Dialogues across Diasporas

Women Writers, Scholars, and Activists of Africana and Latina Descent in Conversation

Edited by Marion Rohrleitner and Sarah E. Ryan - Contributions by Meredith E. Abarca; Gabriela Durán Barraza; Sasha Pimentel Chacón; Myriam J. A. Chancy; Karma R. Chávez; Selfa Chew; Yvette Christiansë; Ayo Abiétou Coly; Angie Cruz; Kerry Doyle; Natasha Gordon-Chipembere; Ana-Maurine Lara; Veronica Savory McComb; Milena Simões Murta; Olumide Popoola; Nelly Rosario and Kathleen Staudt

Dialogues Across Diasporas focuses on the shared historical legacies of members of the Africana and Latina diasporas, and the cultural impact of the African diaspora in the Americas. This book seeks to emphasize connections rather than divisions among different migratory ethnic communities via a reconfiguration of borders and ethnic identities. This collection of essays has three major goals: first, to foreground shared themes and strategies in the literary productions of women of Africana and Latina/o descent; second, to highlight the importance of the arts for community activism within shared diasporic spaces; and third, to illustrate the potential of artistic and activist collaborations among women from both groups across disciplinary, political, national, and ethnic divides. Dialogues across Diasporas is divided into three sections. The first section provides a theoretical overview of diasporic migrations, politics, and identities. It argues that diverse diasporas can unite around shared political and cultural experiences such as converting contested spaces into communities and resisting rhetorics of exclusion. The second section demonstrates the diverse ways in which migratory women and daughters of the diaspora frame their histories, lived experiences, and different forms of knowledge via poetry, short stories, academic essays, and other art forms. The third section focuses on women’s activism, suggesting opportunities for collaboration among and between diverse diasporic communities.

Lexington Books

Pages: 302 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-7391-7804-1 • Hardback • December 2012 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-1160-5 • Paperback • February 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)

978-0-7391-7805-8 • eBook • December 2012 • $59.50 • (£46.00)

Series: Critical Africana Studies

Subjects: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Hispanic American Studies, Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory, Social Science / Media Studies, Social Science / Women's Studies, Social Science / World / Africa

Dialogues across Diasporas

Women Writers, Scholars, and Activists of Africana and Latina Descent in Conversation

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Dialogues Across Diasporas focuses on the shared historical legacies of members of the Africana and Latina diasporas, and the cultural impact of the African diaspora in the Americas. This book seeks to emphasize connections rather than divisions among different migratory ethnic communities via a reconfiguration of borders and ethnic identities. This collection of essays has three major goals: first, to foreground shared themes and strategies in the literary productions of women of Africana and Latina/o descent; second, to highlight the importance of the arts for community activism within shared diasporic spaces; and third, to illustrate the potential of artistic and activist collaborations among women from both groups across disciplinary, political, national, and ethnic divides. Dialogues across Diasporas is divided into three sections. The first section provides a theoretical overview of diasporic migrations, politics, and identities. It argues that diverse diasporas can unite around shared political and cultural experiences such as converting contested spaces into communities and resisting rhetorics of exclusion. The second section demonstrates the diverse ways in which migratory women and daughters of the diaspora frame their histories, lived experiences, and different forms of knowledge via poetry, short stories, academic essays, and other art forms. The third section focuses on women’s activism, suggesting opportunities for collaboration among and between diverse diasporic communities.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 302 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-7391-7804-1 • Hardback • December 2012 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-1160-5 • Paperback • February 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)

978-0-7391-7805-8 • eBook • December 2012 • $59.50 • (£46.00)

Series: Critical Africana Studies

Subjects: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Hispanic American Studies, Social Science / Feminism & Feminist Theory, Social Science / Media Studies, Social Science / Women's Studies, Social Science / World / Africa

Author

Marion Rohrleitner is an assistant professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Women’s Studies and African American Studies Programs at the University of Texas at El Paso, where she teaches 20th and 21st century American, Chicana/o and Latina/o, Caribbean, and African diasporic literatures. Her articles, book chapters, and book reviews have appeared in American Quarterly, Antípodas: A Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies, Callaloo, El Mundo Zurdo, Interdisciplinary Humanities, and Latino Studies. Her first book, Diasporic Bodies: Contemporary Historical Fictions and the Intimate Public Sphere, is a finalist for the ICI manuscript competition at Vanderbilt University.

Sarah E. Ryan is an empirical research librarian at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University. She is an M.L.S. candidate at Texas Woman’s University, and holds an M.A. in Interpersonal Communication, Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, and Ph.D. in Rhetorical Criticism from Ohio University. Sarah has published extensively on the topics of good governance and community rebuilding in Rwanda, including a 2012 article in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal entitled “Fulfilling the U.S. obligation to prevent exterminationism: A comprehensive approach to regulating hate speech and dismantling systems of genocide.” She has also published in: Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, Journal of Development Communication, Journal of Public Affairs Education, Peace Review, Review of Communication, Women & Language, and in a variety of edited collections and working papers series.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Diasporic Debates: Exploring the Dynamics of Gender, Race, and Migration
Chapter 1: ‘Harvesting’ Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Zora Neale Hurston’s Literary (Dis)Articulation of Being, Myriam J.A. Chancy
Chapter 2: Not in Our Mother’s Image: Ekphrasis and Challenges to Recovering Afro-Mestizaje in Contemporary Latina/Chicana Historical Fiction, Marion Rohrleitner
Chapter 3: Male Wives, Female Husbands: Immigration, Gender and Home in Calixthe Beyala’s “Le Petit Prince de Belleville and Maman a un Amant”, Ayo Abiétou Coly
Chapter 4: Embodied Translation: Dominant Discourse and Communication with Migrant Bodies-as-Text, Karma R. Chávez
Part 2: Diasporic Dances: Performing Language, History, and Community
Chapter 5: in tongues–the trouble inside language. Imag[e]ining presence, Olumide Popoola
Chapter 6: A Freedom Stolen, Yvette Christiansë
Chapter 7: Reading Yvette Christiansë: Reflections from a Border Scholar Activist, Kathleen Staudt
Chapter 8: Pin-Stripe Alley, Nelly Rosario
Chapter 9: A Box of Chocolates, Angie Cruz
Chapter 10: The Sun Once Again Sings to the People, Ana-Maurine Lara
Chapter 11: “Talking Tagalog” and “The Eyes Open to a Cry”, Sasha Pimentel Chacón
Chapter 12: An Afro-Mestizo Tamal: Remembering a Sensory and Sacred Encounter, Meredith E. Abarca
Chapter 13: Recovering Afro-Mestiza Identities: A Borderlands Classroom, Selfa Chew
Chapter 14: Discourses of Deference: Women and Submission in the Nigerian Diaspora, Veronica Savory McComb
Chapter 15: Catherine Mary Ajizinga Chipembere of Malawi: Living an Extraordinary Life, Natasha Gordon-Chipembere
Chapter 16: luchando, rimando, sacando, pintando: Young Female Artist Collectives in Ciudad Juárez, Kerry Doyle and Gabriela Durán Barraza
Chapter 17: Constrained Activism: National Agendas versus Local Activities in Nongovernmental Organizations Serving Diasporic Women, Sarah E. Ryan and Milena Simões Murta

Reviews

A stunning and unique contribution in the field of Africana Studies. Includes eloquent and highly readable work by female creative writers, community activists, and scholars of the African diaspora from Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean region, and the United States. Notably, this collection not only emerged from a two-day symposium in El Paso del Norte in 2010, but from where a majority of the nineteen contributors presently live and work, or have had past experiential contact with the U.S. Mexico borderlands. This book expands the horizons of interdisciplinary and intersectional scholarship in the already established areas of American-, Woman-, and Cultural Studies.
— Marta E. Sanchez, Arizona State University

This edited collection of must-read writings proposes a new, holistic, and persuasive manner of framing diasporas. Dialogues across Diasporas creates the necessary intellectual space for examining issues that speak to the core of our own identities, in different geographic locations and across the disciplines. It provides the missing discursive parameters that will guide discussions in decades to come.
— William Luis, Vanderbilt University