Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora

Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora
Author: Grace Aneiza Ali
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1783749903

Liminal Spaces is an intimate exploration into the migration narratives of fifteen women of Guyanese heritage. It spans diverse inter-generational perspectives – from those who leave Guyana, and those who are left – and seven seminal decades of Guyana’s history – from the 1950s to the present day – bringing the voices of women to the fore. The volume is conceived of as a visual exhibition on the page; a four-part journey navigating the contributors’ essays and artworks, allowing the reader to trace the migration path of Guyanese women from their moment of departure, to their arrival on diasporic soils, to their reunion with Guyana. Eloquent and visually stunning, Liminal Spaces unpacks the global realities of migration, challenging and disrupting dominant narratives associated with Guyana, its colonial past, and its post-colonial present as a ‘disappearing nation’. Multimodal in approach, the volume combines memoir, creative non-fiction, poetry, photography, art and curatorial essays to collectively examine the mutable notion of ‘homeland’, and grapple with ideas of place and accountability. This volume is a welcome contribution to the scholarly field of international migration, transnationalism, and diaspora, both in its creative methodological approach, and in its subject area – as one of the only studies published on Guyanese diaspora. It will be of great interest to those studying women and migration, and scholars and students of diaspora studies. Grace Aneiza Ali is a Curator and an Assistant Professor and Provost Fellow in the Department of Art & Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Her curatorial research practice centers on socially engaged art practices, global contemporary art, and art of the Caribbean Diaspora, with a focus on her homeland Guyana.

Representing Africa in the Motherland and the Diaspora

Representing Africa in the Motherland and the Diaspora
Author: Kevin J. Wetmore
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1527526062

This volume brings together fifteen scholars from Africa, Europe and the United States to explore how Africa is represented in and through the performing arts and cinema. Essays include discussions of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, American influences on Nollywood, Nigerian video films, the representation of women in cinema, African dance in the diaspora, children’s music, and media portrayals of savagery from pop cinema through news reports of Ferguson, Missouri. Using a variety of methodologies and approaches, the contributors consider how African societies and cultures have been represented to themselves, to the continent at large, and in the diaspora. The volume represents an extended dialogue between African scholars and artists about the challenges of representing themselves and their respective societies within and without Africa. Many of the contributors are scholar-practitioners, offering practical guides on how to approach these performance and media forms as artists. As such, this book will serve as both model and building block for the next generation of representors, students, and audiences.

Oshun's Daughters

Oshun's Daughters
Author: Vanessa K. Valdés
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1438450435

Examines the ways in which the inclusion of African diasporic religious practices serves as a transgressive tool in narrative discourses in the Americas. Oshun’s Daughters examines representations of African diasporic religions from novels and poems written by women in the United States, the Spanish Caribbean, and Brazil. In spite of differences in age, language, and nationality, these women writers all turn to variations of traditional Yoruba religion (Santería/Regla de Ocha and Candomblé) as a source of inspiration for creating portraits of womanhood. Within these religious systems, binaries that dominate European thought—man/woman, mind/body, light/dark, good/evil—do not function in the same way, as the emphasis is not on extremes but on balancing or reconciling these radical differences. Involvement with these African diasporic religions thus provides alternative models of womanhood that differ substantially from those found in dominant Western patriarchal culture, namely, that of virgin, asexual wife/mother, and whore. Instead we find images of the sexual woman, who enjoys her body without any sense of shame; the mother, who nurtures her children without sacrificing herself; and the warrior woman, who actively resists demands that she conform to one-dimensional stereotypes of womanhood.

Motherland

Motherland
Author: Vineeta Vijayaraghavan
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2003-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1569479275

In this quiet but engaging debut novel, an American teenager spends the summer with her relatives in southern India and gains new insight into her past, her family and her heritage. Born in Kerala, Maya spent the first four years of her life there, cared for mainly by her grandmother, Ammamma, until she was sent to live with her parents in New York. At 15, with her parents' marriage undergoing a rough patch, she is sent back to India to stay with her Aunt Reema and Uncle Sanjay, their 10-year-old daughter, Brindha, and Ammamma at their house in the tea hills above Coimbatore. It's been years since Maya came to visit, and this time she is keenly aware of cultural differences: the different spheres of men and women and the persistence of the caste system. She feels stifled by the attentions of Ammamma and resentful of the time she must spend with the old woman. When Maya suffers an accident while most of the family is away, she and Ammamma grow closer, and Maya learns a hidden family fact. But only when Ammamma falls ill and the entire family gathers, including Maya's parents from New York, does Maya begin to comprehend more deeply the complexities of relationships.

Daughters of Africa

Daughters of Africa
Author: Margaret Busby
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
Total Pages: 1174
Release: 1994
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

"A magnificent starting place for any reader interested in becoming part of the collective enterprise of discovering and uncovering the silent, forgotten, and underrated voices of black women." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD From all over the world and through the ages, here is a dazzling collection of two hundred women writers of African descent, showcased as never before, including: Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Childress, Maryse Conde, Aldo do Espirito Santo, Marita Golden, Pilar Lopez Gonzales, June Jordan, Terry McMillan, Queen of Sheba, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Phillis Weatley, and many, many others.

New Daughters of Africa

New Daughters of Africa
Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 798
Release: 2022-08-25
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0241997011

Nearly three decades after her pioneering anthology, Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby curates an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A glorious portrayal of the richness and range of African women's voices, this major international book brings together their achievements across a wealth of genres. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class. Bold and insightful, brilliant in its intimacy and universality, this landmark anthology honours the talents of African daughters and the inspiring legacy that connects them-and all of us.

Mama Africa

Mama Africa
Author: Patricia de Santana Pinho
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2010-01-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 082234646X

An examination of the meanings of blackness in the Brazilian state of Bahia, which is often called the most African part of Brazil.

The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club
Author: Amy Tan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2006-09-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101502738

“The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians Amy Tan’s beloved, New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters, now the focus of a new documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir on Netflix Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.

Lose Your Mother

Lose Your Mother
Author: Saidiya Hartman
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2008-01-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780374531157

An original, thought-provoking meditation on the corrosive legacy of slavery from the 16th century to the present.--Elizabeth Schmidt, "The New York Times."

Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women

Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women
Author: Simone A. James Alexander
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2001
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 082626316X

"Focusing on specific texts by Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Conde, and Paule Marshall, this study explores the intricate trichotomous relationship between the mother (biological or surrogate), the motherlands Africa and the Caribbean, and the mothercountry represented by England, France, and/or North America. The mother-daughter relationships in the works discussed address the complex, conflicting notions of motherhood that exist within this trichotomy. Although mothering is usually socialized as a welcoming, nurturing notion, Alexander argues that alongside this nurturing notion there exists much conflict. Specifically, she argues that the mother-daughter relationship, plagued with ambivalence, is often further conflicted by colonialism or colonial intervention from the "other," the colonial mothercountry." "Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women offers an overview of Caribbean women's writings from the 1990s, focusing on the personal relationships these three authors have had with their mothers and/or motherlands to highlight links, despite social, cultural, geographical, and political differences, among Afro-Caribbean women and their writings. Alexander traces acts of resistance, which facilitate the (re)writing/righting of the literary canon and the conception of a "newly created genre" and a "womanist" tradition through fictional narratives with autobiographical components." --Book Jacket.