Forging Diaspora

“A fascinating study. . . . Guridy has selected four exemplary moments in U.S. and Cuban republican history. . . . Will encourage readers to explore more deeply by demonstrating that substantial understanding of any one of these topics requires a better understanding of the others.” — H-Net Reviews

“A work that will have significant relevance for a number of fields….The book should be required reading for scholars studying the African diaspora….It is written in a clear, accessible style, …easy for instructors to incorporate individual chapters into syllabi for undergraduate courses.” — Journal of American History

“A groundbreaking study in black transnational history. This book will be required reading for students concerned with the African diaspora, southern U.S. history, and black community building during the twentieth century.” — Journal of Southern History

“While this will be a welcome text in history courses that emphasize black diaspora theory and research methodology, it is also certain to spark exciting discussions in advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars in interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies and Latin American studies.” — The Americas

“An impressive effort to unmask the long history of relations between the peoples of the United States and Cuba.” — Essays In History

“This is a book that makes me respect the work of historians on the subject of African-descended populations in the Americas. . . [It] expands our understanding of relations between and among African-descended people in the Western Hemisphere. ” — Journal of African American History

“[Guridy’s] conceptualization of this African diaspora. . . [helps us to] understand how Afro-descendants created an identity that both inserted them into larger cultural and political networks, and at the same time helped them in their fights for national political rights.” — Caribbean Studies

“Guridy makes the important argument that African Americans and Afro-Cubans fought for national inclusion while at the same time engaging in a diaspora network. His analysis is fresh, offering new readings and interpretations of Tuskegee, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the black renaissances of the 1920s and 1930s, and black travel/tourist networks. This is a fabulous book.” — Lisa Brock, coeditor of Between Race and Empire: African-Americans and Cubans Before the Cuban Revolution

“In this fundamental book, Guridy painstakingly reconstructs for the first time how, in a world shaped by U.S. imperial interests and racist ideologies, black activists in the United States and Cuba created networks of cooperation and support. This is African Diaspora history at its best.” — Alejandro de la Fuente, University of Pittsburgh

“A masterful work of transnational history, Frank Guridy’s bold yet carefully crafted study of black struggles in Cuba and the U.S. will compel all of us to rethink the history of racial politics and black nationalism in the Western Hemisphere.” — Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original