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Despite great ethnic & racial diversity, ethnicity in Brazil is often portrayed as a simple matter of black or white, a distinction reinforced by the ruling elite's efforts to craft the nation's identity in its own image-white, Christian, & European. In Negotiating National Identity Jeffrey Lesser ...

Despite great ethnic & racial diversity, ethnicity in Brazil is often portrayed as a simple matter of black or white, a distinction reinforced by the ruling elite's efforts to craft the nation's identity in its own image-white, Christian, & European. In Negotiating National Identity Jeffrey Lesser explores the role ethnic minorities from China, Japan, North Africa, & the Middle East have played in constructing a national identity, thereby challenging dominant notions of Brazilian nationality & citizenship. Lesser examines how, despite their desire to have a racially homogeneous Brazil, the ruling classes recruited migrant labor from Asia in an attempt to "expand" the definition of "whiteness." Although they were encouraged to consider themselves white regardless of their actual race or ethnicity, immigrants from many countries-as well as their descendents-employed different strategies to negotiate their places as citizens. Some believed that their ethnic heritage was too high a price to pay for the "privilege" of being white & created alternative categories for themselves, such as Syrian-Brazilian, Korean-Brazilian, & so on. By examining how acculturating minority groups have represented themselves, Lesser reenvisions what it means to be Brazilian. Based on extensive research, Negotiating National Identity will be valuable to scholars & students in Brazilian & Latin American studies, as well as those in the fields of immigrant history, ethnic studies, & race relations.

What did it mean in the first half of this century to say `I am English'? Writing Englishness: An Introductory Sourcebook is a unique collection of extracts from writings of the era, all of which in some way raise this question. Drawn from a wide range of sources including letters, diaries ...

What did it mean in the first half of this century to say `I am English'? Writing Englishness: An Introductory Sourcebook is a unique collection of extracts from writings of the era, all of which in some way raise this question. Drawn from a wide range of sources including letters, diaries, journalism, fiction, poems, parliamentary speeches and government reports, the volume is divided into five sections: * The Ideas and Ideals of Englishness * Versions of Rural England * War and National Identity * Culture and Englishness * Domestic and Urban Englands The editors provide an introduction to each section and conclude with suggested study activities and further reading. It also contains a chronology and bibliography, completing the framework for study.

In this bold social history, Lillian Guerra explores the nature of popular-class and elite political consciousness in Puerto Rico from 1889 to 1940, the period when North American colonialism was taking shape. Through the prisms of gender, race, and class she analyzes the folk sayings of subalterns ...

In this bold social history, Lillian Guerra explores the nature of popular-class and elite political consciousness in Puerto Rico from 1889 to 1940, the period when North American colonialism was taking shape. Through the prisms of gender, race, and class she analyzes the folk sayings of subalterns in tandem with the literary production of the intelligentsia, producing a mosaic of debate, dissent, and affirmation regarding Puerto Rican identity.

The book focuses on two sources of intellectual and creative expression -- a vast and largely unstudied collection of folk tales, songs, and riddles (the 1914 Mason collection) and the essayist movement (including writers such as Antonia Pedreira, Miguel Melendez Munoz, and Luis Munoz Marin), which appropriated the figure of the Puerto Rican peasant as a symbol of national identity. From these sources Guerra mines a spectrum of opinions and beliefs about the world of the popular classes and she demonstrates that their songs, word-play, and narrative expression formed the nexus for engagement with the elite. What results is an image of the Puerto Rican peasant that works both against and in collusion with elite society.

Guerra's conclusions about class struggle for identity under North American imperialism challenge readers to compare the historical case of Puerto Rico with other colonial cases, not just in the Caribbean but throughout the Americas.