Choice
The 18 papers in this volume are original, clearly written, and of consistently high quality. Organized in four parts—Comparative Diaspora Historiography, Identity and Culture, Domination and Resistance, and Geo-Social History and the Atlantic World—these essays complement each other in a way that makes the whole even more valuable than the sum of the parts. Contributors examine the origins, usefulness, and problems of the concept of black or African diaspora to locate the subject in its local, regional, global, and historical contexts, and they critique prevailing research paradigms. Essays discuss general issues, including slavery's legacies, the culture of race, and the politics of identity, with detailed reference to examples, among them, the Cape Verde Islands, Cuba, Jamaica, Peru, Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the American Midwest. Some essays make comparisons and connections between freedom struggles in the US and South Africa, slave laws in Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, and labor coercion in Grenada and St. Vincent. Other essays discuss the use of jazz as an instrument of US foreign policy in the Cold War, and the place of Africa in the development of the capitalist world. Highly recommended for all African diaspora studies. Upper-division undergraduates and above.—O. N. Bolland, Colgate University, Choice, February 2000— O. N. Bolland, Colgate University
