(Queeley, Andrea) Andrea J. Queeley is associate professor of anthropology and African diaspora studies at Florida International University. Based on Andrea J. Queeley’s fieldwork in Santiago and Guantánamo, Rescuing Our Roots: The African Anglo-Caribbean Diaspora In Contemporary Cuba (University Press of Florida) looks at local and regional identity formations as well as racial politics in revolutionary Cuba. Queeley argues that, as the island experienced a resurgence in racism due in part to the emergence of the dual economy and the reliance on tourism, Anglo-Caribbean Cubans revitalized their communities and sought transnational connections not just in the hope of material support but also to challenge the association between blackness, inferiority, and immorality. Their desire for social mobility, political engagement, and a better economic situation operated alongside the fight for black respectability. Unlike most studies of black Cubans, which focus on Afro-Cuban religion or popular culture, Queeley’s penetrating investigation offers a view of strategies and modes of black belonging that transcend ideological, temporal, and spatial boundaries.
