A01=Andrea J. Queeley
A01=Andrea Queeley
Afro Cuban
Andrea Queeley
Anglo Caribbean
anti racist activism
Author_Andrea J. Queeley
Author_Andrea Queeley
belonging
black activism
black Cubans
blackness
British West Indian immigrants
CARICOM
Category=JBFA
Category=JBFA1
Category=JBFH
Category=JBSL
Category=NHK
Cuba
Cuban
Cuban revolution
cultural citizenship
diaspora
diasporic subject
diasporic subjectivity
discrimination
doble moral
early twentieth century Cuba
economic crisis
emmigration
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnic revitalization
ethnography
exile
freedom
gender
Guantanamo Naval Base
hybridity
identity formation
immigration
intra Caribbean migration
migration
narratives
new Cuban subject
opportunity
political activism
political subjectivity
post Soviet era
professional
race
race mixture
racial politics
racism
reflexive ethnography
regional alliance
respectability
respectable blackness
revolution
social mobility
Soul Train
Special Period
subjectivity
the state
tourism
transnational social field
transnationalism
twenty first century Cuba
US expansion
Product details
- ISBN 9780813054612
- Weight: 525g
- Dimensions: 151 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 16 May 2017
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Provides invaluable insight into the histories and lives of Cubans who trace their origins to the Anglo-Caribbean.”—Robert Whitney, author of State and Revolution in Cuba: Mass Mobilization and Political Change, 1920–1940
“Adds a missing piece to the existing literature about the renewal of black activism in Cuba, all the while showing the links and fractures between pre- and post-1959 society.”—Devyn Spence Benson, Louisiana State University
In the early twentieth century, laborers from the British West Indies immigrated to Cuba, attracted by employment opportunities. The Anglo-Caribbean communities flourished, but after 1959, many of their cultural institutions were dismantled: the revolution dictated that in the name of unity there would be no hyphenated Cubans. This book turns an ethnographic lens on their descendants who—during the Special Period in the 1990s—moved to “rescue their roots” by revitalizing their ethnic associations and reestablishing ties outside the island.
Based on Andrea J. Queeley’s fieldwork in Santiago and Guantánamo, Rescuing Our Roots looks at local and regional identity formations as well as racial politics in revolutionary Cuba. Queeley argues that, as the island experienced a resurgence in racism due in part to the emergence of the dual economy and the reliance on tourism, Anglo-Caribbean Cubans revitalized their communities and sought transnational connections not just in the hope of material support but also to challenge the association between blackness, inferiority, and immorality. Their desire for social mobility, political engagement, and a better economic situation operated alongside the fight for black respectability.
Unlike most studies of black Cubans, which focus on Afro-Cuban religion or popular culture, Queeley’s penetrating investigation offers a view of strategies and modes of black belonging that transcend ideological, temporal, and spatial boundaries.
“Adds a missing piece to the existing literature about the renewal of black activism in Cuba, all the while showing the links and fractures between pre- and post-1959 society.”—Devyn Spence Benson, Louisiana State University
In the early twentieth century, laborers from the British West Indies immigrated to Cuba, attracted by employment opportunities. The Anglo-Caribbean communities flourished, but after 1959, many of their cultural institutions were dismantled: the revolution dictated that in the name of unity there would be no hyphenated Cubans. This book turns an ethnographic lens on their descendants who—during the Special Period in the 1990s—moved to “rescue their roots” by revitalizing their ethnic associations and reestablishing ties outside the island.
Based on Andrea J. Queeley’s fieldwork in Santiago and Guantánamo, Rescuing Our Roots looks at local and regional identity formations as well as racial politics in revolutionary Cuba. Queeley argues that, as the island experienced a resurgence in racism due in part to the emergence of the dual economy and the reliance on tourism, Anglo-Caribbean Cubans revitalized their communities and sought transnational connections not just in the hope of material support but also to challenge the association between blackness, inferiority, and immorality. Their desire for social mobility, political engagement, and a better economic situation operated alongside the fight for black respectability.
Unlike most studies of black Cubans, which focus on Afro-Cuban religion or popular culture, Queeley’s penetrating investigation offers a view of strategies and modes of black belonging that transcend ideological, temporal, and spatial boundaries.
Andrea J. Queeley is assistant professor of anthropology and African diaspora studies at Florida International University.
