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The Coolie Speaks
Introducing radical counter-visions of race and slavery, and probing the legal and philosophical questions raised by indenture,The Coolie Speaksoffers the first critical reading of a massive testimony case from Cuba in 1874. From this case, Yun traces the emergence of a \"coolie narrative\" that forms a counterpart to the \"slave narrative.\" The written and oral testimonies of nearly 3,000 Chinese laborers in Cuba, who toiled alongside African slaves, offer a rare glimpse into the nature of bondage and the tortuous transition to freedom. Trapped in one of the last standing systems of slavery in the Americas, the Chinese described their hopes and struggles, and their unrelenting quest for freedom.
Yun argues that the testimonies from this case suggest radical critiques of the \"contract\" institution, the basis for free modern society. The example of Cuba, she suggests, constitutes the early experiment and forerunner of new contract slavery, in which the contract itself, taken to its extreme, was wielded as a most potent form of enslavement and complicity. Yun further considers the communal biography of a next-generation Afro-Chinese Cuban author and raises timely theoretical questions regarding race, diaspora, transnationalism, and globalization.
eBook
The history of Cuba
\"A thorough examination of the history of Cuba, focusing primarily on the period from the revolution in 1959 to the present day\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Visions of Power in Cuba
In the tumultuous first decade of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and other leaders saturated the media with altruistic images of themselves in a campaign to win the hearts of Cuba's six million citizens. InVisions of Power in Cuba, Lillian Guerra argues that these visual representations explained rapidly occurring events and encouraged radical change and mutual self-sacrifice.Mass rallies and labor mobilizations of unprecedented scale produced tangible evidence of what Fidel Castro called \"unanimous support\" for a revolution whose \"moral power\" defied U.S. control. Yet participation in state-orchestrated spectacles quickly became a requirement for political inclusion in a new Cuba that policed most forms of dissent. Devoted revolutionaries who resisted disastrous economic policies, exposed post-1959 racism, and challenged gender norms set by Cuba's one-party state increasingly found themselves marginalized, silenced, or jailed. Using previously unexplored sources, Guerra focuses on the lived experiences of citizens, including peasants, intellectuals, former prostitutes, black activists, and filmmakers, as they struggled to author their own scripts of revolution by resisting repression, defying state-imposed boundaries, and working for anti-imperial redemption in a truly free Cuba.
eBook
The Golden Leaf
Through the rise and fall of empires, ideologies, and economies,
tobacco grown on the tiny island of Cuba has remained an enduring
symbol of pleasure and extravagance. Cultivated as one of the first
reliable commodities for those inhabitants who remained after
conquistadors moved on in search of a mythical wellspring of gold,
tobacco quickly became crucial to the support of the swelling
Spanish Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Eventually, however, tobacco became one of the final stabilizing
forces in the empire, and it ultimately proved more resilient than
the best laid plans of kings and queens. Tobacco, and those whose
livelihoods depended on it, shrugged off the Empire's collapse and
pressed on into the twentieth century as an economic force any
state or political power must reckon with. Cosner explores the
history of this golden leaf through the personal narratives of
farmers, bureaucrats, and laborers, all struggling to build an
independent and lucrative economic engine. Through conquest,
rebellion, colonial and imperial schemes, and the eventual
Communist revolution, Cuban tobacco and cigars became a luxury item
that commanded loyalty that defied mere borders or embargoes.
Ultimately, The Golden Leaf is a story of two carefully
cultivated products: Cuban tobacco, and its lofty reputation.
eBook
Cuba's racial crucible : the sexual economy of social identities, 1750-2000
\"For the past two centuries, competing views of Cuban racial identity have remained in continuous tension, with whiteness, blackness, and race mixture variably upheld as ideals. Cuba's Racial Crucible explores the historical dynamics behind Cuban racial identities by highlighting the racially-selective reproductive practices and genealogical memories associated with family formation. Karen Y. Morrison reads archival, oral-history, and literary sources to demonstrate the ideological centrality and inseparability of race, nation, and family in definitions of Cubanidad. Morrison analyzes the conditions that supported the social advance and decline of notions of white racial superiority, nationalist projections of racial hybridity, and pride in African descent that influenced, but also were shaped by, Cuban men and women's every day, racially-oriented choices in creating families\"--Provided by publisher.
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Sexual Revolutions in Cuba
InSexual Revolutions in CubaCarrie Hamilton delves into the relationship between passion and politics in revolutionary Cuba to present a comprehensive history of sexuality on the island from the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 into the twenty-first century. Drawing on an unused body of oral history interviews as well as press accounts, literary works, and other published sources, Hamilton pushes beyond official government rhetoric and explores how the wider changes initiated by the Revolution have affected the sexual lives of Cuban citizens. She foregrounds the memories and emotions of ordinary Cubans and compares these experiences with changing policies and wider social, political, and economic developments to reveal the complex dynamic between sexual desire and repression in revolutionary Cuba.Showing how revolutionary and prerevolutionary values coexist in a potent and sometimes contradictory mix, Hamilton addresses changing patterns in heterosexual relations, competing views of masculinity and femininity, same-sex relationships and homophobia, AIDS, sexual violence, interracial relationships, and sexual tourism. Hamilton's examination of sexual experiences across generations and social groups demonstrates that sexual politics have been integral to the construction of a new revolutionary Cuban society.
eBook
Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution
From 1750 to 1800, a critical period that saw the American Revolution, French Revolution, and Haitian Revolution, the Atlantic world experienced a series of environmental crises, including more frequent and severe hurricanes and extended drought. Drawing on historical climatology, environmental history, and Cuban and American colonial history, Sherry Johnson innovatively integrates the region's experience with extreme weather events and patterns into the history of the Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic world.By superimposing this history of natural disasters over the conventional timeline of sociopolitical and economic events in Caribbean colonial history, Johnson presents an alternative analysis in which some of the signal events of the Age of Revolution are seen as consequences of ecological crisis and of the resulting measures for disaster relief. For example, Johnson finds that the general adoption in 1778 of free trade in the Americas was catalyzed by recognition of the harsh realities of food scarcity and the needs of local colonists reeling from a series of natural disasters. Weather-induced environmental crises and slow responses from imperial authorities, Johnson argues, played an inextricable and, until now, largely unacknowledged role in the rise of revolutionary sentiments in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.
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