Mobile and Entangled America(s)

Maryemma Graham is Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Wilfried Raussert is Chair and Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany.

’This volume transcends celebrations of multiculturalism and condemnations of globalization through its insightful reflections on the positive and negative aspects of entanglements in the Americas. Essays on literature, music, media, travel, and biocultural and spiritual mobilities explore issues of identity and displacement, mobility and stasis, rupture and growth. A timely collection that pushes the boundaries of Inter-American Studies.’ Catherine Leen, National University of Ireland, Maynooth ’A resolutely interdisciplinary Inter-American Studies collection by an international group of scholars in ongoing dialogue. So rigorously do the editors stir up the collection’s key concepts, mobility and entanglement, that the words stopped striking me as opposites about halfway through the introduction, and seemed to increase in dynamism as author after author pushed them together to spark new insights in a vast range of cultural studies across the Americas. Not a metaphor or map in sight, this is a disorientating collection in the best sense of the word.’ Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas, USA

• Lists of Figures and Tables viiNotes on Contributors ixAcknowledgments xiiiIntroduction: Just a Small Step: From Jamaica Kincaid’sA Small Place to Mobile and Entangled America(s) 1Maryemma Graham and Wilfried RaussertPART I LITERARY AND CULTURAL MOBILITIES1 On Routes and Roots: Movement and Rootedness inGarifuna Culture 13Paula Prescod2 CircumCaribbean Sisterhood: Patterns of Migration inCristina Garcia’s The Agüero Sisters 25John Lowe3 Tracing Afro Diasporic Histories: Translocational Storytellingand Entangled Afro Americas in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass,Cypress & Indigo and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying 51Wilfried Raussert4 “My history is a creature nobody really believes in. My history isa foreign word.” Second-Generation Immigrant Identity inDavid Chariandy’s Soucouyant 73Miriam Brandel5 From Granny’s Knee to Graduate Seminar: The Travels ofthe Soucouyant 91Giselle Liza Anatol6 Translocating the Caribbean, Positioning Im/Mobilities:The Sonic Politics of Las Krudas from Cuba 103Julia Rothvi Mobile and Entangled America(s)PART II BIOCULTURAL AND NEW MEDIA MOBILITIES7 Intimate Ties: Biotic Mobility and Inter‑American Studies 131Rüdiger Kunow8 Tattoo Travels: On Mobilities and Mobilizations ofAmerican Skin Art 155Martin Butler9 United Colors of Belonging? Participatory Culture andDiversity 2.0 in the Crowd-sourced Documentary Life in a Day 167Sebastian Thies10 Transnational Forces, Technological Developments, andthe Role of the State in the Mexican Audiovisual Sector 189José Carlos Lozano11 Mission Inverted: Inter-American Religious Flows andHow to Capture Them 203Heinrich Wilhelm SchäferPART III TRAVELING POLITICS, TRAVELING IDEOLOGIES,AND TRANSMIGRATIONS12 The Polysemic Use of Identity and Culture in InternationalMigration: The Case of Central American Migration in Mexico 245Rodolfo Casillas13 The Mobility of Hope and Violence in Sin Nombre 265Josef Raab14 Mexican Indigenismo in a Hemispheric Context―Elements fora Historiography of Inter-American Entanglements in theFirst Half of the Twentieth Century 283Olaf Kaltmeier15 Boas Goes to Americas: The Emergence of Trans-AmericanPerspectives on “Culture” 301Afef Benessaieh16 Moby-Dick and Globalization 321John Carlos RoweIndex 337