Recent Scholarship in Afro-Latin American and Caribbean Studies: A Brief Bibliography
The past twelve months have witnessed an outpouring of new scholarship on the African Diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean. Newly published works include fresh treatments of seminal thinkers Sylvia Wynter, George Padmore, and C.L.R. James as well as several books on longstanding topics of interest such as slave rebellion, labor radicalism, and decolonization. In addition to the dozens of newly released and forthcoming monographs in the field of Afro-Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Cambridge University Press has announced two new book series of interest: the Cambridge Studies on the African Diaspora series to be edited by Michael A. Gomez (New York University) and the Afro-Latin America series to be edited by George Reid Andrews (University of Pittsburgh) and Alejandro de la Fuente (Harvard University). Also of note, Duke University Press is republishing the works of C.L.R. James—complete with new introductions by leading scholars—as part of the C.L.R. James Archives series edited by Robert A. Hill. Duke University Press has also announced that a new volume of landmark The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers series—Volume XIII: The Caribbean Diaspora, 1921-1922—will be released in 2016.
Below is a brief list of books in the field of Afro-Latin American and Caribbean Studies that have been published in English since 2014. In the comment section, please feel free to add your favorite new or forthcoming book to the (very abridged) list provided here.
Rethinking Slavery and Emancipation: Historical, Literary, and Philosophical Approaches
Ana Lucia Araujo, African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015)
Alex Borucki, From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming November 2015)
Sherwin K. Bryant, Rivers of Gold, Lives of Bondage: Governing through Slavery in Colonial Quito (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)
Marlene L. Daut, Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789-1865 (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2015)
Sara Fanning, Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement (New York: NYU Press, 2014)
Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Aisha K. Finch, Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841-1844 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
Julia Gaffield, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming October 2015)
Natasha Lightfoot, Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming December 2015)
Jason McGraw, The Work of Recognition: Caribbean Colombia and the Postemancipation Struggle for Citizenship (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)
João José Reis, Divining Slavery and Freedom: The Story of Domingos Sodré, an African Priest in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Neil Roberts, Freedom as Marronage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)
Matthew J. Smith, Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica after Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)
Forging Communities, Fighting for Rights: Mapping the Terrain of Black Social Movements and Intellectual Currents in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Yarimar Bonilla, Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming October 2015)
Alexandre Emboaba Da Costa, Reimagining Black Difference and Politics in Brazil: From Racial Democracy to Multiculturalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Eric D. Duke, Building a Nation: Caribbean Federation in the Black Diaspora (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, forthcoming 2016)
Nadia Ellis, Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015)
Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014)
Christian Høgsbjerg, C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014)
Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma, and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families (Austin: University of Texas Press, forthcoming November 2015)
Philip Howard, Black Labor, White Sugar: Caribbean Braceros and their Struggle for Power in the Cuban Sugar Industry (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015).
Leslie James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
April J. Mayes, The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014)
Katherine McKittrick, Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015)
Colin A. Palmer, Freedom’s Children: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014)
Marc D. Perry, Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming 2015)
Shalini Puri, The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Andrea J. Queeley, Rescuing Our Roots: The African Anglo-Caribbean Diaspora in Contemporary Cuba (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, forthcoming November 2015)
Kate Quinn, ed., Black Power in the Caribbean (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014)
Olive Senior, Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and The Building of the Panama Canal (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2014)
Jerome Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonization Struggle in Trinidad and Tobago (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015)
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Thanks for this excellent list, Reena.
I’d include two of Gerald Horne’s recent books: Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba during Slavery and Jim Crow (Monthly Review Press, 2014) and Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic (Monthly Review Press, 2015).
Thanks for the great suggestions! I look forward to reading Professor Horne’s two newest books.
If I may, my book on the intersections of place, race and musical performance in Cuba was recently published:
Bodenheimer, Rebecca. Geographies of Cubanidad: Place, Race, and Musical Performance in Contemporary Cuba (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2015)
http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1792
Your new book looks fantastic! Thanks for letting us know about it.
Like Rebecca, I will also note this book that came out September 2014:
Juncker, Kristine. Afro-Cuban Religious Arts: Popular Expressions of Cultural Inheritance in Espiritismo and Santeria (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2014).
This volume would also fit into the subheading of: Forging Communities, Fighting for Rights: Mapping the Terrain of Black Social Movements and Intellectual Currents in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.
Thank you for starting this bibliography!
It’s wonderful to learn about your new book on Afro-Cuban religious practices. Thanks for adding it to our ever-growing list!
Thanks for this!
Another addition:
Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico
Isar Godreau, U of Illinois Press, 2015
I look forwarding to reading _Scripts of Blackness_! It’s exciting to see all of the new books on race in the Spanish Caribbean.
This book has also just been published by Demeter Press and would be suitable for inclusion in the bibliography:
Cristina Herrera and Paula Sanmartin (Eds.) Reading/Speaking/Writing the Mother Text: Essays on Caribbean Women s Writing (Demeter Press, 2015)
Thanks for contributing to the list, Dr. Beyer! I look forward to reading the new edited volume on Caribbean women’s writing.
Two more:
Alai Reyes-Santos, Our Caribbean Kin: Race and Nation in the Neoliberal Antilles, Rutgers UP, 2015. 1st offering (I’m pretty sure) in Rutgers’s new Critical Caribbean Studies series.
Maja Horn, Masculinity after Trujillo: The Politics of Gender in Dominican Literature, UP of Florida, 2014.
Thanks for putting this list together!
Thanks for these two great additions!
Hi Reena, How can I get you a copy of my book on Jamaica’s struggle from colonialism to Independence? Published March 2014, it is called We Come From Jamaica: The National Movement 1937-1962. I will mail you a copy if you e-mail me your mailing address.
Ewart Walters
Ottawa, Canada
No problem, and one more addition (a special journal issue and a bit of self-promotion):
Raj Chetty and Amaury Rodriguez, eds., Special issue on “Dominican Black Studies,” The Black Scholar, Vol. 45, no. 2 (2015).
Please add: Vibert C. Cambridge, Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity. University Press of Mississippi, 2015. http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1794
Regretfully there are no publications mentioned from the Dutch Caribbean. I would like to name just a few recent ones in English:
Francio Guadeloupe. Chanting Down the New Jerusalem.Calypso, Christianity, and Capitalism in the Caribbean. The Anthropology of Christianity, 2008; Rose Mary Allen. Di ki manera. Social History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 1863-1917/Swp, 2007; Linda Rupert.Creolization and Contraband. Curaçao in the Early Modern Atlantic World. University of Georgia Press, 2012;Rhoda Arrindell. Language, Culture, and Identity in St. Martin. House of Nehesi Publishers, 2014