1. ¡Tierra!: In Search of An Ideal and the “Creation” of America
Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios
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2. Plantation and Transplantation: Sugar Economy and Slavery
The Modern Caribbean
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This collection of thirteen original essays by experts in the field of Caribbean studies clarifies the diverse elements that have shaped the modern Caribbean. Through an interdisciplinary examination of the complexities of race, politics, language, and environment that mark the region, the authors offer readers a thorough understanding of the Caribbean's history and culture. The essays also comment thoughtfully on the problems that confront the Caribbean in today's world.
La isla que se repite : para una reinterpretación de la cultura caribeña
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3. Planting roots: Criollism and Indigenism vs. Exile
4. Race, Gender and the Creation of a Caribbean Myth: “La mulata”
Cecilia Valdés or el Angel Hill
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Cecilia Valdés is arguably the most important novel of 19th century Cuba. Originally published in New York City in 1882, Cirilo Villaverde's novel has fascinated readers inside and outside Cuba since the late 19th century. In this new English translation, a vast landscape emerges of the moral, political, and sexual depravity caused by slavery and colonialism. Set in the Havana of the 1830s, the novel introduces us to Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, who is being pursued by the son of a Spanish slave trader, named Leonardo. Unbeknownst to the two, they are the children of the same father. Eventually Cecilia gives in to Leonardo's advances; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. When Leonardo, who gets bored with Cecilia after a while, agrees to marry a white upper class woman, Cecilia vows revenge. A mulatto friend and suitor of hers kills Leonardo, and Cecilia is thrown into prison as an accessory to the crime.For the contemporary reader Helen Lane's masterful translation of Cecilia Valdés opens a new window into the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba and the Caribbean. There are the elite social circles of European and New World Whites, the rich culture of the free people of color, the class to which Cecilia herself belonged, and then the slaves, divided among themselves between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in the New World, and those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the rich people in Havana. Cecilia Valdés thus presents a vast portrait of sexual, social, and racial oppression, and the lived experience of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.
Autobiografi´a de un Esclavo
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This is a simple but eloquent account of slavery in the Spanish colonies of the New World, as well as the first testimony in Spanish written by a slave and a document of immense historical and human value. Manzano began writing in 1835, encouraged by Domingo del Monte, a writer determined to abolish slavery, who a year later organized a group to buy Manzano's freedom. The work remained unfinished and was only published in Spanish in Cuba more than a hundred years later, in 1937 (an English edition had appeared in 1840). The author, born a slave in the Cuban province of Matanzas, tells of the vicissitudes of his life as a slave before being freed. This edition has respected the spelling and punctuation of the author.
5. Negritud y Mulatez: A Redefinition of Hispanic Caribbean Identity
Cuban counterpoint : tobacco and sugar
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Mapa de la poesía negra americana
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Nationalizing Blackness
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6. Politics in the Arts: Between Dictatorships and Revolutions
The lost steps. Translated from the Spanish by Harriet de Onis
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7. From the Outside: The Caribbean Diaspora
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
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8. From the Inside: Insularity and poverty
9. Dominicans, Newyoricans, Cuban-Americans: "U.S. Caribbeanness"
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
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Ana Lydia Vega (selected short stories)
Cuba and the USA: a Musical Journey
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Documentary: Chosen Few, by BoyWonder
The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective
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The Caribbean: the genesis of a fragmented nationalism
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Offering a rare pan-Caribbean perspective on a region that has moved from the very center of the western world to its periphery. The Caribbean journeys through five centuries of economic and social development, emphasizing such topics as the slave-run plantation economy, the changes in political control over the centuries, the impact of the United States, and the effects of Castro's Cuban revolution on the area. The newly revised 2nd Edition clarifies the notions of "settler" and "exploitation" societies, makes more explicit the characteristics of state formation and the concept of fragmented nationalism, incorporates the results of recent scholarship, expands treatment of the modern period, updates the chronology of events, and adds a number of new tables. Integrating social analysis with political narrative, The Caribbean provides a unique perspective on the problems of nation-building in an area of dense populations, scarce resources, and an explosive political climate.
