Jana Evans Braziel – författare

The hidden impact of race on modern ideals

Jana Evans Braziel examines how Haitian diaspora writers, performance artists, and musicians address black masculinity through the Haitian Creole concept of gwo nègs, or "big men." She focuses on six artists and their work: writer Dany Laferrière, director Raoul Peck, rap artist Wyclef Jean, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, drag queen performer and poet Assotto Saint, and queer drag king performer Dréd (a.k.a. Mildréd Gerestant). For Braziel, these individuals confront the gendered, sexualized, and racialized boundaries of America's diaspora communities and openly resist "domestic" imperialism that targets immigrants, minorities, women, gays, and queers. This is a groundbreaking study at the intersections of gender and sexuality with race, ethnicity, nationality, and diaspora.

Since World War II, when the diet and fitness industries promoted mass obsession with weight and body shape, fat has been a dirty word. In the United States, fat is seen as repulsive, funny, ugly, unclean, obscene, and above all as something to lose. "Bodies Out of Bounds" challenges these dominant perceptions by examining social representations of the fat body. The contributors to this collection show that what counts as fat and how it is valued are far from universal; the variety of meanings attributed to body size in other times and places demonstrates that perceptions of corpulence are infused with cultural, historical, political, and economic biases. The exceptionally rich and engaging essays collected in this volume question discursive constructions of fatness while analyzing the politics and power of corpulence and addressing the absence of fat people in media representations of the body. The essays are widely interdisciplinary; they explore their subject with insight, originality, and humor. The contributors examine the intersections of fat with ethnicity, race, queerness, class, and minority cultures, as well as with historical variations in the signification of fat.They also consider ways in which 'objective' medical and psychological discourses about fat people and food hide larger agendas. By illustrating how fat is a malleable construct that can be used to serve dominant economic and cultural interests, "Bodies Out of Bounds" stakes new claims for those whose body size does not adhere to society's confining standards.

Bringing together the key essays that have constituted this field since its inception and that point the way toward its future, Theorizing Diaspora is a central resource for understanding diaspora as an emergent and contested theoretical space. Anthologizes the most influential and critically received essays that have shaped the trajectory of diaspora studies.Offers classic statements that have defined the field by scholars including Appadurai, Gilroy, Radhakrishnan, and Hall.Presents divergent strains of multiple diasporas, including Chinese, Black African, Jewish, South Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean.Reflects the modalities and methodologies of scholars across the humanities and social sciences.Includes a postscript on diaspora in cyberspace and an extensive bibliography.

Bringing together the key essays that have constituted this field since its inception and that point the way toward its future, Theorizing Diaspora is a central resource for understanding diaspora as an emergent and contested theoretical space. Anthologizes the most influential and critically received essays that have shaped the trajectory of diaspora studies.Offers classic statements that have defined the field by scholars including Appadurai, Gilroy, Radhakrishnan, and Hall.Presents divergent strains of multiple diasporas, including Chinese, Black African, Jewish, South Asian, Latin American, and Caribbean.Reflects the modalities and methodologies of scholars across the humanities and social sciences.Includes a postscript on diaspora in cyberspace and an extensive bibliography.

From a position of urgent political engagement, this provocative book offers novel and compelling interpretations of several well-known Haitian-born authors, particularly regarding U.S. intervention in their homeland.Drawing on the diasporic cultural texts of several authors, such as Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière, Jana Evans Braziel examines how writers participate in transnational movements for global social justice. In their fictional works they discuss the U.S.’s many interventionist methods in Haiti, including surveillance, foreign aid, and military assistance. Through their work, they reveal that the majority of Haitians do not welcome these intrusions and actively criticize U.S. treatment of Haitians in both countries.Braziel encourages us to analyze the instability and violence of small nations like Haiti within the larger frame of international financial and military institutions and forms of imperialism. She forcefully argues that by reading these works as anti-imperialist, much can be learned about why Haitians and Haitian exiles often have negative perceptions of the U.S.

Foregrounding street art in the capital cities of Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico, this book argues that Antillean street artists diagnose the “impossible state” of the arrested present (colonized, occupied, or under dictatorship) while simultaneously imagining liberated futures and fully sovereign states.Jana Evans Braziel launches a comparative study of art, politics, history, urban street cultures, engaged citizenships, and social transformations in three Antillean capital cities—Havana, Cuba; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and San Juan, Puerto Rico—of the Greater Caribbean. The book includes a photo documentary archive of street art, murals, and installations by key muralists in these cities: Yulier Rodriguez Pérez, "Jerry" Rosembert Moïse, and Colectivo Moriviví (Chachi González Colón, Raysa Rodríguez García, and Salomé Cortés). Braziel offers art historical and geopolitical analyses of the urban street art in their cities of production, underscoring street art as political, economic, and environmental engagements (and not as exclusively aesthetic ones) with urban space and street life.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Caribbean studies, Latin American studies, and urban studies.

Foregrounding street art in the capital cities of Cuba, Haiti, and Puerto Rico, this book argues that Antillean street artists diagnose the “impossible state” of the arrested present (colonized, occupied, or under dictatorship) while simultaneously imagining liberated futures and fully sovereign states.Jana Evans Braziel launches a comparative study of art, politics, history, urban street cultures, engaged citizenships, and social transformations in three Antillean capital cities—Havana, Cuba; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and San Juan, Puerto Rico—of the Greater Caribbean. The book includes a photo documentary archive of street art, murals, and installations by key muralists in these cities: Yulier Rodriguez Pérez, "Jerry" Rosembert Moïse, and Colectivo Moriviví (Chachi González Colón, Raysa Rodríguez García, and Salomé Cortés). Braziel offers art historical and geopolitical analyses of the urban street art in their cities of production, underscoring street art as political, economic, and environmental engagements (and not as exclusively aesthetic ones) with urban space and street life.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Caribbean studies, Latin American studies, and urban studies.

This study focuses on street art and large-scale murals in metropolitan Miami/Dade County, while also foregrounding the diasporic and aesthetic interventions made by migrant and second-generation artists whose families hail from the Caribbean and Latin America. Jana Evans Braziel argues that Caribbean and Latinx street artists define and visually mark the city of Miami as a diasporic, transnational urban space. These artists also help define Miami as a cosmopolitan city, yet one that is also a distinctly Caribbean and Latinx urban space, and simultaneously resist but also (at times reluctantly) participate in the forces of gentrification and urban re/development, particularly through the myriad and complex ways in which street art contributes to city branding and art tourism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, urban studies, American studies, and Latin American/Caribbean studies.

This study focuses on street art and large-scale murals in metropolitan Miami/Dade County, while also foregrounding the diasporic and aesthetic interventions made by migrant and second-generation artists whose families hail from the Caribbean and Latin America. Jana Evans Braziel argues that Caribbean and Latinx street artists define and visually mark the city of Miami as a diasporic, transnational urban space. These artists also help define Miami as a cosmopolitan city, yet one that is also a distinctly Caribbean and Latinx urban space, and simultaneously resist but also (at times reluctantly) participate in the forces of gentrification and urban re/development, particularly through the myriad and complex ways in which street art contributes to city branding and art tourism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, urban studies, American studies, and Latin American/Caribbean studies.

Edwidge Danticat’s prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21st-century literary culture. Across such novels as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Farming the Bones and short story collections such as Krik? Krak! and most recently Everything Inside, essays, and writing for children, the Haitian-American writer has throughout her oeuvre tackled important contemporary themes including racism, imperialism, anti-immigrant politics, and sexual violence.With chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars, this is the most up-to-date and in-depth reference guide to 21st-century scholarship on Edwidge Danticat’s work. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat covers such topics as:· The full range of Danticat’s writing from her novels and short stories to essays, life writing and writing for children and young adults.· Major interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives including from establishing fields fields of literary studies, Caribbean Studies Political Science, Latin American Studies, feminist and gender studies, African Diaspora Studies, , and emerging fields such as Environmental Studies.· Danticat’s literary sources and influences from Haitian authors such as Marie Chauvet, Jacques Roumain and Jacques-Stéphen Alexis to African American authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Caribbean American writers Audre Lorde to Paule Marshall.· Known and unknown Historical moments in experiences of slavery and imperialism, the consequence of internal and external migration, and the formation of diasporic communitiesThe book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Danticat’s work and key works of secondary criticism, and an interview with the author, as well as and essays by Danticat herself.

Edwidge Danticat’s prolific body of work has established her as one of the most important voices in 21st-century literary culture. Across such novels as Breath, Eyes, Memory, Farming the Bones and short story collections such as Krik? Krak! and most recently Everything Inside, essays, and writing for children, the Haitian-American writer has throughout her oeuvre tackled important contemporary themes including racism, imperialism, anti-immigrant politics, and sexual violence.With chapters written by leading and emerging international scholars, this is the most up-to-date and in-depth reference guide to 21st-century scholarship on Edwidge Danticat’s work. The Bloomsbury Handbook to Edwidge Danticat covers such topics as:· The full range of Danticat’s writing from her novels and short stories to essays, life writing and writing for children and young adults.· Major interdisciplinary scholarly perspectives including from establishing fields fields of literary studies, Caribbean Studies Political Science, Latin American Studies, feminist and gender studies, African Diaspora Studies, , and emerging fields such as Environmental Studies.· Danticat’s literary sources and influences from Haitian authors such as Marie Chauvet, Jacques Roumain and Jacques-Stéphen Alexis to African American authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Caribbean American writers Audre Lorde to Paule Marshall.· Known and unknown Historical moments in experiences of slavery and imperialism, the consequence of internal and external migration, and the formation of diasporic communitiesThe book also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Danticat’s work and key works of secondary criticism, and an interview with the author, as well as and essays by Danticat herself.

On the southern end of the Grand Rue, a major thoroughfare that runs through the center of Port-au-Prince, waits the Haitian capital's automobile repair district. This veritable junkyard of steel and rubber, recycled parts, old tires, and scrap metal might seem an unlikely foundry for art. Yet, on the street's opposite end thrives the Grand Rue Galerie, a working studio of assembled art and sculptures wrought from the refuse.Established by artists André Eugène and Jean Hérard Celeur in the late 1990s, the Grand Rue's urban environmental aesthetics-defined by motifs of machinic urbanism, Vodou bricolage, the postprimitivist altermodern, and performative politics--radically challenge ideas about consumption, waste, and environmental hazards, as well as consider innovative solutions to these problems in the midst of poverty, insufficient social welfare, lack of access to arts, education, and basic needs.In Riding with Death, Jana Evans Braziel explores the urban environmental aesthetics of the Grand Rue sculptors and the beautifully constructed sculptures they have designed from salvaged automobile parts, rubber tires, carved wood, and other recycled materials. Through first-person accounts and fieldwork, Braziel constructs an urban ecological framework for understanding these sculptures amid environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Above all, Braziel presents Haitian artists who live on the most challenged Caribbean island, yet who thrive as creators reinventing refuse as art and resisting the abjection of their circumstances.

Philosophical exploration of Jamaica Kincaid's entire literary oeuvre.By exploring the breadth of Jamaica Kincaid's writings, this book reveals her work's transmutations of genre, specifically those of autobiography, biography, and history in relation to the forces of creation and destruction in the Caribbean. Jana Evans Braziel examines Kincaid's preoccupation with genealogy, genesis, and genocide in the Caribbean; her adaptations of biblical texts for her literary oeuvre; and her authorial deployments of the diabolic as frames for both rethinking the boundaries of genre and altering notions of subjectivity, objectivity, self, and other.

Philosophical exploration of Jamaica Kincaid's entire literary oeuvre.By exploring the breadth of Jamaica Kincaid's writings, this book reveals her work's transmutations of genre, specifically those of autobiography, biography, and history in relation to the forces of creation and destruction in the Caribbean. Jana Evans Braziel examines Kincaid's preoccupation with genealogy, genesis, and genocide in the Caribbean; her adaptations of biblical texts for her literary oeuvre; and her authorial deployments of the diabolic as frames for both rethinking the boundaries of genre and altering notions of subjectivity, objectivity, self, and other.