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2014 Runner-Up, MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural StudiesIn Unbecoming Blackness, Antonio Lopez uncovers an important, otherwise unrecognized century-long archive of literature and performance that reveals Cuban America as a space of overlapping Cuban and African diasporic experiences.Lopez shows how Afro-Cuban writers and performers in theU.S. align Cuban black and mulatto identities, often subsumed in the mixed-race and postracial Cuban national imaginaries, with the material and symbolic blackness of African Americans and other Afro-Latinas/os. In the works of Alberto O'Farrill, Eusebia Cosme, Romulo Lachatanere, and others, Afro-Cubanness articulates the African diasporic experience in ways that deprive negro and mulato configurations of an exclusive link with Cuban nationalism. Instead, what is invoked is an unbecoming relationship between Afro-Cubans in the U.S and their domestic black counterparts. The transformations in Cuban racial identity across the hemisphere, represented powerfully in the literary and performance cultures of Afro-Cubans in the U.S., provide the fullest account of a transnational Cuba, one in which the Cuban American emerges as Afro-Cuban-American, and the Latino as Afro-Latino.

Are all immigrants from the same home country best understood as a homogeneous group of foreign-born? Or do they differ in their adaptation and transnational ties depending on when they emigrated and with what lived experiences? Between Castro’s rise to power in 1959 and the early twenty-first century more than a million Cubans immigrated to the United States. While it is widely known that Cuban émigrés have exerted a strong hold on Washington policy toward their homeland, Eckstein uncovers a fascinating paradox: the recent arrivals, although poor and politically weak, have done more to transform their homeland than the influential and prosperous early exiles who have tried for half a century to bring the Castro regime to heel. The impact of the so-called New Cubans is an unintended consequence of the personal ties they maintain with family in Cuba, ties the first arrivals oppose. This historically-grounded, nuanced book offers a rare in-depth analysis of Cuban immigrants’ social, cultural, economic, and political adaptation, their transformation of Miami into the \"northern most Latin American city,\" and their cross-border engagement and homeland impact. Eckstein accordingly provides new insight into the lives of Cuban immigrants, into Cuba in the post Soviet era, and into how Washington’s failed Cuba policy might be improved. She also posits a new theory to deepen the understanding not merely of Cuban but of other immigrant group adaptation. Introduction 1. Immigrants and the Weight of Their Past 2. Immigrant Imprint in America 3. Politics for Whom and for What? 4. The Personal is Political: Bonding across Borders 5. Cuba Through the Looking Glass 6. Transforming Transnational Ties into Economic Worth 7. Dollarization and Its Discontents: Homeland Impact of Diaspora Generosity 8. Reenvisioning Immigration Appendix I: Field Research \"Based on extensive fieldwork in Cuba and the U.S., Eckstein shows that immigrant incorporation and enduring homeland involvements are cohort specific—how Cubans feel about their homeland and what they want to do about it depends upon when they leave and what they leave with. Her research also shows how the same group settles differently in different contexts of reception. A must-read for migration scholars, Latin Americanists, and policymakers alike.\" - Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College, author of God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape \"Eckstein, one of the leading scholars of contemporary Cuba, sheds light on the most recent and fascinating change in relations between Cuba and its diaspora: Officially, the government of Cuba and the leadership of the Miami diaspora may still hate each other but Cubans on both sides of the Straits of Florida have developed a flourishing relationship of remittances, migration, and transnational societies. This book is a terrific guide to relationships that are bound to develop even more in the years to come.\" - Jorge I. Domínguez, Harvard University, USA \"The immigrant’s journey is a story that has been told often, but never like this. With a sympathetic ear for the poetry of pathos and a critical eye for the data that give her insights depth, Eckstein has written a remarkable chronicle of two Cuban migrations to the United States. The ‘Exiles,’ who left soon after Castro arrived, and the ‘New Cubans,’ who came a generation later, were both changed by the journey, but what makes this book special is that she shows how they also changed both countries.\" - Robert Pastor, American University; National Security Advisor for Latin America, 1977–81 \"Eckstein takes on the timely question of change in the Cuban Diaspora. She looks beyond the initial wave of émigrés to analyze the experiences of the other waves that followed. By tapping this natural case study of immigrant resources and different patterns of incorporation and influence, Eckstein builds a comprehensive theory of immigrant incorporation that accounts for sending and receiving country influences and the role of co-ethnic political organization in the country of migration.\" - Louis DeSipio, University of California, Irvine, USA \"Few social scientists know Cuba as deeply or as subtly as Susan Eckstein. She has written the best sociological analysis of the political evolution of the island during the revolutionary period, Back from the Future . Now, she turns her attention to the Cuban diaspora and, with the same dispassionate eye, tells us of its behavior and its consequences both for their native and their adopted countries. A must-read for anyone interested in Cuba or immigrant politics.\" - Alejandro Portes \"Eckstein’s skillful parsing of secondary data—be they from the U.S. Census or the FIU Cuba Poll, which is used liberally to establish an empirical differentiation between “waves” of migrants—unravels the threads of the Cuban experience.\" - Guillermo J Grenier, Florida International University, Vol. 116, No. 2, American Journal of Sociology. \"Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.\" - M. Vickerman, CHOICE (May 2010) Susan Eva Eckstein is Professor of Sociology and International Relations at Boston University. Author of Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro , as well as numerous other books on Latin America, she is also former president of the Latin American Studies Association and the New England Council on Latin America.

This essay scrutinizes the 2015 debut novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, written by Cuban American writer Jennine Capó Crucet. Through the methodology of textual analysis, it aims to critically examine and demonstrate how this novel center on the process of shaping and re-shaping one’s constructed identity in its intersections with a complex web of traditions, history, immigration, politics, power struggles, place and displacement, socio economic and class determinants. Guided by J. Butler and J. Blocker’s ideas on performativity, the essay posits that Cuban “exiles” occupy their exile “as a discursive position” to create and stage an identity. It examines the intersectional performativity of being Cuban in the United States, and the power/identitarian struggles of claiming Cubanness, as presented by Capó Crucet in her excellent first novel.

Writing for Inclusion is a study of some of the ways the idea of national identity developed in the nineteenth century in two neighboring nations, Cuba and The United States. The book examines symbolic, narrative, and sociological commonalities in the writings of four Afro-Cuban and African American writers: Juan Francisco Manzano and Frederick Douglass, fugitive slaves during mid-century; and Martín Morúa Delgado and Charles W. Chesnutt from the post-slavery period. All four share sensitivity to their imperfect inclusion as full citizens, engage in an examination of the process of racialization that hinders them in seeking such inclusion, and contest their definition as non-citizens. Works discussed include the slave narratives of Manzano and Douglass, Manzano's poetry and play Zafira, andDouglass's oratory and novella The Heroic Slave. Also considered, within the context provided by Manzano and Douglass, are Morúa and Chesnutt's non-fiction writings about race and nation as well as their second-generation \"tragic mulata\" novels Sofía and The House Behind the Cedars. Based on an examination of the works of these four authors, Writing for Inclusion provides a detailed examination of examples of self-emancipation, the authors' symbolic use of language, their expression of social anxieties or irony within the quest for recognition, and their arguments for an inclusive vision of national identity beyond the quagmires of race. By focusing on the process of racialization and ideas of race and national identity in a comparative context, the study seeks to highlight the artificial and contested nature of both terms and suggest new ways to interrogate them in our present day.

\"Fall festivities are underway in Coral Shores, Miami. Cuban-American cooking show star Miriam Quiñones-Smith wakes up to find a corpse in her front yard. The body by the fake tombstone is the woman that was kicked out of the school's Fall Festival the day before. Miriam's luck does not improve. Her passive-aggressive mother-in-law puts her in charge of the Women's Club annual gala. But this year, it's not canapes and waltzes. Miriam and her girlfriends-squad opt for fun and flavor. They want to spice it up with Caribbean food trucks and a calypso band. While making plans at the country club, they hear a volatile argument between the new head chef and the club's manager. Not long after, the chef swan dives to his death at the bottom of the grand staircase. Was it an accident? Or was it Beverly, the sous chef, who is furious after being passed over for the job? Or maybe it was his ex-girlfriend, Anastasia? Add two possible poisonings to the mix and Miriam is worried the food truck fun is going to be a major crash. As the clock ticks down and the body count goes up, Miriam's life is put in jeopardy. Will she connect the dots or die in the deep freeze? Foodies and mystery lovers alike will savor the denouement as the truth is laid bare in this simmering stew of rage, retribution, and murder\"-- Dust jacket flap.

For those opposed to immigration, Miami is a nightmare. Miami is the de facto capital of Latin America; it is a city where immigrants dominate, Spanish is ubiquitous, and Denny's is an ethnic restaurant. Are Miami's immigrants representative of a trend that is undermining American culture and identity? Drawing from in-depth fieldwork in the city and looking closely at recent events such as the Elián González case, This Land Is Our Land examines interactions between immigrants and established Americans in Miami to address fundamental questions of American identity and multiculturalism. Rather than focusing on questions of assimilation, as many other studies have, this book concentrates on interethnic relations to provide an entirely new perspective on the changes wrought by immigration in the United States. A balanced analysis of Miami's evolution over the last forty years, This Land Is Our Land is also a powerful demonstration that immigration in America is not simply an \"us versus them\" phenomenon.