With its exalted emotionality, Pentecostalism is a widespread religious movement in Latin America and Africa. It is a blend of Methodism and African religious culture which arouses the passions of the poorest Brazilian masses. Pentecostal conversion is experienced as a sudden break which radically transforms the life of these sectors of the population. Pentecostalism is an Utopia of equality, love and emotion, which is staged during the worship service. However, it is also characterized by authoritarian features. Pentecostalism is slowly eroding the foundation of Western political categories.

In this book Sara Le Menestrel explores the role of music in constructing, asserting, erasing, and negotiating differences based on the notions of race, ethnicity, class, and region. She discusses established notions and brings to light social stereotypes and hierarchies at work in the evolving French Louisiana music field. She also draws attention to the interactions between oppositions such as black and white, urban and rural, differentiation and creolization, and local and global.

Le Menestrel emphasizes the importance of desegregating the understanding of French Louisiana music and situating it beyond ethnic or racial identifications, amplifying instead the importance of regional identity. Musical genealogy and categories currently in use rely on a racial construct that frames African and European lineage as an essential difference. Yet as the author samples music in the field and discovers ways music is actually practiced, she reveals how the insistence on origins continually interacts with an emphasis on cultural mixing and creative agency. This book finds French Louisiana musicians navigating between multiple identifications, musical styles, and legacies while market forces, outsiders' interest, and geographical mobility also contribute to shape musicians' career strategies and artistic choices.

The book also demonstrates the decisive role of non-natives' enthusiasm and mobility in the validation, evolution, and reconfiguration of French Louisiana music. Finally, the distinctiveness of South Louisiana from the rest of the country appears to be both nurtured and endured by locals, revealing how political domination and regionalism intertwine.

Throughout her novels, Toni Morrison explores the complex interaction of race, class, culture, and gender. This study takes into account both Western and Black traditions to show how Morrison not only denounces the constricting patterns of the dominant culture, but also, through the reversal or subversion of Western stereotypes, harnesses the rich potential for the significance they contain.

While most recent studies of Morrison examine individual works separately, this book concentrates on particular dimensions of Morrison's fiction and explores the continuities and developments from her first to most recent novel. And while other studies generally approach Morrison from a particular critical perspective, this book instead considers the interaction of multiple determinants such as race and gender, and gives special attention to the pressure exerted by dominant cultural forms. The authors demonstrate how in contradiction to the dominant culture's ideology of unity and homogeneity, Morrison makes a case for the value of difference in a diverse society.

The statement, "The Civil Rights Movement changed America," though true, has become something of a cliche. "Civil rights in the White Literary Imagination" seeks to determine how, exactly, the Civil Rights Movement changed the literary possibilities of four iconic American writers: Robert Penn Warren, Norman Mailer, Eudora Welty, and William Styron. Each of these writers published significant works prior to the "Brown v. Board of Education" case in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott that began in December of the following year, making it possible to trace their evolution in reaction to these events. The work these writers crafted in response to the upheaval of the day, from Warren's "Who Speaks for the Negro?," to Mailer's "The White Negro" to Welty's "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" to Styron's "Confessions of Nat Turner," reveal much about their own feeling in the moment even as they contribute to the national conversation that centered on race and democracy.

By examining these works closely, Gray posits the argument that these writers significantly shaped discourse on civil rights as the movement was occurring but did so in ways that--intentionally or not--often relied upon a notion of the relative innocence of the South with regard to racial affairs, and on a construct of African Americans as politically and/or culturally na*ve. As these writers grappled with race and the myth of southern nobility, their work developed in ways that were simultaneously sympathetic of, and condescending to, black intellectual thought occurring at the same time."

This interdisciplinary volume surveys the diverse experiences of biracial families, both across and outside the black/white binary. The book examines the deep-rooted social contexts that inform the lifespan of interracial families, from dating and marriage through the stages of parenthood, as well as families' unique responses and realities. Through a variety of structures and settings including blended and adoptive families, contributors describe families' strengths and resilience in meeting multiple personal and larger social challenges. The intricacies of parenting and family development are also revealed as an ongoing learning process as parents and children construct identity, culture, and meaning. Among the topics covered: Social constitutionality of race in America: some meanings for biracial/multiracial families. Interracial marriages: historical and contemporary trends. Racial socialization: a developmental perspective. Biracial families formed through adoption. Diverse family structures within biracial families. Racial identity: choices, context, and consequences. Addressing lingering gaps in the existing literature and highlighting areas for future study, Biracial Families gives readers a fuller understanding of a growing and diversifying population. Its depth and breadth of coverage makes the book an invaluable reference not only for practitioners and researchers, but also for educators and interracial families across the spectrum.

This book focuses on ethnic nationalism and its universality as a phenomenon in world politics. By employing case studies, the essays demonstrate the past, current, and future persistence of this fragmenting tendency and its implications for various regional and world-wide political dynamics. By its very comprehensiveness and geographic case diversity, the study provides evidence that there are two simultaneous (and sometimes contradictory) dynamics taking place in the international political arena--integration and fragmentation. This collection of essays analyzes fragmentation. There are significant implications for description, analysis, evaluation, and prescriptive policy in international relations. This book challenges the bias in post-war America (and the West overall) that the preeminent, if not exclusive, political behavior tendency in regional and world politics is integration of actors and their behavior. While not seeking to refute or deny integration, it suggests balancing the analysis of international politics by upgrading the fragmentation tendencies based upon a very basic phenomenon--ethnic nationalism.

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aA veritable feast of the field's most scrumptious offerings, "East Main Street" satisfies with some of the best minds in Asian American studies at this table.a
--Gary Y. Okihiro, author of "Common Ground: Reimagining American History"

"Sure to spark the imagination of both seasoned fans of Asian American popular culture and the as yet uninitiated. From cyberspace and animA(c) to "The Simpsons" and "Secret Asian Man," this book intrigues and provokes with every chapter. The sheer number of savvy cultural critics assembled ensures that readers will find something of interest, no matter where one begins exploring the popular culture of Asian America."
--Kent Ono, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

aEast Main Street creates its own relevance by touching on an abundance of cultural mediums and themes. Scholars of film, literature, the Internet, music, and history can all find essays in which to sink their teeth.a
--"Western American Literature"

aThis volume explores historical and contemporary Asian American popular culture in the context of three broad themes: globalization and local identities, cultural legacy and memories, and ethnicity and identification. Among topics covered are transnational Vietnamese music, Asian fusion cuisine, race on the Internet, kung fu movies, hip hop, and the aiconography of Tiger Woodsa.
--"Sage Race Relations Abstracts"

From henna tattoo kits available at your local mall to afaux Asiana fashions, housewares and fusion cuisine; from the new visibility of Asian film, music, video games and anime to the current popularity of martial arts motifs in hip hop, Asianinfluences have thoroughly saturated the U.S. cultural landscape and have now become an integral part of the vernacular of popular culture.

By tracing cross-cultural influences and global cultural trends, the essays in East Main Street bring Asian American studies, in all its interdisciplinary richness, to bear on a broad spectrum of cultural artifacts. Contributors consider topics ranging from early Asian American movie stars to the influences of South Asian iconography on rave culture, and from the marketing of Asian culture through food to the contemporary clamor for transnational Chinese womenas historical fiction. East Main Street hits the shelves in the midst of a boom in Asian American population and cultural production. This book is essential not only for understanding Asian American popular culture but also contemporary U.S. popular culture writ large.

The man who brought a mountain of soul to Houston, Texas. The man who brought and promoted many Houston rhythm and blues performers. The man who brought and promoted many comedy shows including Amos &Andy. The man who watched the church he is a member of grow from 25 members to over 14,000 members.

Forming minorities in five adjacent countries for 74 years, Kurds have been fighting for independence or autonomy against governments reluctant to accede either. The Kurdish saga is one of periodic insurrections, partial victories, misfortunes, defeats, betrayal, national repression, clashing personalities, changing allegiances and a mixture of heroism and expediency. This book examines both political and military aspects of the struggle, and of the motives and machinations of key figures involved.

This work rejects the view that the growth of Irish nationalism, Afrikaner nationalism and Zionism was due primarily to issues of race, religion or language. Instead, drawing on an analytical framework and close historical analysis, it shows how their ultimate success was the result of political, economic and organizational factors conditioned by sustained conflict with the existing state and other ethnic groups.

Published annually, this 31st edition brings together a unique combination of the latest data on, and detailed analysis of, a vast region. Scrupulously updated by Europa's experienced editors, the volume also includes contributions from regional specialists. General Survey Essays written by acknowledged experts on the area provide an impartial overview of the region. Country surveys Individual chapters on each country, comprising: - essays on the geography, recent history and economy of each country - a statistical survey - a full directory section - a select bibliography. Regional Information A directory of research institutes and bibliographies of books and journals covering Latin America and the Caribbean.

DIRECT AND IMMEDIATE Ideas, like blades of prairie grass, sprout in abundance everywhere. Equal at their inception, all of them have the potential to develop beneficially. From mere scribbled notes, to books blossoming from imprisoned authors, to worldly Montaignes, ideas can encourage us, even to flourish in inhospitable places. Ideas to fit our particular lives. Elementary thought, the ordinary, the eccentric, all are conditional at first. Cultivated by outsiders, the new art, music, popular culture and knowledge thrive everywhere, but hardly ever are considered mainstream. How influential, and as pertinent, who promotes them, determines their utility and value. People have to be comfortable with them, or perceive how far-reaching these ideas are. I am a thinker, an eccentric one by all accounts. These ideas seem most natural to me, and I find myself grafting them into one book after another. Holding any book, and such a book as this is a suspenseful action. Does it click with us? Are we attracted by its appearance? Are we influenced by the endorsements of friends or pundits? Striding through this prairie of universal ideas, adventurous browsers and informed readers will pick out which ideas are substantial to them.

William A. James, Sr., has created a cogent book of essays that deals with a perplexing problem found among African-Americans. James calls it "The Skin Color Syndrome.

His book is divided into four sections, consisting of seven chapters. Within those chapters he depicts five principles that define blacks' "intra racial hatred," a hatred based upon "Pigmentation Discrimination," as the first principle of the Skin Color Syndrome. James then discusses "Passing," and "Where Blacks Are And Where They Need To Go." He talks about "Where Blacks are headed," and then he gives " A Conclusion Of The Matter," and "The Problems We (African-Americans) Must Fix."

Lastly, James offers "Kwanzaa 365 Days Per Year," as a restorative solution to the ravages of Jim Crow Law in America.

Speaking the Earth's Languages brings together for the first time critical dis-cussions of postcolonial poetics from Australia and Chile. The book crosses multiple languages, landscapes, and dis-ciplines, and draws on a wide range of both oral and written poetries, in order to make strong claims about the importance of 'a nomad poetics' - not only for under-standing Aboriginal or Mapuche writing practices but, more widely, for the prob-lems confronting contemporary literature and politics in colonized landscapes. The book begins by critiquing canon-ical examples of non-indigenous post-colonial poetics. Incisive re-readings of two icons of Australian and Chilean poetry, Judith Wright (1915-2000) and Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), provide rich insights into non-indigenous responses to colonization in the wake of modernity. The second half of the book establishes compositional links between Aboriginal and Mapuche poetics, and between such oral and written poetics more generally. The book's final part develops an 'emerging synthesis' of contemporary Aboriginal and Mapuche poetics, with reference to the work of two of the most important avant-garde Aboriginal and Mapuche poets of recent times, Lionel Fogarty (1958-) and Paulo Huirimilla (1973-). Speaking the Earth's Languages uses these fascinating links between Abori-ginal and Mapuche poetics as the basis of a deliberately nomadic, open-ended theory for an Australian-Chilean post-colonial poetics. "The central argument of this book," the author writes, "is that a nomadic poetics is essential for a gen-uinely postcolonial form of habitation, or a habitation of colonized landscapes that doesn't continue to replicate colonialist ideologies involving indigenous dispos-session and environmental exploitation."

Writing French Algeria offers a new perspective on the history of French writing in colonial Algeria. It discusses both the Orientalizing texts which followed the conquest of 1830 (by Fromentin, Gautier, Masqueray, and Loti), and the colonialist novelists who sought to depict and influence the birth of a new European race (Bertrand, Randau, and the Algerianists). Finally, it provides fresh readings of key works by the École Alger's foremost writers: Camus, Audisio, and Roblès.

Originally published between 1931 and 1994 these books cover the turbulent racial history and politics of South Africa as well as economic and social aspects. Their authors include one of the premier historians of British imperial policy and African history, as well as many who were active in the political fight to end the apartheid system, some of whom were imprisoned or exiled for their beliefs. The volumes discuss: The complexities of the relationships between peoples of different racial origins The widely differing economic and cultural standards within one country - inequalities which continue to exist today They: Trace the history and growth of Apartheid in South Africa Provide novel data for sociological, political and strategic reassessment of South Africa. Explore the development of the gold and diamond mining industries and their effect on the South African economy and its labour force Examine the ways in which American and South African culture have been fascinated with and influenced by one another Provide students with easily accessible historical primary sources.

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Awarded Honorable Mention for the 2005 MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies.

a"Loca Motion" is a work of intelligent exuberance. Michelle Habell-PallAn has the eyes, ears, and heart to read popular performance, culture, and music as the new archives of Chicana and Latina transnational and translocal histories.a
--Lisa Lowe, UC San Diego

aForget about Ricky Martin and Shakira, here come El Vez and Marga Gomez. Habell-PallAn has produced a highly original study of Chicano/Latino popular culture and of its local, national and international dimensions by taking us into the world of alternative and experimental Chicano/Latino art.a
--Arlene Davila, author of "Barrio Dreams"

"Offers insight into the dynamics of race, class, gender and sexuality."--"Hispanic LInk Weekly Report"

In the summer of 1995, El Vez, the aMexican Elvis, a along with his backup singers and band, The Lovely Elvettes and the Memphis Mariachis, served as master of ceremony for a ground-breaking show, aDiva L.A.: A Salute to L.A.as Latinas in the Tanda Style.a The performances were remarkable not only for the talent displayed, but for their blend of linguistic, musical, and cultural traditions.

In Loca Motion, Michelle Habell-PallAn argues that performances like Diva L.A. play a vital role in shaping and understanding contemporary transnational social dynamics. Chicano/a and Latino/a popular culture, including spoken word, performance art, comedy, theater, and punk music aesthetics, is central to developing cultural forms and identities that reach across and beyond the Americas, from Mexico City to Vancouver to Berlin. Drawing on the lives and work of a diverse group of artists, Habell-PallAn explores new perspectives that defy both traditional forms of Latino cultural nationalism and the expectations of U.S. culture. The result is a sophisticated rethinking of identity politics and an invaluable lens from which to view the complex dynamics of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

In the field of ethnic relations the complex, often tortuous, interactions among academic researchers, research funders and those who use the research often result in social policy interventions that are poorly conceived and flawed in their implementation. In this unique book, the contributors seek to develop a dialogue about the multiple constraints that skew research and its findings, and to kick-start a wider debate about the political context of current research and policy. In doing so, they aim to produce a renewed awareness of the current links between research and social policy in ethnic relations and to provide a critically reflexive basis for shaping interventions. It will be of interest to academics working in higher and further education as well as to students at higher undergraduate and postgraduate level, and to a wide range of people working in ethnic relations policy fora.