Rychetta Watkins
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031618
- eISBN:
- 9781621031451
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031618.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Images of upraised fists, afros, and dashikis have long dominated the collective memory of Black Power and its proponents. The “guerilla” figure—taking the form of the black-leather-clad ...
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Images of upraised fists, afros, and dashikis have long dominated the collective memory of Black Power and its proponents. The “guerilla” figure—taking the form of the black-leather-clad revolutionary within the Black Panther Party—has become an iconic trope in American popular culture. That politically radical figure, however, has been shaped as much by Asian American cultural discourse as by African American political ideology. From the Asian-African Conference held in April of 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, onward to the present, Afro-Asian political collaboration has been active and influential. This book uses the guerilla figure as a point of departure, and shows how the trope’s rhetoric animates discourses of representation and identity in African American and Asian American literature and culture. In doing so, it examines the notion of “Power” in terms of ethnic political identity, and explores collaborating—and sometimes competing—ethnic interests that have drawn ideas from the concept. The project brings together a range of texts—editorial cartoons, newspaper articles, novels, visual propaganda, and essays—that illustrate the emergence of this subjectivity in Asian American and African American cultural productions during the Power period, roughly 1966 through 1981. After a case study of the cultural politics of academic anthologies and the cooperation between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed, the book culminates with analyses of this trope in Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Alice Walker’s Meridian, and John Okada’s No No Boy.Less
Images of upraised fists, afros, and dashikis have long dominated the collective memory of Black Power and its proponents. The “guerilla” figure—taking the form of the black-leather-clad revolutionary within the Black Panther Party—has become an iconic trope in American popular culture. That politically radical figure, however, has been shaped as much by Asian American cultural discourse as by African American political ideology. From the Asian-African Conference held in April of 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, onward to the present, Afro-Asian political collaboration has been active and influential. This book uses the guerilla figure as a point of departure, and shows how the trope’s rhetoric animates discourses of representation and identity in African American and Asian American literature and culture. In doing so, it examines the notion of “Power” in terms of ethnic political identity, and explores collaborating—and sometimes competing—ethnic interests that have drawn ideas from the concept. The project brings together a range of texts—editorial cartoons, newspaper articles, novels, visual propaganda, and essays—that illustrate the emergence of this subjectivity in Asian American and African American cultural productions during the Power period, roughly 1966 through 1981. After a case study of the cultural politics of academic anthologies and the cooperation between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed, the book culminates with analyses of this trope in Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Alice Walker’s Meridian, and John Okada’s No No Boy.
Maxine Leeds Craig
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195152623
- eISBN:
- 9780199849345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152623.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter traces the development of the natural or Afro hairstyle from its origins, among activists in social movement organizations and on college campuses, to its transformation into a popular ...
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This chapter traces the development of the natural or Afro hairstyle from its origins, among activists in social movement organizations and on college campuses, to its transformation into a popular commodity. The chapter is based on interviews with women who, as early participants in the Civil Rights Movement, were among the first to stop straightening their hair to wear what eventually became known as naturals or Afros. It documents the ways in which meanings and practices that emerged in social movement communities spread beyond the movement community to nonactivists. The chapter follows these meanings and practices beyond the borders of the movement to analyze what happens to the products of social movements when they are no longer embedded in and sustained by a social movement culture.Less
This chapter traces the development of the natural or Afro hairstyle from its origins, among activists in social movement organizations and on college campuses, to its transformation into a popular commodity. The chapter is based on interviews with women who, as early participants in the Civil Rights Movement, were among the first to stop straightening their hair to wear what eventually became known as naturals or Afros. It documents the ways in which meanings and practices that emerged in social movement communities spread beyond the movement community to nonactivists. The chapter follows these meanings and practices beyond the borders of the movement to analyze what happens to the products of social movements when they are no longer embedded in and sustained by a social movement culture.
Kwame Dixon
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813062617
- eISBN:
- 9780813055985
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813062617.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter focuses on Afro–social movements and the rise of civil society in Brazil from the middle of the 1970s until the present. It analyzes the burgeoning rise of blocos afros (carnival blocks ...
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This chapter focuses on Afro–social movements and the rise of civil society in Brazil from the middle of the 1970s until the present. It analyzes the burgeoning rise of blocos afros (carnival blocks or clubs) as horizontal Black social movements as they burst onto the scene in Brazil and Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these movements were deemed “cultural” as they emphasized Afro-Diasporic music, religion, identity, and Black consciousness. At the same time similar, more politicized Black movements arose in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador with explicit discourse framed around questions of racial equality, social discrimination, and citizenship. These various formations—that is, blocos afros, Black social movements, and rising Black electoral political movements—have their early foundations in the emergence of Brazilian civil society during the transition to democracy in the mid to late 1980s. Afro–civil society groups were central not only in expanding concepts of citizenship but also in developing new means of participation that were more horizontal than vertical in nature.Less
This chapter focuses on Afro–social movements and the rise of civil society in Brazil from the middle of the 1970s until the present. It analyzes the burgeoning rise of blocos afros (carnival blocks or clubs) as horizontal Black social movements as they burst onto the scene in Brazil and Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these movements were deemed “cultural” as they emphasized Afro-Diasporic music, religion, identity, and Black consciousness. At the same time similar, more politicized Black movements arose in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador with explicit discourse framed around questions of racial equality, social discrimination, and citizenship. These various formations—that is, blocos afros, Black social movements, and rising Black electoral political movements—have their early foundations in the emergence of Brazilian civil society during the transition to democracy in the mid to late 1980s. Afro–civil society groups were central not only in expanding concepts of citizenship but also in developing new means of participation that were more horizontal than vertical in nature.
