Richard L. Jackson - Böcker

[This book] clarifies vividly many of the less obvious and complex issues behind the tensions shaping the North-South political-economic struggle. . . . Impressive in its scope and informational content. Choice Jackson's work seeks to dispel the perception that the movement of third world nonaligned nations . . . is ineluctably anti-United States and pro-Soviet. . . . [His] call for a new approach deserves attention. Current History

This memoir attempts to capture the humor and sheer incongruity of working across cultures in an international career spanning diplomacy and education. Written in a light hearted tone, it also delves into tragic consequences in countries such as Somalia, Libya and Greece. While critical in many respects of US foreign policy, it also hopes to attract adventurous young men and women of today's generation to possible careers in diplomacy. The author uses humor and anecdote to highlight the monumental changes in the world environment and practice of diplomacy in the short space of a single career. The book features cover art and interior sketches by Eliza Jackson.

In Black Literature and Humanism in Latin America, Richard L. Jackson explores literary Americanism through writings of black Hispanic authors such as Carlos Guillermo Wilson, Quince Duncan, and Nelson Estupiñán Bass that in many ways provide a microcosm for the larger literature. Jackson traces the roots of Afro-Hispanic literature from the early twentieth-century Afrocriollo movement--the Harlem Renaissance of Latin America--to the fiction and criticism of black Latin Americans today. Black humanism arose from Afro-Hispanics' self-discovery of their own humanity and the realization that over the years they had become not only defenders of threatened cultures but also symbolic guardians of humanity. This humanist tradition had enabled writers such as Manuel Zapata Olivella to write of a Latin America "from below" the slave-ship deck and "from inside" the mind of Africa.Though many writers have adopted black literary models in their quest for a "poetry of sources, of fundamental human values," Jackson demonstrates that literature about blacks by blacks themselves is clearly separate from, yet instrumental to, these other works. Relating the vision of Latin American blacks not only to other Latin American writers but also to North American literary critics such as Eugene Goodheart and John Gardner, Jackson stresses the universal power of resisting oppression and injustice through the language of humanism.