Nightgowns from Cuba: Desire and Diaspora After the Revolution
Third Floor, Levis Faculty Center 919 West Illinois Street Urbana
As a child growing up in post-revolutionary Cuba as a member of an Ashkenazi-Sephardic family, Ruth Behar was cared for by Cardidad Martinez, an Afro-Cuban woman. Years later, the now noted anthropologist and MacArthur Fellow, once again encounters Martinez although under vastly different circumstances.
This is the very personal story of that encounter as Ruth Behar examines her childhood relationship with Martinez through a variety of modes - ethnographical, autobiographical and fictional. The difficulties, as well as advantages, of autobiography in anthropology are revealed in this fascinating account of the racial dynamics of the Cuban-Jewish experience in the late twentieth century.
Sponsored by: Department of Anthropology, Drobny Program for the Study of Jewish Culture and Society, Latina/o Studies Program
In conjunction with: Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, Afro-American Studies and Research Program, CAS Initiative, Territories and Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Latina/o Studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, International Programs and Studies, Women's Studies Program and La Casa Cultural Latina
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan