Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow . By Frank Andre Guridy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Pp. xiv, 270. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index.
Frank Andre Guridy's careful examination of the interactions between blacks in the United States and Cuba illustrates precisely how a diaspora comes to be. In this book, he argues that "material incentives, performance and embodiment, cultural production and its reception, [and] tourism" are what fundamentally drive diasporic movements and linkages. Guridy asks the questions: "Why did Afro-Cubans and African Americans seek out each others' communities during the first half of the twentieth century? How does the concept of diaspora enhance our understanding of these initiatives?" (p. 4). The connections between African Americans and Afro-Cubans developed as a result of a common striving to combat racism locally as well as globally. As Guridy asserts, although the historical actors highlighted in his study did not use the term "diaspora," their actions provide evidence of the formation of a diasporic community through social, political, intellectual and cultural exchanges. Guridy advances the idea that "Afro-diasporic linkages were made in practice" (p. 5), the product of the material needs of both communities within their respective nations as much as their historical sense of belonging to an international diaspora of African-descendant peoples.