1st Edition

Scattered Belongings Cultural Paradoxes of Race, Nation and Gender

By Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe Copyright 1999
    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    When the American golfer Tiger Woods proclaimed himself a "Caublinasian", affirming his mixed Caucasian, Black, Native American and Asian ancestry, a storm of controversy was created. This book is about people faced by the strain of belonging and not belonging within the narrow confines of the terms 'Black' or 'White'.
    This is a unique and radical study. It interweaves the stories of six women of mixed African/African Caribbean and white European heritage with an analysis of the concepts of hybridity and mixed race identity.

    List of plates -- Prologue -- A cknowledgements -- 1 Cracking the coconut: resisting popular folk discourses on “race,” “mixed race” and social hierarchies -- 2 Returning(s): relocating the critical feminist autoethnographer -- 3 Setting the stage: invoking the griot(te) traditions as textual strategies -- Preamble: could I be a part of your family? Preliminary /contextualizing thoughts on psychocultural politics of transracial placements and adoption -- 4 Ruby -- 5 Similola -- 6 Akousa -- 7 Sarah -- 8 Bisi -- 9 Yemi -- 10 Let Blackness and Whiteness wash through: competing discourses on bi-racialization and the compulsion of genealogical erasures -- Epilogue -- Select Bibliographies -- Index.

    Biography

    Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe is Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of East London.