People Get Ready

An examination of the rich, long-lasting exchanges between African American and Caribbean peoples People Get Ready offers historical and theoretical readings of Caribbean and African American interaction from the 1700s to the present. By analyzing travel narratives, histories, creative collaborations, and political exchanges, author Kevin Meehan traces the development of African American/Caribbean dialogue through the lives and works of four key individuals: bibliophile/librarian Arthur Schomburg, writer/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, jazz poet Jayne Cortez, and theologian/politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "The genius of Kevin Meehan's approach is that he focuses on the blending of African American and Caribbean experience and the creative power of people as a source of decolonizing views and interventions while keeping the tensions and diasporas in full view. Looking to music for a principle of coherent inter-American cultural resistance, he finds that cultural contact across the hemisphere could be as liberating as it was in the songs of Curtis Mayfield and Bob Marley." -Tiffany Ruby Patterson, African American and Diaspora Studies, History, and American Studies, Vanderbilt University Kevin Meehan is associate professor of English at University of Central Florida. He has published in African American Review, American Literature, Callaloo, and elsewhere.