Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora (Blacks in the Diaspora) - Softcover

The 18 papers in this volume are original, clearly written, and of consistently high quality. Organized in four parts-Comparative Diaspora Historiography, Identity and Culture, Domination and Resistance, and Geo-Social History and the Atlantic World-these essays complement each other in a way that makes the whole even more valuable than the sum of the parts. Contributors examine the origins, usefulness, and problems of the concept of black or African diaspora to locate the subject in its local, regional, global, and historical contexts, and they critique prevailing research paradigms. Essays discuss general issues, including slavery's legacies, the culture of race, and the politics of identity, with detailed reference to examples, among them, the Cape Verde Islands, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the American Midwest. Some essays make comparisons and connections between freedom struggles in the US and South Africa, slave laws in Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, and labor coercion in Grenada and St. Vincent. Other essays discuss the use of jazz as an instrument of US foreign policy in the Cold War, and the place of Africa in the development of the capitalist world. Highly recommended for all African diaspora studies. Upper-division undergraduates and above.February 2000 -- O. N. Bolland * Colgate University *

Now in paperback! Crossing Boundaries Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora Edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod Suggests new paradigms for the study of Blacks in diaspora. The 18 papers in this volume are original, clearly written, and of consistently high quality. Organized in four parts-`Comparative Diaspora Historiography,' `Identity and Culture,' `Domination and Resistance,' and `Geo-Social History and the Atlantic World'-these essays complement each other in a way that makes the whole even more valuable than the sum of the parts." -Choice The essays assembled in Crossing Boundaries reflect the international dimensions, commonalities, and discontinuities in the histories of diasporan communities of color. People of African descent in the New World (the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean) share a common set of experiences: domination and resistance, slavery and emancipation, the pursuit of freedom, and struggle against racism. No single explanation can capture the varied experiences of Black people in diaspora. Crossing Boundaries probes differences embedded in Black ethnicities and helps to discover and to weave into a new understanding the threads of experience, culture, and identity across diasporas. Contributors include Allison Blakely, Kim Butler, Frederick Cooper, George Fredrickson, David Barry Gaspar, Jack P. Green, Thomas Holt, Earl Lewis, Elliott Skinner, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn. Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan State University, is author of Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (Indiana University Press); co-author of A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America and The African American Odyssey; and co-editor of More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas and A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Men's History and Masculinity (both Indiana University Press).</