Close Kin and Distant Relatives

Download or Read eBook Close Kin and Distant Relatives PDF written by Susana M. Morris and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
Close Kin and Distant Relatives
Author :
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Total Pages : 233
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780813935515
ISBN-13 : 0813935512
Rating : 4/5 (15 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Close Kin and Distant Relatives by : Susana M. Morris

Book excerpt: The "black family" in the United States and the Caribbean often holds contradictory and competing meanings in public discourse: on the one hand, it is a site of love, strength, and support; on the other hand, it is a site of pathology, brokenness, and dysfunction that has frequently called forth an emphasis on conventional respectability if stability and social approval are to be achieved. Looking at the ways in which contemporary African American and black Caribbean women writers conceptualize the black family, Susana Morris finds a discernible tradition that challenges the politics of respectability by arguing that it obfuscates the problematic nature of conventional understandings of family and has damaging effects as a survival strategy for blacks. The author draws on African American studies, black feminist theory, cultural studies, and women’s studies to examine the work of Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and Sapphire, showing how their novels engage the connection between respectability and ambivalence. These writers advocate instead for a transgressive understanding of affinity and propose an ethic of community support and accountability that calls for mutual affection, affirmation, loyalty, and respect. At the core of these transgressive family systems, Morris reveals, is a connection to African diasporic cultural rites such as dance, storytelling, and music that help the fictional characters to establish familial connections.


Close Kin and Distant Relatives Related Books

Close Kin and Distant Relatives
Language: en
Pages: 233
Authors: Susana M. Morris
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-02-04 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The "black family" in the United States and the Caribbean often holds contradictory and competing meanings in public discourse: on the one hand, it is a site of
Kinship and Continuity
Language: en
Pages: 354
Authors: Alison Shaw
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2000 - Publisher: Psychology Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Kinship and Continuity is a vivid ethnographic account of the development of the Pakistani presence in Oxford, from after World War II to the present day. Aliso
Women and the Ancestors
Language: en
Pages: 296
Authors: Virginia Kerns
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1997 - Publisher: University of Illinois Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This classic study of Black Carib culture and its preservation through ancestral rituals organized by older women now includes a foreword by Constance R. Sutton
Contexts of Kinship
Language: en
Pages: 360
Authors: Esther N. Goody
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2005-07-07 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In her study of domestic organization in Gonja, Esther Goody has concentrated on tracing the interrelationships between political and domestic institutions in a
Risky Transactions
Language: en
Pages: 320
Authors: Frank K. Salter
Categories: Social Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-07-01 - Publisher: Berghahn Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Trust is a central feature of relationships within the Mafia, oppressed minorities, kin groups everywhere, among dissidents, nationalist freedom fighters, ethni