Cubas Racial Crucible

"For the past two centuries, competing views of Cuban racial identity have remained in continuous tension, with whiteness, blackness, and race mixture variably upheld as ideals. Cuba's Racial Crucible explores the historical dynamics behind Cuban racial identities by highlighting the racially-selective reproductive practices and genealogical memories associated with family formation. Karen Y. Morrison reads archival, oral-history, and literary sources to demonstrate the ideological centrality and inseparability of race, nation, and family in definitions of Cubanidad. Morrison analyzes the conditions that supported the social advance and decline of notions of white racial superiority, nationalist projections of racial hybridity, and pride in African descent that influenced, but also were shaped by, Cuban men and women's every day, racially-oriented choices in creating families"--Provided by publisher.