The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 15002000

Edited by Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Karen Racine

Publication date:

16 November 2009

Length of book:

236 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742567306

Like snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on the diaspora caused by the forced migration of Africans to Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas, the chapters explore the slave trade, enslavement, resistance, adaptation, cultural transformations, and the quest for citizenship rights. The variety of experiences, constraints and choices depicted in the book and their changes across time and space defy the idea of a unified "black experience." At the same time, it is clear that in the twentieth century, "black" identity unified people of African descent who, along with other "minority" groups, struggled against colonialism and racism and presented alternatives to a version of modernity that excluded and alienated them. Drawing on a rich array of little-known documents, the contributors reconstruct the lives and times of some well-known characters along with ordinary people who rarely left written records and would otherwise have remained anonymous and unknown.

Contributions by: Aaron P. Althouse, Alan Bloom, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, Aisnara Perera Díaz, María de los Ángeles Meriño Fuentes, Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Hilary Jones, Beatriz G. Mamigonian, Charles Beatty Medina, Richard Price, Sally Price, Cassandra Pybus, Karen Racine, Ty M. Reese, João José Reis, Lorna Biddle Rinear, Meredith L. Roman, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer, and Jerome Teelucksingh.

Introduction: People in the Making of the Black Atlantic
Chapter 1: Alonso de Illescas (1530s–1580s): African, Ladino, and Maroon Leader in Colonial Ecuador
Chapter 2: Gregoria López (1680s): A Mexican Mulata Defends Her Honor
Chapter 3: Philip Quaque (1741–1816): African Anglican Missionary on the Gold Coast
Chapter 4: Harry Washington (1760s–1790s): A Founding Father's Slave
Chapter 5: Rufino José Maria (1820s–1850s): A Muslim in the Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Slave Trade Circuit
Chapter 6: Buenaventura Lucumí (1820s–1872): African Slave, Head of a Household, and Lottery Winner in Cuba
Chapter 7: Blaise Diagne (1872–1934): Senegal's Deputy to the French National Assembly
Chapter 8: Phyllis Ann Edmeade (1920s): Caribbean Migrant Worker Deported from the United States
Chapter 9: C. L. R. James (1901–1989): The Black Jacobin
Chapter 10: Robert Robinson (1930s): Celebrity Worker in the USSR
Chapter 11: Vicente Ferreira Pastinha (1889–1981): The "Angolan" Tradition of Capoeira
Chapter 12: Malcolm X (1925–1965): A Pan-African Revolutionary
Chapter 13: Romare Bearden (1911-1988): Artist, Intellectual, Activist
Suggested Readings by Topic
Selected Filmography on the Black Atlantic

This wonderful addition to the growing scholarship attempts, quite successfully, to add a human face to the black Atlantic. A topical bibliography and a filmography provide instructors and students alike a guide for further research. Highly recommended.