguistic contributions on the linguistic geography of ‘criollo’ in Spanish America, the Limonese creole speakers of Costa Rica, ‘creole’ language and identity in the Netherlands Antilles and the affinities between Papiamentu and Chinese in Curaçao
– ethnohistorical examinations of such topics as creole transgression in the Dominican/Haitian borderland, the Haitian Mandingo and African fundamentalism, creolization and identity in West-Central Jamaica, Afro-Nicaraguans and national identity, and the Creole heritage of Haiti
– studies of religion and folk culture, including voodoo and creolization in New York City, the creolization of the "Mami Wata" water spirit, and signifyin(g) processes in New World Anancy tales
– a group of essays focusing on the thought of Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, and the Créolité writers
and case-studies of artistic expression, including creole identities in Caribbean women’s writing, Port-au-Prince in the Haitian novel, Cynthia McLeod and Astrid Roemer and Surinamese fiction, Afro-Cuban artistic expression, and metacreolization in the fiction of Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson.

CONTENTS Illustrations Introduction Ulrich FLEISCHMANN : The Sociocultural and Linguistic Profile of a Concept Articles CREOLITY, GENERAL REFLECTIONS Leon-François HOFFMANN: Creolization in Haiti and National IdentityAntonio BENÍTEZ-ROJO: Creolization and Nation-Building in the Hispanic Caribbean Mervyn C. ALLEYNE: The Role of Africa in the Construction of Identities in the CaribbeanCREOLlTY, LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY Armin SCHWEGLER: The Linguistic Geography of ‘criollo’ in Spanish America: A Case of Enigmatic Extension and RestrictionAnita HERZFELD: Language and Identity in a Contact Situation:The Limonese Creole Speakers in Costa RicaEva Martha ECKKRAMMER: On the Perception of ‘Creole’ Language and Identity in the Netherlands Antilles Emilio Jorge RODRÍGUEZ: Creole Transgression in the Written / Oral Discourse of the Dominican / Haitian BorderlandUlrich FLEISCHMANN & Alex-Louise TESSONNEAU: African Fundamentalism in the New World: The Case of the Haitian MandingoFrank MARTINUS: Creole Identity through Chinese Wall: Affinities between Papiamentu and ChineseSOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL PROCESS Jean BESSON: Euro-Creole, Afro-Creole, Meso-Creole: Creolization and Identity in West-Central Jamaica, c. 1660-1999 Marián BELTRÁN NÚÒEZ: The Afro-Nicaraguans (Creoles): An Historico-Anthropological Approach to their National IdentityJeannot HILAIRE: Haiti: The Creole Heritage TodayBettina E. SCHMIDT: The Presence of Vodou in New Vork City: The Impact of a Caribbean Religion on the Creolization of a Metro ... Read more

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Bestbook on Caribbean Pop Culture
I was drawn to this book firstly through its title.
Since many books on caribbean pop culture tend to be either too theory ridden or journalistic, I was impressed with this work's ability to ride in the liminal space between academia and the everyday, so to speak.

Here is an author who seems to really know the subject matter and whose approach reflects passion and even an anxiety to take Caribbean criticism to new levels. Although the book makes reference to other more established critical approaches to Caribbean pop critique, it doesn't fall into the trap of labouring over them, instead it demonstrates how far Caribbean culture has advanced and the distance that criticism must be prepared to go to catch up. Given the work done on Contemporary culture studies at University of the West Indies, this book marks a new trend in some respects, chief among which must be the attempt to unhinge cultural critique from the pole of overworked methods rooted in postcolonialism, gender, marxism etc.

Here is a work that is prepared to chart its own course, so to speak. Its discussion of leading-edge subjects such as AIDS, gospel, Internet, Technology etc makes this book easily the most creative and daring work so far on Caribbean culture in the 21st Century.

For me "Culture @ the Cutting Edge" helps to invigorate criticism about Caribbean society. In the future this text might very well be regarded as one of, if not the defining work that marks the active entry of the UWI School into the robust domain of first world cultural production.
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This collection reviews established and emerging perspectives on the relationships among mass communication, the cultures of dominant societies, and the culture of the Caribbean. Weaving together a number of contrasting perspectives, it develops a theoretical framework for the study of continuity and change in the essential attributes of the culture. ... Read more

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Perhaps there is no other region in the world that has been more radically altered in terms of human and botanic migration, transplantation, and settlement than the Caribbean. Theorists such as Edouard Glissant argue that the dialectic between Caribbean "nature" and "culture," engendered by this unique and troubled history, has not heretofore been brought into productive relation. Caribbean Literature and the Environment redresses this omission by gathering together eighteen essays that consider the relationship between human and natural history. The result is the first volume to examine the literatures of the Caribbean from an ecocritical perspective in all language areas of the region.

In its exploration of the relationship between nature and culture, this collection focuses on four overlapping themes: how Caribbean texts inscribe the environmental impact of colonial and plantation economies; how colonial myths of edenic and natural origins are revisioned; what the connections are between histories of biotic and cultural creolization; and how a Caribbean aesthetics might usefully articulate a means to preserve sustainability in the context of tourism and globalization. By creating a dialogue between the growing field of ecological literary studies, which has primarily been concerned with white settler narratives, and Caribbean cultural production, especially the region's negotiation of complex racial and ethnic legacies, these essays explore the ways in which the history of transplantation and settlement has provided unique challenges and opportunities for establishing a sense of place and an environmental ethic in the Caribbean.

The volume includes an extensive introduction by the editors and essays by Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris, Cyril Dabydeen, Helen Tiffen, Hena Maes-Jelinek, and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, among others, as well as interviews with Walcott and Raphaël Confiant. It will appeal to all those interested in Caribbean, literary, and ecocritical studies. ... Read more

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The Rhythms of French Caribbean Popular Music
Explore the culture of the French Caribbean while experiencing its popular music is the invitation from Brenda F. Berrian in her seminal text, Awakening Spaces: French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music and Culture.Berrian gives the reader a comprehensive critique of the composers, singers, and production of music on the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.Berrian combines insightful scholarship with her joyous celebration of the artistry of the music makers.For lovers of this music, Awakening Spaces features all of the major players: the bands of Malavoi, Kassav', Taxikréol, Kwak, and Volt Face; the singers Joselyne Béroard, Patrick Saint Éloi, and Pôglo; the instrumentalists Jean-Paul Soime, Mario Canonge, and Mano Césaire; and versatile artists like Henri Guédon who excels as a composer, percussionist, and painter.

Berrian's book is a treasure trove of personal interviews with musicians and original transcriptions of song lyrics in French Creole and English.Awakening Spaces effectively bridges the past and present in Francophone Caribbean music for all lovers of music-be they exuberant fans of zouk or musicologists.

A well researched piece of art, enjoyable start to finish!
Well, when I first received this book in the mail for my review, I looked at the front and then the back cover and the first thing that came to mind is the phrase 'This I've got to see'.Why? Because this book discusses and analyzes in English, music from French West Indies sung primarily in Creole.Those of you who know Creole also know that is a very metaphoric, symbolic language that is sometimes difficult to decipher when you are not from a Creole background.To take the lyrics and deduct valid conclusions about the francophone culture would be no easy task. Well a couple of pages into the book, my qualms were put away, and I discovered a pleasant, vibrant book that covers such a broad range of topics: lyrics, politics, perception, tradition and culture all based on French Caribbean popular songs and music.The author Brenda F. Berrian, has taken the time to go deep into the scene of Martinique's and Guadeloupe's artistry with candid interviews, and lyrical analysis,all wrapped up neatly with her well thought out and researched interpretations and conclusions. The read was an enjoyable flirt with wonderful Creole songs, and to someone who is familiar with the music that is being showcased in the book, the book will be a ten-fold more enjoyable.Brenda's often-comical anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter are also a very nice touch.Over all, I'd recommend this book to those who have been to the French West Indies and have wondered what was being said and why. If you are a fan of Zouk music, Biguine, Ka, French Reggae; you'll especially want to pick this book up!Bravo Brenda on a job well done!I will write a more detailed review for the readers of www.zoukarchive.com. In the meantime definitely pick up this book! ... Read more

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The book takes as its point of departure the processes of cultural interaction and reflectivity. It argues that the study of cultural continuity should be guided by a notion of cultural complexity involving the continuous constitution, development and assertion of culture. It emphasises the interplay between local and global cultures, and examines the importance of cultural display for peoples who have experienced the process of socioeconomic marginalization in the western world.
Global Culture, Island Identity looks at the development of cultural identity in the global context, using the approach of historical anthropology. It examines the way in which the West Indian community of Nevis has, since the 1600s, incorporated both African and European cultural elements into the framework of social life, to create an Afro-Caribbean culture that was distinctive and yet geographically unbounded - a ''global culture''. The historical anthropological perspective offers new insight on global cultura ... Read more