The Future Is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Studies, edited by Vanessa Valdés, is now available for purchase from Cambridge Scholars Press
and Amazon, and my essay, “The Challenge of Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters: (Re)Claiming Wholeness” is among the assembled. The full table of contents follows below, but first, here’s what folks are saying about this collection:
“The merit of The Future is Now: A New Look at African Diaspora Diaspora Studies is that it takes scholars out of the traditional academic straightjacket, by focusing on more than one discipline, more than one geographic location, and more than one linguistic group. The volume takes a welcome holistic approach to the African diasporic experience.”
– Flore Zéphir, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Missouri
Acting Director, Afro-Romance Institute for Languages and Literatures
of the African Diaspora
“[The Future is Now] will make a valuable contribution to the dialogue on the current thinking and on the future direction of African Diaspora Studies. Regarding the essays themselves, they are thought-provoking, well-researched, and quite appropriate for demonstrating how one pays ‘homage to one’s ancestors’…”
– James J. Davis, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of World Languages and Cultures
Howard University
“Dealing with the African Diaspora in the Americas, the essays here are significant in that they expand this important subject beyond its all too common focus on the culture of the United States alone and discuss it in the context of Latin America as well. In an age of unprecedented electronic communication between the peoples of the Americas, the implementation of this kind of hemispheric perspective is both refreshing and productive.”
– Earl E. Fitz, Ph.D.
Professor of Spanish, Portuguese, and Comparative Literature
Vanderbilt University
Table of Contents
Introduction……….. 1
Vanessa K. Valdés
Invocation ……….. 5
Because When God is too Busy: Haiti, Me and the World (excerpts from a performance) by Gina Athena Ulysse
Chapter One……….. 13
“Mistè a Gatem”: Deploying Ezili and Queering the Haitian Religious Experience in Anne Lescot’s and Laurence Magloire’s Film Des hommes et des dieux by Sophie Saint-Just
Chapter Two……….. 27
Meticulous Production and the Embodiment of History: María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese Series by Heather Shirey
Chapter Three……….. 43
El arte como resistencia: Lo afropuertorriqueño by María Elba Torres-Muñoz
Chapter Four……….. 67
Afirmación étnica y estética en la ensayística y poética de Jorge Artel by Luisa García-Conde
Chapter Five……….. 87
The Holy Temple of Soca: Rev. Rudder in Attendance by Alison McLetchie
Chapter Six……….. 107
Afro-Brazilian Literature, from the Periphery to the Center by Vanessa K. Valdés
Chapter Seven……….. 131
Decolonizing the Banjo: Cultural Memory and a (Re)representation of Slave Performance 1700s – 1863 by Katya Isayev
Chapter Eight……….. 161
The Challenge of Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters: (Re)Claiming Wholeness by Ashley David
Chapter Nine……………………………………………………………183
Performing the Archive: Photography and the Africana World by Brendan Wattenberg
Conclusion……….. 215
Where Do We Go from Here? The Future of African Diaspora Studies by Vanessa K. Valdés
Contributors…………………………………………………………….221
Ashley David 