People Get Ready: African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange (Caribbean Studies Series)

248 Pages·2009·1.95 MB·English

by  Kevin Meehan

People Get Ready
caribbean studies series
Anton L. Allahar and Shona N. Jackson
Series Editors
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People Get Ready
African American and Caribbean Cultural Exchange
Kevin Meehan
university press of mississippi
Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
Designed by Peter D. Halverson
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of
the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2009 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2009
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meehan, Kevin, 1962–
People get ready : African American and Caribbean cultural exchange / Kevin Meehan.
p. cm. — (Caribbean studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-60473-281-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Intellectual
life. 2. Blacks—Caribbean Area—Intellectual life. 3. Schomburg, Arthur Alfonso,
1874–1938—Influence. 4. Hurston, Zora Neale—Influence. 5. Cortez, Jayne—Influence.
6. Aristide, Jean-Bertrand—Influence. 7. United States—Relations—Caribbean Area.
8. Caribbean Area—Relations—United States. 9. Anti-imperialist movements—History.
10. Decolonization—History. I. Title.
E185.M385 2009
972.9’00496—dc22 2009013371
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
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Contents
acknowledgments - vii -
preface - xiii -
introduction. People Get Ready
Recalling African American and Caribbean Solidarity - 3 -
chapter 1. Theorizing African American and Caribbean Contact
Comparative Approaches to Cultural Decolonization in the Americas - 22 -
chapter 2. Vested in the Anonymous Thousands
Arthur A. Schomburg as Decolonizing Historian - 52 -
chapter 3. Decolonizing Ethnography
Zora Neale Hurston in the Caribbean - 76 -
chapter 4. Red Pepper Poetry
Jayne Cortez and Cross-Cultural Saturation - 101 -
chapter 5. Mass Media Contact Zones
Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Dialectics of Our America - 131 -
epilogue. One Love in the Classroom
Why Comparative Links between African American Studies
and Caribbean Studies Matter - 155 -
appendix. An Interview with Jayne Cortez - 162 -
notes - 172 -
works cited - 202 -
index - 221 -
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Acknowledgments
academic research is notorious for requiring the scholar to endure
solitude, isolation, and antisocial withdrawal from people and events. Yet the
publishing of a book, because it involves and impinges on so many networks
and stretches over the course of so many years, can never be described as a solo
endeavor. I wish to acknowledge the following people, groups, and places that
played an influential role in conceptualizing and completing this manuscript.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have found my way to the graduate
program in comparative literature at the University of Maryland. My studies
there with Joyce Ann Joyce, Madeleine Cottenet-Hage, and José Rabasa started
me on the path of comparing African American and Caribbean writing and
culture. Eugene Hammond gave me my first teaching assignment in African
American literature at the University of Maryland, and he has remained an in-
spiration to me as a scholar and a person. Maryse Condé taught a seminar on
Negritude and its reception that included her memorable lecture on the Haitian
Revolution and that gave me a chance to fight my way through a seminar pre-
sentation in French on the poetry of Léon Damas. Robert Carr taught me how
to use an academic research index and much more about Caribbean culture, his-
tory, and politics. I read, wrote, traveled, debated, suffered, and learned to teach
with many fine fellow students, including Ivan Al-Azm, Virginia Bell, Marjorie
Bynum, Radiclani Clytus, Frances Gateward, Sharon Groves, Harris Gruman,
Katrien Jacobs, Marion Jacobson, Valerie Jean, Rodrigo Lazo, Roberta Maguire,
Glenn Moomau, Abdul-Karim Mustapha, Monique Roelofs, Carlos Schroeder,
Seth Silberstein, Ann Steinecke, and Marian Urquilla. Thanks to Susan Lanser
for introducing me to literary criticism at Georgetown University, and then
bringing her innovative genius to bear on the comparative literature curriculum
at Maryland. Thanks to Sangeeta Ray and Brian Richardson for advice, critiques,
friendship, and a place to stay in Gainesville, Florida, while I was doing research
at the University of Florida’s Hurston Collection. Carmen Coustaut shared her
unique knowledge of black women filmmakers and encouraged my interest in
Francophone literatures and cultures. Saving Maryland’s best for last, I could
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Acknowledgments
never have pursued this project, or found a place in higher education, without
the training and support of a mentoring dream team that includes Lynn Bolles,
Merle Collins, Nicole King, Carla Peterson, and Mary Helen Washington.
Thanks to Henry Schwarz at Georgetown University for graciously sharing
his office and encouraging me to learn the languages. Thanks to Mbye Cham
and Françoise Pfaff at Howard University, my scholarly second home during
graduate school.
At the University of Central Florida (UCF), where pressures from budget
cuts and instrumental bureaucratic logic constantly threaten the life of the
mind, I have been fortunate to find a superb community of scholars and friends.
Two of my closest colleagues, Curtis Austin and Adenike Davidson, have gone
on to satisfying appointments elsewhere, but I will always be proud to say I
worked with them. In the English Department, thanks especially to my sib-
lings, James Campbell and Lisa Logan, and also to Kathleen Bell, Barry Mauer,
Craig Saper, Ernest Smith, and Dawn Trouard. In the library, I am grateful to
Carole Hinshaw, Cheryl Mahan, and Carla Summers. The interlibrary loan staff
kept important documents coming my way, and Gloria Coney ensured I had a
place to store them by renewing my research carrel request year after year. I am
also grateful to the following people with whom I have crossed paths at UCF:
Rose Beiler, Lyman Brodie, Liz Bury, Jody Cutler, Vindra Dass, Sharmet Dean,
Bernadette Adams Davis, Marty Dupuis, Shalanda Faulk, José Fernández, Tyler
Fisher, Guadelupe Garcia, Nora Lee Garcia, David Gillette, Jon Glover, the late
Cheryl Green, Kelle Groom, Kathleen Hoehenleitner, Rosalyn Howard, Anna
Lillios, Luis Martínez-Fernández, Roy Perez, Maria Redmond, Rick Salcedo,
Eladio Scharon, JoAnne Stephenson, Norma Toussaint, Alvin Wang, Bruce
Wilson, Bronwen West, Gladstone Yearwood, and Kurt Young.
Thanks to Belinda Edmondson, Ivette Cesareo-Romero, and Lizabeth
Paravisini-Gebert for publishing pieces of this work in essay collections they
edited, and special thanks to Lisa for attending a dinner talk I gave at the
C. L. R. James Institute. Thanks also to Carroll Coates at Callaloo, Holly Laird
at Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and Shusheila Nasta at Wasifiri for
encouragement and helping me to shape my research and writing.
At the University Press of Mississippi (UPM), Seetha Srinivasan maintained
an interest in this project long after others consigned it to the dustbin of his-
tory. Walter Biggins has been an advocate for the manuscript with colleagues
both inside and outside of UPM, and he graciously kept me on track during
the editing and production process. Thanks to the very insightful anonymous
reviewer who helped me clarify and update the argument in People Get Ready,
and thanks as well to copyeditor Robert Burchfield, whose augean cleansing
resulted in large and small improvements to every page of the manuscript.
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Acknowledgments
David Lindley introduced me to critical theory, Jean Casimir’s pivotal book
The Caribbean: One and Divisible, and a never-to-be-forgotten moment of ex-
treme amateur rock climbing at Harper’s Ferry. Thanks to Derrick P. Alridge for
sparking my intellectual renaissance with a conference paper on Michael Franti
and Spearhead and a memorable weekend in Athens, Georgia, complete with
copious wine, a discussion of Ethiopianism, lunch at The Grit, and a delicious
fish-fry breakfast. Cheryl Wall and Tiffany Patterson also lit some mental fires
at recent Zora Neale Hurston conferences in Orlando and Ft. Pierce, Florida.
N. Y. Nathiri at the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of the Arts in Eatonville,
Florida, opened the door to me on Memorial Day 1992 and has been most gra-
cious ever since. Patricia Saunders welcomed me in Pittsburgh and Trinidad
and helped me get the greatest deal on books in Port-of-Spain that anyone has
ever heard of. The late Jim Murray hosted me as a research fellow at the C. L. R.
James Institute when I was on a short sabbatical in 2000, and I will always be
grateful for having experienced his mordant humor, his archival jouissance, and
his expertise in DIY typesetting.
Thanks to Yvonne Baubie Pascal for persevering with wit and panache, to
Jonathan Scott for friendship and a superb book on Langston Hughes, and to
Laura Lomas for being a “daughter of Ella” and the catalyst for so many high-
level professional moments over the course of nearly two decades.
Some colleagues transcend the category of professional peer and qualify as
lifelong supportive friends. Thanks to Maria Helena Lima, who recruited me to
study comparative literature at the University of Maryland and has remained
attentive and responsive to my progress as a teacher, writer, and person dur-
ing more than two decades. Paulette Richards has read every word of every
version of this manuscript and provides a constant model of how to combine
interdisciplinary scholarship, liberatory activism, and multigenre creativity;
I could never have formulated or completed this project without her input.
Phyllis Jeffers-Coly is my true intellectual, political, and spiritual sister who
went months and sometimes years with no contact and but somehow managed
to call me on every important milestone day in the life of this manuscript. Tish
Crawford witnessed with me the full range of sublime, absurd, grotesque, and
mundane experiences associated with graduate study, as well as the sequels that
beset us on the tenure track; I am grateful for sharing good food and music
(especially Kassav), conversations about Haiti, hardboiled detective fiction, and
visitations from the spirits of Himes and Hurston. Most important, perhaps,
Tish introduced me to the theory and practice of reenactment, and that has
helped me savor life’s pleasures and survive its pain.
In Orlando, I am fortunate to have been sustained by intellectual, musi-
cal, multilingual, culinary, vinicultural, horticultural, political, and sporting
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