Scattered Belongings: Cultural Paradoxes of Race, Nation and Gender

by Ifekwunigwe,Jayne O.

• ISBN13: 9780415170956
• ISBN10: 0415170958
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-16
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

When the golfer Tiger Woods proclaimed himself a "Caublinasian", affirming his mixed Caucasian, Black, Native American and Asian ancestry, a storm of controversy was created in a world still perceived in terms of "black" and "white". This book is about ordinary lives facing similar dilemmas of racial identity, of belonging and not belonging. It tells the stories of six women of mixed African/ African Caribbean and white European heritage to show how the often painful experience of being a stranger in two cultures can be named and celebrated. Jayne Ifekwunigwe explores the cultural and historical roots of the popular discourses of race. She analyzes the problem of theorizing mixed racial and/or cultural identity in a global context, always relating it to the real-life experiences of these women.

Author Biography

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

Table of Contents

List of plates	p. xi
Prologue	p. xii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Cracking the coconut: resisting popular folk discourses on "race," "mixed race" and social hierarchies	p. 1
Returning(s): relocating the critical feminist auto-ethnographer	p. 29
Setting the stage: invoking the griot(te) traditions as textual strategies	p. 50
Preamble: could I be a part of your family? Preliminary/contextualizing thoughts on psychocultural politics of transracial placements and adoption	p. 62
Ruby	p. 71
Similola	p. 88
Akousa	p. 102
Sarah	p. 116
Bisi	p. 132
Yemi	p. 152
Let Blackness and Whiteness wash through: competing discourses on bi-racialization and the compulsion of genealogical erasures	p. 170
Epilogue	p. 194
Select Bibliographies	p. 197
Index	p. 215
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