Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora

by Darlene Clark Hine (Editor), Jacqueline McLeod (Editor)

Now in paperback!

Crossing Boundaries
Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora

Edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod

Suggests new paradigms for the study of Blacks in diaspora.

"The 18 papers in this volume are original, clearly written, and of consistently high quality. Organized in four parts―'Comparative Diaspora Historiography,' 'Identity and Culture,' 'Domination and Resistance,' and 'Geo-Social History and the Atlantic World'―these essays complement each other in a way that makes the whole even more valuable than the sum of the parts."
―Choice

The essays assembled in Crossing Boundaries reflect the international dimensions, commonalities, and discontinuities in the histories of diasporan communities of color. People of African descent in the New World (the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean) share a common set of domination and resistance, slavery and emancipation, the pursuit of freedom, and struggle against racism. No single explanation can capture the varied experiences of Black people in diaspora.

Crossing Boundaries probes differences embedded in Black ethnicities and helps to discover and to weave into a new understanding the threads of experience, culture, and identity across diasporas. Contributors include Allison Blakely, Kim Butler, Frederick Cooper, George Fredrickson, David Barry Gaspar, Jack P. Green, Thomas Holt, Earl Lewis, Elliott Skinner, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn.

Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan State University, is author of Hine Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (Indiana University Press); co-author of A Shining Thread of The History of Black Women in America and The African American Odyssey; and co-editor of More Than Black Women and Slavery in the Americas and A Question of A Reader in Black Men's History and Masculinity (both Indiana University Press).

Jacqueline McLeod is Assistant Professor of History at Western Illinois University. She holds a J.D. degree from the University of Toledo College of Law.

Blacks in the Diaspora―Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey, Jr.,
David Barry Gaspar, general editors

March 2001 (cloth 1999)
520 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 1 fig., notes, index
cloth0-253-33542-6$29.95 L / £22.95
paper0-253-21450-5$17.95 s / £13.95

Genres: History, Nonfiction

520 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Noah]

So, I'm reading this textbook from my class on Sociology of the African Diaspora in the Americas (a mouthful I know), and I was fascinated to learn last night about the development of Afro-Cuban groups and how they were able to influence the political climate in Cuba in the nineteenth century.

First of all, I had knowledge that there were far more Africans forcefully migrated to the Caribbean, Central and South America than to the US. But I really didn't know a whole lot about these people, their history, culture, music, etc. I had slight exposure to them by learning about the Garifuna's on Honduras' Northern coast, and learning about the Haitian revolt in Latin American History class, but there is a large gap in my knowledge in this area.

It is pretty amazing that they were able to affect political change at that point in world history. These people were also able to maintain a lot of their traditions, religion and recreation from Africa, something that slaves in the US were intentionally prevented from doing. The tragic thing was that the leaders of these groups learned that in order to affect change, they needed to abandon those traditions and assimilate to integrate themselves into the Spanish language, religion and culture.

These paradoxes rest heavily on my heart and mind.