Awesome Biculturalism Album and Music Offers

When Coco Fusco and collaborator Guillermo Gomez-Pena toured the country in a cage as "authentic natives," their provocative performance piece enraged some and enthralled others. Known for using performance to explore the boundaries of ethnicity in art, Coco Fusco has now brought her talents to bear in a volume of cultural criticism and theory, English is Broken Here. Infused with a unique cultural sensibility, English is Broken Here examines cross-cultural art issues in America at a crucial moment. Coco Fusco adds an original and eloquent voice to a growing debate over cultural identity and visual politics. .
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Waking Up American includes original work by women who are either American-born of at least one foreign-born parent or who immigrated to the United States during childhood The writers explore what it means to feel caught between two worlds—neither wholly American nor wholly a part of another heritage.

Cultures represented include the Philippines, Germany, India, Mexico, China, Iran, Nicaragua, Japan, Russia, and Panama, among others, and are often juxtaposed with a bicultural reality, having been raised by parents who simultaneously embrace and question American values. Essays trace themes of rebellion and conformity, pride and uncertainty, sexuality and sense of self, and a heightened awareness of what it means to be "other."

These narratives examine the part cultural identity plays in creating strong, independent, hyphenated American women whose experiences are part of what makes the United States the intriguing cultural amalgamation that so many diverse peoples are proud to call home..
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Unfolding a rich tapestry of intersecting cultures and passions, Shiva Dancing takes us from the desert plains of northern India to the bustle and charm of San Francisco to modern day Calcutta as a spirited woman seeks to reconnect with her past. Meena Kumari was seven years old when she was abducted from her village in Rajasthan. Though she managed to escape a life of slavery, she was never able to find her way home and was adopted by a wealthy American couple. Now thirty-five, Meena has a successful career in San Francisco, but lacks a personal life and keenly feels her separation from her heritage. Lonely and homesick, she decides to try to find her old village in Rajasthan and the man designated to be her husband in a childhood arranged marriage. But her mission is complicated by her growing involvement with Antoine Dobson, a sexy American novelist, who seems to find in Meena the same completeness she seeks for herself. As Meena embarks for India, she begins a journey that will change her profoundly but leave her with a new faith in herself that comes from personal discovery.
•Shiva Dancing appeals to a growing audience for Indian women's fiction. Bharti Kirchner joins such notable authors as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Gita Mehta, and Bharati Mukherjee.
•Shiva Dancing is commercial women's fiction with a multicultural twist. .
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Creeks and Southerners examines the families created by the hundreds of intermarriages between Creek Indian women and European American men in the southeastern United States during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Called "Indian countrymen" at the time, these intermarried white men moved into their wives' villages in what is now Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. By doing so, they obtained new homes, familial obligations, occupations, and identities. At the same time, however, they maintained many of their ties to white American society and as a result entered the historical record in large numbers. Creeks and Southerners studies the ways in which many children of these relationships lived simultaneously as Creek Indians and white Southerners. By carefully altering their physical appearances, choosing appropriate clothing, learning multiple languages, embracing maternal and paternal kinsmen and kinswomen, and balancing their loyalties, the children of intermarriages found ways to bridge what seemed to be an unbridgeable divide. Many became prominent Creek political leaders and warriors, played central roles in the lucrative deerskin trade, built inns and taverns to cater to the needs of European American travelers, frequently moved between colonial American and Native communities, and served both European American and Creek officials as interpreters, assistants, and travel escorts. The fortunes of these bicultural children reflect the changing nature of Creek-white relations, which became less flexible and increasingly contentious throughout the nineteenth century as both Creeks and Americans accepted a more rigid biological concept of race, forcing their bicultural children to choose between identities.

Andrew K. Frank is an assistant professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American South..
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The yearning to remember who we are is not easily detected in the qualitative dimensions of focus groups and ethnographic research methods; nor is it easily measured in standard quantified scientific inquiry. It is deeply rooted, obscured by layer upon layer of human efforts to survive the impact of historical amnesia induced by the dominant policies and practices of advanced capitalism and postmodern culture. Darder's introduction sets the tone by describing the formation of "Warriors for Gringostroika" and "The New Mestizas." In the words of Anzaldua, "those who cross over, pass over . . . the confines of the `normal.'" Critical essays follow by Mexicanas, poets, activists, and educators of all colors and persuasions. The collection coming out of the good work of the Southern California University system relates to all locales and spectrums of the human condition and will no doubt inspire excellent creativity of knowing and remembering among all who chance to read any part thereof..
Price: $26.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]