ISBN:
9781496831156
,
9781496831163
Language:
English
Pages:
xv, 208 Seiten
,
Illustrationen, Diagramme
DDC:
305.8914/10747
Keywords:
Guyanese Americans Social life and customs
;
Blacks Marriage customs and rites
;
African diaspora
;
New York, NY
;
Einwanderer
;
Guyana
;
Ritual
;
Kollektives Gedächtnis
Abstract:
Acknowledgments -- Abstract -- Prologue: the processes of diasporization and rediasporization -- Introduction: "Who Karkalay?" from wedding-based kweh-kweh to cultural reenactment -- "Where's the cookup rice?" Extracting the "African" and reconstructing "home" through food -- Wipin', winin', and wukkin': constructing, contesting, and displaying gender values -- "Beat de drum and de spirit gon get up": music, dance, and autenticity in Rediasporization -- "Borrow a day from God": navigating the boundaries of race and religion in rediasporization -- Conclusion: wholly fractured, wholly whole: innovating "traditions" and reconstructing self in Come to My Kwe-Kwe rituals -- Epilogue: picking up the pieces.
Abstract:
"Every year on the Friday before Labor Day, Guyanese from all over the world convene in Brooklyn, New York, to celebrate the accidental tradition of Come to My Kwe-Kwe and to connect or reconnect with other Guyanese. Since the fall of 2005, they have celebrated Come to My Kwe-Kwe (more recently, Kwe-Kwe Night), a reenactment of a uniquely African Guyanese prewedding ritual called kweh-kweh, also known as karkalay, mayan, kweh-keh, or pele. Come to My Kwe-Kwe has increasingly become a symbol of African Guyaneseness. In this volume, Rediasporization: African Guyanese Kwe-Kwe, Gillian Richards-Greaves examines the role of Come to My Kwe-Kwe in the construction of a secondary African Guyanese diaspora (a rediasporization) in New York City. She explores how African Guyanese in the United States draw on the ritual to articulate their tripartite cultural identities: African, Guyanese, and American. This work also investigates the factors that affect African Guyanese perceptions of their racial and gendered selves, and how these perceptions, in turn, impact their engagement with African-influenced cultural performances like Come to My Kwe-Kwe. This work demonstrates how the malleability of this celebration allows African Guyanese to negotiate, highlight, conceal, and even sometimes reject complex, shifting, overlapping, and contextual identities. Ultimately, this work explores how these performances in the United States facilitate African Guyanese transformation from an imagined community to a tangible community"--
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
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