Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Marc Matera offers us a vibrant and sophisticated history of the people of African descent, both famous and fugitive, who coursed through the heart of the British Empire in their quest for personal, professional, and political recognition in the twentieth century. Part social history, part collective biography, this genealogy of peripatetic black political formation reveals London as a bustling global portal for some of the most inspiring people who championed anticolonial modernity.
Black London archives the often terrible, troubling contradictions at the heart of racialized and sexualized imperial encounters and asks us to rethink both the makers and the tempos of decolonization.and#8221;and#151;Antoinette Burton, author of
Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism and#147;Marc Materaand#8217;s vibrant and kaleidoscopic excavation of black London traverses a stunning range of domains (from political activism to newspaper editing, from jazz performance to sexuality) to explore in admirable detail the complexities of what it meant to be black in the English metropole in the interwar period. If the book is a nuanced study of the emergence of black internationalism at the height of empire, it is also a marvel of rediscovery, bringing back to light a number of overlooked or understudied figures, including Una Marson, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Coleridge Goode, and Ras Prince Monolulu. Simply put, Black London is a must-read.and#8221;and#151;Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism
and#147;This engaging and lively book, richly peopled and powerfully situated in time and space, brings the multiple worlds of black Londoners vividly to life. Black London charts a web of black intellectuals, performers, and ordinary citizens who saw London as the place in which they might remake themselves, along with transforming the core of imperial thought and policy. Marc Materaand#8217;s account of the diverse sights and soundsand#151;along with politics and personal relationshipsand#151;of the late imperial metropole explains much about the complex dynamics of race and urbanity not only in the twentieth century but in the twenty-first as well.and#8221;and#151;Jordanna Bailkin, author of The Afterlife of Empire
and#147;Marc Materaand#8217;s carefully historical and deeply researched study places figures and events familiar in pan-African history in a richly textured setting. Reaching far beyond political protests against imperialism and racism, Matera traces the lives of women and men moving from Soho music clubs to Speakersand#8217; Corner, from film sets to university seminars, through interracial sexual liaisons and diverse alliances with British activists. He reveals how, despite much disagreement and difference, black London gathered people and influences from Africa and its diaspora and generated both powerful alternate views of the future and cultural forms which later found new homes around the Atlantic world. Many stories within black Atlantic history will be enriched by this book.and#8221;and#151;Philip S. Zachernuk, author of Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas
and#147;Marc Matera offers a fine, comprehensive reconstruction of black London, demonstrating conclusively the degree to which the imperial metropole worked to generate the counterforces of a vibrant black internationalism. He tells a powerful story that provides an essential dimension to our understanding of decolonization.and#8221;and#151;Bill Schwarz, author of Memories of Empire, Volume I: The White Manand#8217;s World
and#147;In this deeply researched, compelling story about the daily lives, desires, and political activism of African and Caribbean intellectuals in interwar London, Marc Matera offers a fine-grained analysis of the institutional spaces and polyvalent cultural practices that both gave rise to a unique African diasporic formation and fostered a set of black internationalist sensibilities that would resonate throughout the twentieth century. With careful attention to organizational networks, social relationships, and the intimacies that made up black life in the imperial metropolis, Matera places black feminists and less well-known figures alongside a more familiar cast of black male actors to show how their efforts at elaborating an alternative political imaginary involved pursuing a world whose horizon lay beyond the British Empire.and#8221;and#151;Minkah Makalani, author of In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939
Review
and#8220;This book is a must-have addition to any boxing fan's library.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Runstedtler brings new perspectives to bear in Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner. . . itand#8217;s well worth the read.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Runstedtler presents an unexpected yet wholly authentic take on the great African American boxer, Jack Johnson.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A fascinating must-read for students of African American or American studies covering the early 1900s.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;My nominee for book of the year by a rising young scholar. . . . For anyone interested in colonialism, imperialism, race, and the global impact of sport, this book is a must read.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A thoroughly researched, scholarly study, meant to be read slowly and considered deeply. . . . Highly recommended for all readers.and#8221;
Review
"A multitude of biographies have examined the life and influence of Jack Johnson over the last half-century, largely focused on the boxer's battles, escapades, and problems in the United States. Theresa Runstedtler has addressed a need for a more complete analysis in a transnational study that concentrates on Johnson's international impact. . . . This book is a valuable addition to the scholarly literature."
Review
"Using the color line as her yardstick, Runstedtler brilliantly measures Johnsonand#8217;s global impact. . . . She adds freshinsights about the meaning of Johnsonand#8217;s life, and she suggests new ways of understanding sport, race, and history."
Review
"In Theresa Runstedtlerand#8217;s exciting new book about Jack Johnsonand#8217;s global impact, Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line, we get something very rare and#8212; a history that truly travels the world along with its subject. This book represents a bold new way of conceptualizing boxing history across vectors of space, race, and theory. Recognizing the global nature of the sport and her subject, Runstedtler provides us with a transnational account in a genre that all-too-often tracks its participants no further than the boundaries of the ring. . . . A book like this one is long overdue and much welcomed."
Synopsis
In his day, Jack Johnsonand#151;born in Texas, the son of former slavesand#151;was the most famous black man on the planet. As the first African American World Heavyweight Champion (1908and#150;1915), he publicly challenged white supremacy at home and abroad, enjoying the same audacious lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, masculine bravado, and interracial love wherever he traveled. Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner provides the first in-depth exploration of Johnsonand#8217;s battles against the color line in places as far-flung as Sydney, London, Cape Town, Paris, Havana, and Mexico City. In relating this dramatic story, Theresa Runstedtler constructs a global history of race, gender, and empire in the early twentieth century.
Synopsis
"Theresa Runstedtler traces Jack Johnsonand#8217;s fabulous, furious, iconic life across five continents and through four paradigms (race, masculinity, imperialism, and popular culture), setting a formidably high bar in the emerging genre of transnational biography.
Jack Johnson: Rebel Sojourner is a groundbreaking achievement.and#8221;and#151;David Levering Lewis, author of
W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Raceand#147;This is a brilliantly researched and original study of the transnational career of the black American boxer Jack Johnson. In lucid and engaging prose, Theresa Runstedtler traces Johnsonand#8217;s travels across multiple continents, showing how Johnsonand#8217;s life serves as a cultural compass for the intersecting worlds of American, British, and French empire and ideas of race at the turn of the last century. This marvelous contribution to the burgeoning literature on the popular culture of imperialism and transnationalism will find a wide and appreciative audience among scholars of empire, American history, and African American studies.and#8221;and#151;Kevin Gaines, author of American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates in the Civil Rights Era.
and#147;Theresa Runstetler's Jack Johnson: Rebel Sojourner is one of the two or three most important books on race and sports I have read in the last ten years. It shows that Jack Johnson's impact on black-white relations, during the years of his exile, was at least as great in countries outside the United States as it was domestically. When he fought outside the US, Johnson became a model of power and agency for colonial peoples seeking liberation, and an object of exotic fascination and aversion for whites trying to maintain their power in a changing world. It is a brilliantly researched and innovative work that forces the reader to look at race in countries like France and Mexico in a completely different way.and#8221; and#151;Mark Naison, Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University
and#147;Theresa Runstedtler has created a wonderfully thoughtful and sophisticated exploration of the impact of Jack Johnsonand#8217;s storied boxing career in the context of Western imperialism of the early twentieth century. The author provides a fascinating and broad picture of the international implications of Johnsonand#8217;s success as the worldand#8217;s first black heavyweight champ. His fame inspired colonized people from Fiji to Jamaica to India. Western imperialists conversely grew alarmed at Johnsonand#8217;s popularity and success. Ultimately, this book is a welcome addition to the study of how itinerant black workers who left the U.S. contributed to transnational resistive politics in Europe, Latin America, Australia, Asia, and Africa. None was as popular as Jack Johnson, who reigned not only as heavyweight champ, but was the most salient example of the intersection of defiance to global white supremacy in the space of sport and entertainment.and#8221; and#151;Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, author of Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap
Synopsis
This vibrant history of London in the twentieth century reveals the city as a key site in the development of black internationalism and anticolonialism. Marc Matera shows the significant contributions of people of African descent to Londonand#8217;s rich social and cultural history, masterfully weaving together the stories of many famous historical figures and presenting their quests for personal, professional, and political recognition against the backdrop of a declining British Empire. A groundbreaking work of intellectual history, Black London will appeal to scholars and students in a variety of areas, including postcolonial history, the history of the African diaspora, urban studies, cultural studies, British studies, world history, black studies, and feminist studies.
Synopsis
In this closely integrated collection of essays on colonialism in world history, Frederick Cooper raises crucial questions about concepts relevant to a wide range of issues in the social sciences and humanities, including identity, globalization, and modernity. Rather than portray the past two centuries as the inevitable movement from empire to nation-state, Cooper places nationalism within a much wider range of imperial and diasporic imaginations, of rulers and ruled alike, well into the twentieth century. He addresses both the insights and the blind spots of colonial studies in an effort to get beyond the tendency in the field to focus on a generic colonialism located sometime between 1492 and the 1960s and somewhere in the "West." Broad-ranging, cogently argued, and with a historical focus that moves from Africa to South Asia to Europe, these essays, most published here for the first time, propose a fuller engagement in the give-and-take of history, not least in the ways in which concepts usually attributed to Western universalismand#151;including citizenship and equalityand#151;were defined and reconfigured by political mobilizations in colonial contexts.
Synopsis
"Probably the most important historian of Africa currently writing in the English language. His intellectual reach and ambition have even taken influence far beyond African studies as such, and he has become one of the major voices contributing to debates over empire, colonialism and their aftermaths. This book is a call to reinvigorate the critical way in which history can be written. Cooper takes on many of the standard beliefs passing as postcolonial theory and breathes fresh air onto them."and#151;Michael Watts, Director of the Institute of International Studies, Berkeley
"This is a very much needed book: on Africa, on intellectual artisanship and on engagement in emancipatory projects. Drawing on his enormous erudition in colonial history, Cooper brings together an intellectual and a moral-political argument against a series of linked developments that privilege 'taking a stance' and in favor of studying processes of struggle through engaged scholarship."and#151;Jane I. Guyer, author of Marginal Gains
Synopsis
This landmark book tracks matters of intimacy to investigate matters of state in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Indonesia, particularly the critical role played by sexual arrangements and affective attachments in creating colonial categories and distinguishing the ruler from the ruled. Arguing that social classification is not a benign cultural act but a potent political one, Ann Laura Stolerand#8217;s essays focus on parents and parenting, nursing mothers, servants, orphanages, and abandoned children to reveal why they were understood as so essential to imperial governance and why they have been so consistently absent from its historiography. In a new preface, Stoler takes up a broad range of problematics raised in the first edition, including the analytics of comparison, the treatment of the intimate, and more.
Synopsis
Praise for the first edition of
Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power:
and#147;Comprehensive, erudite, and compelling.and#8221;and#151;Journal of Modern History
and#147;Stoler presents a groundbreaking work that emanates from her empirical investigations of the European colonial experiences in Asia of the 19th and early 20th centuries. At the same time, she engages with cutting-edge discussions advanced by postcolonial theorists in recent years. By introducing the issues of race, sexuality, and intimacy into the study of colonialism, or the interactions of Europeans with the indigenous populations in their households and in their personal or sex lives, Stoler offers a fresh look at the European colonial experience, in which the line between the colonizers and the colonized becomes significantly blurred. This 'blurring,' or hybridity, is, of course, an important issue in postcolonial theory, yet Stoler's presentation reveals that this hybridity is not only a theoretical question, but also (though largely absent from the extant scholarship) a reflection of historical reality. Stoler shows that hybridization took place at the personal, quotidian level, where the Europeans interacted actively with the natives, and in the economic arena, where impoverished Europeans were forced to compete with locals for a good living in 'their' colonies. An eye-opening bookand#133;. Highly recommended.and#8221;and#151;Choice
and#147;Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power is a compelling text, its dense analysis made accessible and almost visceral by the historical ethnography and scholarly detailand#133;the book offers a rich and intricate account of the imperial project at work and strikes a difficult balance between theory, history, and ethnography in its analysis.and#8221;and#151;Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Synopsis
Drawing on more than fifteen years of research,
Mexican New York offers an intimate view of globalization as it is lived by Mexican immigrants and their children in New York and in Mexico. Robert Courtney Smith's groundbreaking study sheds new light on transnationalism, vividly illustrating how immigrants move back and forth between New York and their home village in Puebla with considerable ease, borrowing from and contributing to both communities as they forge new gender roles; new strategies of social mobility, race, and even adolescence; and new brands of politics and egalitarianism.
Smith's deeply informed narrative describes how first-generation men who have lived in New York for decades become important political leaders in their home villages in Mexico. Smith explains how relations between immigrant men and women and their U.S.-born children are renegotiated in the context of migration to New York and temporary return visits to Mexico. He illustrates how U.S.-born youth keep their attachments to Mexico, and how changes in migration and assimilation have combined to transnationalize both U.S.-born adolescents and Mexican gangs between New York and Puebla. Mexican New York profoundly deepens our knowledge of immigration as a social process, convincingly showing how some immigrants live and function in two worlds at the same time and how transnationalization and assimilation are not opposing, but related, phenomena.
Synopsis
"An ethnographic classic and the best ethnography of migration that I have ever read."and#151;Roger Waldinger, coauthor of
How the Other Half Works"A compelling, multi-dimensional portrait of Mexicans in New York. Smith authoritatively examines, in considerable detail and with convincing ethnographic evidence, how immigration patterns have drastically changed over the last 15 years, creating a group of 'transnational migrants.'"and#151;Francisco Lomeli, author of U.S. Latino Literatures and Cultures
"Many observers of American migration have noticed the increasing formation of transnational communities instead of one-way transfers from old country to new. In his warm, perceptive, richly documented study of a Mexican town, its New York counterpart, and the connections between them, however, Robert Smith has lived, chronicled, and reinterpreted the human experience of transnationalism. He shows us how individual and collective transformations interact, producing surprising new varieties of social life."and#151;Charles Tilly, author of Durable Inequality
"Studying local processes over an extended period of time has allowed Smith to make a major theoretical and methodological contribution to our understanding of the migration experience. Smith brilliantly succeeds in detecting as yet unrecognized dynamics in the increasingly complex and multi-sited character of migration."and#151;Saskia Sassen, author of Guests and Aliens
"In this essential book, Robert Courtney Smith provides insight on New York City in a new and important way. After years of research and observation, Smith documents a world through the eyes of the city's growing Mexican population. Smith's crucial points about immigration and transnational identity make compelling reading because of the sense of joy in his writing at being so close to a community that is redefining the American immigrant experience."and#151;Deborah Amos, Correspondent, National Public Radio
"The big contributions in ethnography come from doing something ambitious and novel in data gathering. Smith's research is not only unprecedented in its fieldwork, his analyses are consistently subtle, surprising and omni-relevant to major sociological issues. An instant classic, Mexican New York deeply carves a new benchmark for immigration studies."and#151;Jack Katz, professor of sociology, University of California Los Angeles
About the Author
Robert Courtney Smith is Associate Professor of Sociology, Immigration Studies and Public Affairs, School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, and Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the coeditor of Migration, Transnationalization, and Race in a Changing New York (2001). He is cofounder of the Mexican Educational Foundation of New York, a 501c(3) organization.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Transnational Life in Ethnographic Perspective
2. Mexican Immigrants in New York: Contexts for Transnational Life
3. and#147;Los Ausentes Siempre Presentesand#8221;: Making a Local-Level Transnational Political Community
4. The Defeat of Don Victorio: Transnationalization, Democratization, and Regime Change
5. Gender Strategies, Settlement, and Transnational Life
6. and#147;In Ticuani, He Goes Crazyand#8221;: The Second Generation Renegotiates Gender
7. and#147;Padre Jesus Is Our Protectorand#8221;: Adolescence, Religion, and Social Location in New York and Ticuani
8. and#147;Iand#8217;ll Go Back Next Yearand#8221;: Transnational Life across the Life Course
9. Defending Your Name: The Roots and Transnationalization of Mexican Gangs
10. and#147;Why You Gotta Mess Up a Good Place?and#8221;: Returning to a Changed Ticuani
Conclusions and Recommendations
Coda: The Mexican Educational Foundation of New York
Notes
Bibliography
Index