Recent Books by
Jouvert Board Members
Volume 4
Allen, Paula Gunn. Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting, Border-Crossing Loose Canons. Boston: Beacon Pr, 1999.
In a collection of political essays, literary criticism and personal reflection, Allen views the boundary where Native American cultures and Western Civilization meet. She offers powerful critiques of the Western social constructs of proprietorship, literacy, individualism and "rape culture" contrasted with the communal and sprititual connection to the earth that characterizes native societies. The book presents some of the best analyses of Native American literature of the late twentieth century, including the work of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Mary Tallmountain.
Barker, Francis, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iversen eds. Cannibalism and the Colonial World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
A group of literary and anthropological scholars places the discussion of cannibalism in the context of postcolonial and cultural studies. The various manifestations of the western fascination with the topic of cannibalism are analyzed in a series of essays on popular culture, film, literature, travel writing and anthroplogy.
Brown, Stewart and John Wickham, eds. The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.
This major anthology of 52 works of pan-Caribbean short fiction expands conventional area borders by including work from Suriname, Panama and Colombia. Chronologically, the collection begins with the Barbadian writer Frank Collymore, often termed the father of modern Caribbean fiction; it ends with a story by the Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat, one of the most acclaimed contemporary Caribbean women writers.
Cudjoe, Selwyn. Preface and Afterword. Emmanuel Appadocca: Or, Blighted Life: A Tale of the Buccaneers. By Maxwell Philip. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts P, 1997.
According to Cudjoe, this text inaugurates the Anglo-Caribbean novel tradition. Cudjoe's contributions to this volume also include an assessement of the novel in its American context.
Cudjoe, Selwyn. Tacarigua: A Village in Trinidad. Wellesley, MA: Calaloux Publications, 1998.
Davies, Carole Boyce, Isidore Okpewho and Ali A. Mazrui, eds. The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1999.
Kaplan, Caren, Norma Alarcon and Minoo Moallem, eds. Between Woman and Nation: Nationalism, Transnational Feminisms, and the State. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1999.
In Between Woman and Nation contructions such as nationalism, homeland, country, region, and locality are for the first time examined in the context of gender. The contributors -- leading scholars of ethnicity, transnationalism, globalization, and feminist theory -- are united in their determination to locate and describe the performative space of interactions between woman and nation.
Laguerre, Michel. The Global Ethnopolis; Chinatown, Japantown, and Manilatown in American Society . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Shohat, Ella, ed. Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (Discourses in Contemporary Art). Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1999.
Talking Visions consists of 25 essays, an introduction by Dr. Shohat and a visual project (65 images), based on a conference she organized for the New Museum, (MIT Press in collaboration with the New Museum, 1999). This multi-voiced collection presents the perspective of activists, scholars, artists and curators from a broad range of constituencies. Challenging traditional disciplinary and cultural boundaries, the book moves beyond any unified feminist historical narrative to present a "relational" feminism of diverse communities, affiliations, and practices. The texts/images partake of many genres: reflective essay, testimonial dialogue, performance piece, digital collage, prose poem, and photomontage. Forging connections between usually compartmentalized areas of knowledge and of activism, the volume helps us to envision alternative epistemologies and imaginative alliances.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.
Gayatri Spivak's most recent work may well be her most controversial: she addresses crucial challenges in postcolonial theory by forging a non-linear critical path and by celebrating hybridity in new ways. The book has already produced some resentment and befuddlement amongst more traditional academic readers and politically motivated general audiences. Other theorists and postcolonial scholars, however, have greeted the book with immense enthusiam. As Jacqueline Rose puts it, "Spivak performs what often seems either impossible or purely gestural -- a critique of transnational globalization which manages to be equally attuned to its cultural and economic effects. This book deserves to be read for its modulated defense of Marxism and feminism alone. It will be welcomed as the clearest statement to date of Spivak's own relationship to the postcolonial theory with which she herself -- wrongly, as she forcefully argues here -- is so often identified."
Viswanathan, Gauri. Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1998.
In a radical reexamination of religious conversion, Gauri Viswanathan demonstrates how conversion, especially to a minority or alternative religion, may be an act of resistance to established authority. In a wholly original perspective, Viswathanan equates the convert as religious dissenter and as colonial subject. She argues that conversion is an interpretive act that belongs in the realm of cultural criticism.
Young, Robert J. C. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction . London: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
This introduction by one of the leading exponents in the field clearly explains the historical and theoretical origins of postcolonial theory. Postcolonialism acknowledges that postcolonial theory draws on a wide, often contested range of theory from different fields. It analyzes the concepts and issues involved, explains the meaning of key terms, and interprets the work of some of the major writers and theorists, providing an ideal guide for readers coming to post-colonial theory and criticism for the first time.