Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMorrison's book opens up several new avenues for research on sexuality and family formation in Cuba, and she does so with a masterful grasp on colonial sources and raises critical questions for the twentieth century. While most scholars accept the primacy of race and sexuality in Cuban history, Morrison succeeds at excavating these questions on a micro-level, providing new insights into the choices and family formations forged by both enslaved and free Cubans over time.
* Cuban Studies *
This thought-provoking book will appeal to specialists and should be quite useful in graduate seminars dealing with race, nation, and Latin American history.
* Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism *
What is most striking about Cuba's Racial Crucible is the manner in which it records why enslaved individuals labored to document paternity, maternity, and racial ascendency for social mobility, love, and individual stability. Those social actors are the highlight of Morrison's research.
* American Quarterly *
This rigorous yet accessible monograph covers an extensive period of Cuban history from a unique and innovative intersectional perspective. For these reasons, it would make an excellent addition to undergraduate collections in African and African American studies, Latin American studies, women's and gender studies, and history. . . . Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Table of ContentsPreface: A Crucible of Race: Historicizing the Sexual Economy of Cuban Social Identities
Acknowledgments
1. Ascendant Capitalism and White Intellectual Re-Assessments of Afro-Cuban Social Value to 1820
2. Slavery and Afro-Cuban Family Formation during Cuba's Economic Awakening, 1763–1820
3. The Illegal Slave Trade and the Cuban Sexual Economy of Race, 1820–1867
4. Nineteenth-Century Racial Myths and the Familial Corruption of Cuban Whiteness
5. Afro-Cuban Family Emancipation, 1868–1886
6. "Regenerating" the Afro-Cuban Family, 1886–1940
7. Mestizaje Literary Visions and Afro-Cuban Genealogical Memory, 1920–1958
Epilogue: Revolutionary Social Morality and the Multi-Racial National
Family, 1959–2000
Notes
References
Index
