Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

By exploring the complexities of enslavement in the autobiography of Cuban slave-poet Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1854), Gerard Aching complicates the universally recognized assumption that a slave's foremost desire is to be freed from bondage. As the only slave narrative in Spanish that has surfaced to date, Manzano's autobiography details the daily grind of the vast majority of slaves who sought relief from the burden of living under slavery. Aching combines historical narrative and literary criticism to take the reader beyond Manzano's text to examine the motivations behind anticolonial and antislavery activism in pre-revolution Cuba, when Cuba's Creole bourgeoisie sought their own form of freedom from the colonial arm of Spain.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgments(p. ix)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• 1 Liberalisms at Odds: Slavery and the Struggle for an Autochthonous Literature(p. 27)
• 2 In Spite of Himself: Unconscious Resistance and Melancholy Attachments in Manzano's Autobiography(p. 65)
• 3 Being Adequate to the Task: An Abolitionist Translates the Desire to Be Free(p. 106)
• 4 Freedom without Equality: Slave Protagonists, Free Blacks, and Their Bodies(p. 147)
• Epilogue(p. 197)
• Appendix: "My Thirty Years"(p. 207)
• Notes(p. 209)
• Bibliography(p. 229)
• Index(p. 241)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This discerning study delves into the life and work of Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1854), the enslaved Cuban poet and author of Spanish America's only known slave narrative, Autobiografía de un esclavo (written in 1836, first published in Spanish in 1937). Providing a solid theoretical framework and relying on archival materials, Aching (Africana and Romance studies, Cornell University) concentrates on Manzano's complex relationship with his patrons, particularly Domingo del Monte, to elucidate the often-competing views on freedom espoused by Creoles and slaves. In the introduction Aching provides background on Cuba in the 1830s-40s. In chapter 1, he examines Cuba's Creole reformers, their struggles for greater autonomy from Spain, and their relationship with Manzano. Chapter 2 offers a close reading of Autobiografía de un esclavo, and chapter 3 considers Richard Robert Madden (1798-1886) and his English translations of Manzano's literary works, which, though inadequate, served to introduce the situation of Cuba's slaves to the larger international abolitionist movement. In chapter 4, Aching turns to del Monte's literary circle and its antislavery literature, which the author contends embodies the reformist bourgeoisie's critique of the relationship between slavery and colonialism. In sum, a valuable contribution to the field of Latin American and Caribbean studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Yvette Fuentes, Nova Southeastern University

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Gerard Aching is Professor of Africana and Romance Studies at Cornell University. He is author of The Politics of Spanish American Modernismo: By Exquisite Design and Masking and Power: Carnival and Popular Culture in the Caribbean.