Cuba's Racial Crucible: The Sexual Economy of Social Identities, 1750-2000

Since the 19th century, assertions of a common, racially-mixed Cuban identity based on acceptance of African descent have challenged the view of Cubans as racially white. For the past two centuries, these competing views of Cuban racial identity have remained in continuous tension, while Cuban women and men make their own racially oriented choices in family formation. Cuba's Racial Crucible explores the historical dynamics of Cuban race relations by highlighting the racially selective reproductive practices and genealogical memories associated with family formation. Karen Y. Morrison reads archival, oral-history, and literary sources to demonstrate the ideological centrality and inseparability of race, nation, and family, in definitions of Cuban identity. Morrison analyzes the conditions that supported the social advance and decline of notions of white racial superiority, nationalist projections of racial hybridity, and pride in African descent.

Author: Karen Y. Morrison
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 05/26/2015
Pages: 372
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780253016546

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2016

About the Author

Karen Y. Morrison is Assistant Professor in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a social historian of the African diaspora.