Mobile and Entangled America(s)

A superb combination of focused case studies and high level conceptual thinking, this volume is an important monument in the ongoing development of Inter-American studies The articles gathered here closely examine a wide variety of cultural phenomena implicated in the 'entanglements' which have defined the history of the Americas. From religious networks to music and dance, and across a range of literary and artistic works, the mobility of people, objects, and ideas in the Americas is expertly mapped. At the same time, the book represents a serious enterprise of theory-building. Drawing on the histories of postcolonial thought, mobility studies, and work on human migration, Mobile and Entangled America(s) clearly establishes a new interdisciplinary field attentive both to the complexities of cultural form and the pervasiveness of power relations. Each article stands as a significant piece of scholarship on its own, but all are in dialogue with each other. The result is a richly satisfying and important volume of cultural scholarship.

Lists of Figures and Tables vii Notes on Contributors ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Just a Small Step: From Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place to Mobile and Entangled America(s) 1 Maryemma Graham and Wilfried Raussert PART I LITERARY AND CULTURAL MOBILITIES 1 On Routes and Roots: Movement and Rootedness in Garifuna Culture 13 Paula Prescod 2 CircumCaribbean Sisterhood: Patterns of Migration in Cristina Garcia’s The Agüero Sisters 25 John Lowe 3 Tracing Afro Diasporic Histories: Translocational Storytelling and Entangled Afro Americas in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying 51 Wilfried Raussert 4 “My history is a creature nobody really believes in. My history is a foreign word.” Second-Generation Immigrant Identity in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant 73 Miriam Brandel 5 From Granny’s Knee to Graduate Seminar: The Travels of the Soucouyant 91 Giselle Liza Anatol 6 Translocating the Caribbean, Positioning Im/Mobilities: The Sonic Politics of Las Krudas from Cuba 103 Julia Roth vi Mobile and Entangled America(s) PART II BIOCULTURAL AND NEW MEDIA MOBILITIES 7 Intimate Ties: Biotic Mobility and Inter-American Studies 131 Rüdiger Kunow 8 Tattoo Travels: On Mobilities and Mobilizations of American Skin Art 155 Martin Butler 9 United Colors of Belonging? Participatory Culture and Diversity 2.0 in the Crowd-sourced Documentary Life in a Day 167 Sebastian Thies 10 Transnational Forces, Technological Developments, and the Role of the State in the Mexican Audiovisual Sector 189 José Carlos Lozano 11 Mission Inverted: Inter-American Religious Flows and How to Capture Them 203 Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer PART III TRAVELING POLITICS, TRAVELING IDEOLOGIES, AND TRANSMIGRATIONS 12 The Polysemic Use of Identity and Culture in International Migration: The Case of Central American Migration in Mexico 245 Rodolfo Casillas 13 The Mobility of Hope and Violence in Sin Nombre 265 Josef Raab 14 Mexican Indigenismo in a Hemispheric Context?Elements for a Historiography of Inter-American Entanglements in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 283 Olaf Kaltmeier 15 Boas Goes to Americas: The Emergence of Trans-American Perspectives on “Culture” 301 Afef Benessaieh 16 Moby-Dick and Globalization 321 John Carlos Rowe Index 337

Maryemma Graham is Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Wilfried Raussert is Chair and Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany.