Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the African Diaspora : Travelling Blackness

Winner Of The National Communication Association's 2018 Diamond Anniversary Book Award With The Exception Of Slave Narratives, There Are Few Stories Of Black International Migration In U.s. News And Popular Culture. This Book Is Interested In Stratified Immigrant Experiences, Diverse Black Experiences, And The Intersection Of Black And Immigrant Identities. Citizenship As It Is Commonly Understood Today In The Public Sphere Is A Legal Issue, Yet Scholars Have Done Much To Move Beyond This Popular View And Situate Citizenship In The Context Of Economic, Social, And Political Positioning. The Book Shows That Citizenship In All Of Its Forms Is Often Rhetorically, Representationally, And Legally Negated By Blackness And Considers The Ways That Blackness, And Representations Of Blackness, Impact One's Ability To Travel Across National And Social Borders And Become A Citizen. This Book Is A Story Of Citizenship And The Ways That Race, Gender, And Class Shape National Belonging, With Haiti, Cuba, And The United States As The Primary Sites Of Examination. Camilla Fojas explores a broad range of popular culture media—film, television, journalism, advertisements, travel writing, and literature—with an eye toward how the United States as an empire imagined its own military and economic projects. Impressive in its scope, Islands of Empire looks to Cuba, Guam, Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, asking how popular narratives about these island outposts expressed the attitudes of the continent throughout the twentieth century. Through deep textual readings of Bataan , Victory at Sea , They Were Expendable , and Back to Bataan (Philippines); No Man Is an Island and Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon (Guam); Cuba , Havana , and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (Cuba); Blue Hawaii , Gidget Goes Hawaiian , and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (Hawai'i); and West Side Story , Fame , and El Cantante (Puerto Rico), Fojas demonstrates how popular texts are inseparable from U.S. imperialist ideology. Drawing on an impressive array of archival evidence to provide historical context, Islands of Empire reveals the role of popular culture in creating and maintaining U.S. imperialism. Fojas's textual readings deftly move from location to location, exploring each island's relationship to the United States and its complementary role in popular culture. Tracing each outpost's varied and even contradictory political status, Fojas demonstrates that these works of popular culture mirror each location's shifting alignment to the U.S. empire, from coveted object to possession to enemy state. Camilla Fojas explores a broad range of popular culture media--film, television, journalism, advertisements, travel writing, and literature--with an eye toward how the United States as an empire imagined its own military and economic projects. Impressive in its scope, Islands of Empire looks to Cuba, Guam, Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, asking how popular narratives about these island outposts expressed the attitudes of the continent throughout the twentieth century. Through deep textual readings of Bataan, Victory at Sea, They Were Expendable, and Back to Bataan (Philippines); No Man Is an Island and Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon (Guam); Cuba, Havana, and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (Cuba); Blue Hawaii, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (Hawai'i); and West Side Story, Fame, and El Cantante (Puerto Rico), Fojas demonstrates how popular texts are inseparable from U.S. imperialist ideology. Drawing on an impressive array of archival evidence to provide historical context, Islands of Empire reveals the role of popular culture in creating and maintaining U.S. imperialism. Fojas's textual readings deftly move from location to location, exploring each island's relationship to the United States and its complementary role in popular culture. Tracing each outpost's varied and even contradictory political status, Fojas demonstrates that these works of popular culture mirror each location's shifting alignment to the U.S. empire, from coveted object to possession to enemy state.--Amazon.com Introduction Framing Cubans and Haitians in The New York Times: Enduring Imprints of Political History Communists and Immigrants: Images of Cubans and Haitians Negotiating Media Representations and Cultural Icons: Audience and Group-Identity A Love Story: Media and an (New) Exceptional Haitian-American Political Subject Conclusion