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People Get Ready: African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange (Caribbean Studies Series) PDF

248 Pages·2009·1.95 MB·English
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People Get Ready caribbean studies series Anton L. Allahar and Shona N. Jackson Series Editors (cid:142) (cid:141) People Get Ready African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange Kevin Meehan university press of mississippi Jackson www.upress.state.ms.us Designed by Peter D. Halverson The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2009 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2009 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meehan, Kevin, 1962– People get ready : African American and Caribbean cultural exchange / Kevin Meehan. p. cm. — (Caribbean studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-60473-281-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Intellectual life. 2. Blacks—Caribbean Area—Intellectual life. 3. Schomburg, Arthur Alfonso, 1874–1938—Influence. 4. Hurston, Zora Neale—Influence. 5. Cortez, Jayne—Influence. 6. Aristide, Jean-Bertrand—Influence. 7. United States—Relations—Caribbean Area. 8. Caribbean Area—Relations—United States. 9. Anti-imperialist movements—History. 10. Decolonization—History. I. Title. E185.M385 2009 972.9’00496—dc22 2009013371 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available (cid:142) (cid:141) Contents acknowledgments - vii - preface - xiii - introduction. People Get Ready Recalling African American and Caribbean Solidarity - 3 - chapter 1. Theorizing African American and Caribbean Contact Comparative Approaches to Cultural Decolonization in the Americas - 22 - chapter 2. Vested in the Anonymous Thousands Arthur A. Schomburg as Decolonizing Historian - 52 - chapter 3. Decolonizing Ethnography Zora Neale Hurston in the Caribbean - 76 - chapter 4. Red Pepper Poetry Jayne Cortez and Cross-Cultural Saturation - 101 - chapter 5. Mass Media Contact Zones Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Dialectics of Our America - 131 - epilogue. One Love in the Classroom Why Comparative Links between African American Studies and Caribbean Studies Matter - 155 - appendix. An Interview with Jayne Cortez - 162 - notes - 172 - works cited - 202 - index - 221 - This page intentionally left blank (cid:142) (cid:141) Acknowledgments academic research is notorious for requiring the scholar to endure solitude, isolation, and antisocial withdrawal from people and events. Yet the publishing of a book, because it involves and impinges on so many networks and stretches over the course of so many years, can never be described as a solo endeavor. I wish to acknowledge the following people, groups, and places that played an influential role in conceptualizing and completing this manuscript. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have found my way to the graduate program in comparative literature at the University of Maryland. My studies there with Joyce Ann Joyce, Madeleine Cottenet-Hage, and José Rabasa started me on the path of comparing African American and Caribbean writing and culture. Eugene Hammond gave me my first teaching assignment in African American literature at the University of Maryland, and he has remained an in- spiration to me as a scholar and a person. Maryse Condé taught a seminar on Negritude and its reception that included her memorable lecture on the Haitian Revolution and that gave me a chance to fight my way through a seminar pre- sentation in French on the poetry of Léon Damas. Robert Carr taught me how to use an academic research index and much more about Caribbean culture, his- tory, and politics. I read, wrote, traveled, debated, suffered, and learned to teach with many fine fellow students, including Ivan Al-Azm, Virginia Bell, Marjorie Bynum, Radiclani Clytus, Frances Gateward, Sharon Groves, Harris Gruman, Katrien Jacobs, Marion Jacobson, Valerie Jean, Rodrigo Lazo, Roberta Maguire, Glenn Moomau, Abdul-Karim Mustapha, Monique Roelofs, Carlos Schroeder, Seth Silberstein, Ann Steinecke, and Marian Urquilla. Thanks to Susan Lanser for introducing me to literary criticism at Georgetown University, and then bringing her innovative genius to bear on the comparative literature curriculum at Maryland. Thanks to Sangeeta Ray and Brian Richardson for advice, critiques, friendship, and a place to stay in Gainesville, Florida, while I was doing research at the University of Florida’s Hurston Collection. Carmen Coustaut shared her unique knowledge of black women filmmakers and encouraged my interest in Francophone literatures and cultures. Saving Maryland’s best for last, I could vii Acknowledgments never have pursued this project, or found a place in higher education, without the training and support of a mentoring dream team that includes Lynn Bolles, Merle Collins, Nicole King, Carla Peterson, and Mary Helen Washington. Thanks to Henry Schwarz at Georgetown University for graciously sharing his office and encouraging me to learn the languages. Thanks to Mbye Cham and Françoise Pfaff at Howard University, my scholarly second home during graduate school. At the University of Central Florida (UCF), where pressures from budget cuts and instrumental bureaucratic logic constantly threaten the life of the mind, I have been fortunate to find a superb community of scholars and friends. Two of my closest colleagues, Curtis Austin and Adenike Davidson, have gone on to satisfying appointments elsewhere, but I will always be proud to say I worked with them. In the English Department, thanks especially to my sib- lings, James Campbell and Lisa Logan, and also to Kathleen Bell, Barry Mauer, Craig Saper, Ernest Smith, and Dawn Trouard. In the library, I am grateful to Carole Hinshaw, Cheryl Mahan, and Carla Summers. The interlibrary loan staff kept important documents coming my way, and Gloria Coney ensured I had a place to store them by renewing my research carrel request year after year. I am also grateful to the following people with whom I have crossed paths at UCF: Rose Beiler, Lyman Brodie, Liz Bury, Jody Cutler, Vindra Dass, Sharmet Dean, Bernadette Adams Davis, Marty Dupuis, Shalanda Faulk, José Fernández, Tyler Fisher, Guadelupe Garcia, Nora Lee Garcia, David Gillette, Jon Glover, the late Cheryl Green, Kelle Groom, Kathleen Hoehenleitner, Rosalyn Howard, Anna Lillios, Luis Martínez-Fernández, Roy Perez, Maria Redmond, Rick Salcedo, Eladio Scharon, JoAnne Stephenson, Norma Toussaint, Alvin Wang, Bruce Wilson, Bronwen West, Gladstone Yearwood, and Kurt Young. Thanks to Belinda Edmondson, Ivette Cesareo-Romero, and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert for publishing pieces of this work in essay collections they edited, and special thanks to Lisa for attending a dinner talk I gave at the C. L. R. James Institute. Thanks also to Carroll Coates at Callaloo, Holly Laird at Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and Shusheila Nasta at Wasifiri for encouragement and helping me to shape my research and writing. At the University Press of Mississippi (UPM), Seetha Srinivasan maintained an interest in this project long after others consigned it to the dustbin of his- tory. Walter Biggins has been an advocate for the manuscript with colleagues both inside and outside of UPM, and he graciously kept me on track during the editing and production process. Thanks to the very insightful anonymous reviewer who helped me clarify and update the argument in People Get Ready, and thanks as well to copyeditor Robert Burchfield, whose augean cleansing resulted in large and small improvements to every page of the manuscript. viii Acknowledgments David Lindley introduced me to critical theory, Jean Casimir’s pivotal book The Caribbean: One and Divisible, and a never-to-be-forgotten moment of ex- treme amateur rock climbing at Harper’s Ferry. Thanks to Derrick P. Alridge for sparking my intellectual renaissance with a conference paper on Michael Franti and Spearhead and a memorable weekend in Athens, Georgia, complete with copious wine, a discussion of Ethiopianism, lunch at The Grit, and a delicious fish-fry breakfast. Cheryl Wall and Tiffany Patterson also lit some mental fires at recent Zora Neale Hurston conferences in Orlando and Ft. Pierce, Florida. N. Y. Nathiri at the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of the Arts in Eatonville, Florida, opened the door to me on Memorial Day 1992 and has been most gra- cious ever since. Patricia Saunders welcomed me in Pittsburgh and Trinidad and helped me get the greatest deal on books in Port-of-Spain that anyone has ever heard of. The late Jim Murray hosted me as a research fellow at the C. L. R. James Institute when I was on a short sabbatical in 2000, and I will always be grateful for having experienced his mordant humor, his archival jouissance, and his expertise in DIY typesetting. Thanks to Yvonne Baubie Pascal for persevering with wit and panache, to Jonathan Scott for friendship and a superb book on Langston Hughes, and to Laura Lomas for being a “daughter of Ella” and the catalyst for so many high- level professional moments over the course of nearly two decades. Some colleagues transcend the category of professional peer and qualify as lifelong supportive friends. Thanks to Maria Helena Lima, who recruited me to study comparative literature at the University of Maryland and has remained attentive and responsive to my progress as a teacher, writer, and person dur- ing more than two decades. Paulette Richards has read every word of every version of this manuscript and provides a constant model of how to combine interdisciplinary scholarship, liberatory activism, and multigenre creativity; I could never have formulated or completed this project without her input. Phyllis Jeffers-Coly is my true intellectual, political, and spiritual sister who went months and sometimes years with no contact and but somehow managed to call me on every important milestone day in the life of this manuscript. Tish Crawford witnessed with me the full range of sublime, absurd, grotesque, and mundane experiences associated with graduate study, as well as the sequels that beset us on the tenure track; I am grateful for sharing good food and music (especially Kassav), conversations about Haiti, hardboiled detective fiction, and visitations from the spirits of Himes and Hurston. Most important, perhaps, Tish introduced me to the theory and practice of reenactment, and that has helped me savor life’s pleasures and survive its pain. In Orlando, I am fortunate to have been sustained by intellectual, musi- cal, multilingual, culinary, vinicultural, horticultural, political, and sporting ix

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Throughout this book, Kevin Meehan offers historical and theoretical readings of Caribbean and African American interaction from the 1700s to the present. By analyzing travel narratives, histories, creative collaborations, and political exchanges, he traces the development of African American/Caribb
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