La Noire de...

An early success of Ousmane Sembene and scathing critique of colonialism. La noire, the black woman maid of a French family in Dakar and then France, is treated like a slave, a brutalized colonial subject, by her white mistress, and eventually rebels in most harrowing way. Diouana's shifting perspective in time seems to align well with the stages of negritude thought and nationalist identity favored by Sembene. I do have to agree with Roger Ebert's review that the film moves too slowly, but the final scene where the boy wearing his mask pursues Diouana's boss is quite powerful.

Wide Sargasso Sea

I wonder if Wide Sargasso Sea is a much better read if one is familiar with Jane Eyre. It was interesting and certainly disturbing in parts, but very difficult to follow without background knowledge in that English classic. Otherwise, I found the text an interesting postcolonial perspective on the Caribbean from the lens of white settlers, with appropriately horrific language and dense imagery.

El Malo

Classic salsa...

Sugar and Slavery in 19th Century Puerto Rico

A map illustrating the most important sugar plantation districts of Puerto Rico in 1828, taken from Francisco Scarano's "Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico" which focuses on Ponce in the first half of the 19th century. Scarano's really an economic historian in some respects, and his work is perfectly balanced with Luis Figueroa's research on slavery and the plantation economy in 19th century Guayama, one of the most important areas in the Ponce-Patillas alluvial plain where sugar plantations thrived. Unlike Scarano, Figueroa endeavors to study slave resistance as well race relations in Guayama, while Scarano provides detailed information and statistics regarding exports, immigration (white immigrants from other colonies and Catholic nations of Europe played a large role in the rise of the plantation model in Guayama, Mayaguez, and Ponce in the 19th century), and trade relations. Indeed, Puerto Rico, in the late 1830s (and despite experiencing a rise in sugar monoculture and the slave trade after Cuba) actually exported more sugar to the US market than Cuba, in spite of its much smaller size and slave population.

Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Just finished reading Zadie Smith's "Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays" and loving it. How could I have ignored her essay writing talent by focusing solely on her novels? Even when discussing classics of English and European literature I have not personally read, her essays are still accessible, witty, humorous, and thought-provoking. I knew from the start it would be a good collection of essays due to her balanced perspective on Zora Neale Hurston. In addition, she deconstructs some of the problems in how one approaches writing, literary criticism, and is unafraid to write personal pieces about her own identity as a black woman, specifically in how it relates to how we perceive President Obama. Her cautious optimism about her experience in Liberia and thoughtful film criticism also opened my eyes. From now on, I'll make sure to read Smith's essays as religiously as I follow her novels.

Bon Bon de Chocolate

Gotta love this charanga orchestra's classic. And those drums! 

More Malavoi

I have been listening to Malavoi's "Pousser la vie" on repeat today. Again, we see the band's penchant for fusing different sounds of the Caribbean and Black Atlantic (jazzy piano, Haitian compas, Martinique's history of violin and string music), and it pays off. The song's multi-layered, featuring restrained characteristically Malavoi elements  that succeed with a compas structure and pulsating drums.