Pirate Novels: Fictions of Nation Building in Spanish America
Nina Gerassi-Navarro
In
Pirate Novels Nina Gerassi-Navarro examines an overlooked genre
to reveal how history and fiction blend to
address important isuses of nation building in nineteenth-century
Spanish America. In the figure of the pirate,
bold and heroic to some, cruel and criminal to others, she
reveals an almost ideal character that came to embody
the spirit of emerging nationhood and the violence associated
with the struggle to attain it.
Beginning with an overview of the history of piracy,
Gerassi-Navarro traces the historical icon of the pirate
through colonial-era chronicles before exploring a group of
nineteenth-century Mexican, Colombian, and
Argentine novels. She argues that the authors of these novels, in
their reconstructions of the past, were less
interested in accurate representations than in using their
narratives to discuss the future of their own countries. In
reading these pirate narratives as metaphors for the process of
nation building in Spanish America,
Gerassi-Navarro exposes the conflicting strains of a complex
culture attempting to shape that future. She shows
how these pirate stories reflect the on-going debates that marked
the consolidation of nationhood, as well as the
extent to which the narratives of national identity in Spanish
America are structured in relation to European
cultures, and the ways in which questions of race and gender were
addressed.
Providing new readings of the cultural and political paradigms
that marked the literary production of
nineteenth-century Spanish America, Pirate Novels uniquely
expands the range of texts usually examined in the
study of nation-building. It will interest literary scholars
generally as well as those engaged in Latin American,
colonial, and postcolonial studies.
Nina
Gerassi-Navarro is Associate Professor of Spanish at Mount
Holyoke College.
Published: 1999
Pages: 264
Illustrations: 5 illustrations
Cloth
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ISBN: 0-8223-2360-5
Price: $49.95
Paper
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ISBN: 0-8223-2393-1
Price: $17.95
Subjects: Latin American Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Literary Studies/Latin American Literature
African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness
Milton C. Sernett, ed.
This widely-heralded collection of remarkable documents offers a
view of African American religious history
from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise
of black nationalism, civil rights, and black
theology of today. The documents—many of them rare,
out-of-print, or difficult to find—include personal
narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early
denominational histories, journalistic accounts, and
theological statements. In this volume Olaudah Equiano describes
Ibo religion. Lemuel Haynes gives a black
Puritan’s farewell. Nat Turner confesses. Jarena Lee becomes
a female preacher among the African Methodists.
Frederick Douglass discusses Christianity and slavery. Isaac Lane
preaches among the freedmen. Nannie Helen
Burroughs reports on the work of Baptist women. African Methodist
bishops deliberate on the Great Migration.
Bishop C. H. Mason tells of the Pentecostal experience. Mahalia
Jackson recalls the glory of singing at the
1963 March on Washington. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes from the
Birmingham jail.
Originally published in 1985, this expanded second edition
includes new sources on women, African missions,
and the Great Migration. Milton C. Sernett provides a general
introduction as well as historical context and
comment for each document.
Milton C. Sernett is Professor of African-American studies at
Syracuse University. He is the author of several
books, including Bound for the Promised Land, also published by
Duke University Press.
African American Religious History: A Documentary
Witness
Sernett, Milton C., ed.
Published: 1999
Pages: 576
Cloth
ISBN: 0-8223-2426-1
Price: $64.95
Paper
ISBN: 0-8223-2449-0
Price: $23.95
Subjects: African American Studies, Religious Studies, History,
U.S.
Update DSeptember 29, 2000