African Americans and the Haitian Revolution. Selected Essays and Historical Documents. Edited by Maurice Jackson, Jacqueline Bacon, Routledge, October 2009, 272 pages, Paperback (also available in Hardback), ISBN: 978-0-415-80376-2, $39.95.
About the Book
Bringing together scholarly essays and helpfully annotated primary documents, African Americans and the Haitian Revolution collects not only the best recent scholarship on the subject, but also showcases the primary texts written by African Americans about the Haitian Revolution. Rather than being about the revolution itself, this collection attempts to show how the events in Haiti served to galvanize African Americans to think about themselves and to act in accordance with their beliefs, and contributes to the study of African Americans in the wider Atlantic World.
Reviews
“This is a timely and enterprising collection that answers a growing need to set African American history in a broader international context. It combines essays that are diverse in approach with a wide-ranging selection of documents.”
David Patrick Geggus, co-editor of The World of the Haitian Revolution
“The chapters and documents presented in this edited volume deliver the goods in rich abundance as promised in its title, through deeply probing exploration of important connections between people of African descent in the United States of America and the history and legacy of the Haitian Revolution. The central significance of that upheaval, when slaves freed themselves in the Caribbean, cannot be overstated for its wide range of impact on the consciousness of enslaved and oppressed blacks in America. African Americans and the Haitian Revolution offers fresh insight and opens up many windows into the role of the historically fascinating and extremely complex world of the Haitian Revolution in shaping the African diaspora.”
David Barry Gaspar, author of A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean
“Amidst a spate of exciting new work on U.S. perceptions of the Haitian Revolution, this work stands out — not simply for the novelty and quality of the scholarship it contains, but also for its efficacy for the classroom. Here, first-rate historical analysis combines with excellent historical editing to offer students the single best volume that can be found on its topic. Highly recommended.”
Patrick Rael, author of African-American Activism before the Civil War: A Reader on the Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North
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This online conversation just started yesterday; check it out. Those of us interested in books by black photographers should be a part of all of these dialogues.
Written by Michael Itkoff
Daylight Magazine’s editors were asked to participate in an ongoing conversation focusing on the future of photo-books. This conversation was orchestrated by Flak Photo and the Resolve blog. For more posts check out: http://bit.ly/7yBOmW read more »
An update today at Publishers Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6711692
(I find the specific criticism of this image really surprising and unfounded. Poor Lauren Kelly—is the image itself—nevermind the headline—really that disturbing? I thought it was witty and stunning, and it’s always great to see the work of black photographers on the cover of anything, frankly. Are Afros and black power fists really so objectionable that as black artists we should shy away from them so as not to offend “others?” Really? When I first saw this image in the Posing Beauty exhibition I thought of fantastical crowns, of Graciela Iturbide’s photograph “Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas, Juchitán, Oaxaca,” of humor and excess and a glorious, unique beauty that is at once culturally specific and arresting in its splendor. Perhaps the upside is that some folks will seek out Posing Beauty to see the image in a different context, although I find it hard to believe how the simple changing of contexts would alter its meaning entirely. It clearly wouldn’t have made the cover of Publishers Weekly were it not for its recent publication in Posing Beauty.)
By Jason Boog on Dec 14, 2009 06:23 PM
This evening, the Twittersphere pounced Publishers Weekly for running an image by on the front cover of the most recent magazine–an picture of a woman’s head covered with countless hair picks.
Entitled “Pickin’,” the image was photographed by Lauren Kelly for the new book, “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present” by Deborah Willis.
Hoping to ease the controversy, Calvin Reid, the senior news editor atPublishers Weekly, responded via the magazine’s Twitter feed. He picked the hashtag #afropw to archive the ongoing discussion about the picture.
“I admit that I love afro picks! In the 1970s I had many just like them also stuck in my massive afro … and it’s a story about ‘picking’ books. I love dumb jokes,” Reid wrote on Twitter. He concluded: “While I respect everyone who may be offended, I think the photo is a delightful and wry expression of historical Afro Americana.”
UPDATE: Reid writes GalleyCat, via Twitter: “Obviously many people dislike the image. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used it but I believe its a fine & beautiful & funny image.”
From today’s New York Times (congrats, Deb!):
Whether the lashed back of an enslaved person, the charred remains of a lynching victim or a terrified marcher fleeing a fire hose, shocking images of degradation seem to dominate the visual history of the African-American experience. Amid so much hardship, one might wonder what, if anything, to say about the nature of black beauty in photography. Deborah Willis, head of New York University’s photography and imaging department, spent a decade exploring the question. In POSING BEAUTY: African American Images From the 1890s to the Present (Norton, $49.95), Willis makes a monumental contribution to contemporary American culture by presenting a definitive history of black beauty….The book is a treasure, a triumph and a singular achievement that invites fresh and enduring insights with each viewing.
Read the rest here.
And for Willis’ recent book of Michelle Obama photographs: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/style/78333107.html?elr=KArks7PYDiaK7DUHPYDiaK7DUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUr
We’re a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens.
http://www.futureofthebook.org/
