Prof. Alaí Reyes-Santos donates her latest publication

Prof. Sarah Aponte would like to thank Prof. Alaí Reyes-Santos for donating her most recent publication to our library.

Reyes-Santos, Alaí. Our Caribbean Kin: Race and Nation in the Neoliberal Antilles. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2015. Print.

No other book in recent memory has analyzed in such an interdisciplinary way the historical, cultural and political solidarity movements among Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Haitians. The book is structured around three key moments of kinship in the Antilles, first in the nineteenth century when the Antillean movement began the process of decolonization of the Americas. Following the region's struggle in the 1930s against U.S. imperialism and its Good Neighbor Policy; culminating with an analysis of neoliberal economic and social policies impact on the islands. More importantly, it carefully examines the shared experiences of Antilleans in moments of mutual recognition and tension. Despite the forces of European colonialism, US imperialism, and neoliberalism, the author raises and challenges the reader to “the ancestral call, to face both the ugly and the beautiful truths of our coexistence” which is something she reflects and questions throughout the book.

The narrative that Reyes-Santos presents is one of inclusiveness, intimacy, and awareness of our ancestral kinship along ethnic, racial, class, sexual, and gender diversity to understand and explain the impact of Antillean political mobilization in different contexts whether it be local, national, and trans-colonial/ transnational. She draws from a selection of invaluable primary and secondary sources to enrich both her historical and current representations of pan-Antillean solidarity. Furthermore, it informs the complexities of this relationship in marriages, brotherhood, and family in the Caribbean region. In the end, this book offers valuable information to students, scholars, and the public interested in understanding Antillean kinship among Haitians, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans. Finding a new perspective that deconstructs conventional interpretations of pan-Antillean solidarity to uncover the conflicts and collaborations among Antilleans.

Jhensen Ortiz
Assistant Librarian